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Comment by jkhwleroiu | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that even in big cities, real world shops are disappearing.

This year I wanted to buy a TV, and wanted to see them in real life to judge colors/brightness levels, and shockingly, in London, I found just one place which had like 10 TVs from the leading brands. I'm sure there are a few more, but I wasn't able to locate them using google, or walking the main shopping streets. I remember shops 10 years ago which had acres of electronics (albeit in a different country).

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Brick and mortar shops can't stop you from coming in and finding the perfect item, then buying it online to save money. I bought an office chair recently and didn't feel confident picking one without trying chairs out in person. The chair I settled on was $100 cheaper online

I wouldn't mind paying a few pounds for them to let me browse the products. Maybe this is a viable business model.

Maybe they can offer a super wide selection available to see, since they don't need to carry stock. And perhaps you can order from them if you like it, and they run an online store where they ship it from, and you get your $10 back as a discount.

This is basically describing the Amazon stores.

Another approach is the manufacturer showroom. They don't care where you buy it so they just try to induce the demand.

But it's not very common. I expected showrooming to develop into a more formalized thing but it really hasn't. I guess between Walmart and B&M chains like Best Buy that have managed to stabilize for the most part, there hasn't been a compelling need for manufacturers to establish a showroom presence.

This is one point the article forgot (or didn't catch) to touch upon. I would like to go buy items in-store but I always hesitate to make the purchase because I know that same item will likely be significantly cheaper somewhere online. Of course, when I go online to find that product, I get distracted by the score of other options available leading to further indecision.

It is especially weird when it's cheaper online on the SAME store. That happened with me in brazil.

What's worse is when the store won't honor their own online price. That happened to me in the US, I think it was Walmart.

They recently honored it for me. 20% difference.

Rumor has it that a certain US retailer has an online store that tries to determine whether you are checking prices from inside their physical store, and raises the advertised price to match those of the store you are in.

Happened to me in target the other day.

At Target, at the checkout you can show them the price on their own website, and they will sell it to you for the online price.

A shift I've noticed in the USA, is I'll go to an electronics retailer, and the item I want isn't on the shelf. In it's place is a placard instructing me to order it online. My hope was to actually handle the item and see if I liked it, then not buy it if I didn't like it.

Instead I have to order it online and then if I don't like it, either return it to the store or send it back via post.

While its super convenient for the consumer, in some respects, ordering everything online seems wasteful and bad for even the consumer and retailer in many respects.

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