Maybe I am looking in the wrong places, but precisely zero of my local retailers have anything that looks like a Shopify storefront. And it's about the tools (Shopify is a great one), but also about the
attitude. Amazon has the attitude of “get the thing to the customer, immediately”. Most of the other places have an attitude of “we want to build a long-lasting relationship with you, the consumer”. Hence they ignore fast deliveries and push coupons and loyalty programs and crowded stores.
Ironically, this leads to a place where the only long-lasting relationship the customer ends up having is with Amazon, which is a pretty shitty company.
> somehow it's moral to ignore all externalities in the name of pure market efficiency
I am not saying that, or I don't think I am anyway. I think the retailers are not taking the externality of reduced attention span in a serious way like Google or Amazon. The technology totally exists for a local retailer to get my location, and deliver a product to me with 3 clicks in under an hour.
And yet, apart from food delivery startups (that are not local, and simulate such an experience via a layer), few actual goods retailers (say, my local hardware store) have invested in building such an experience. I can't recall any of them having the courage to at least test out a pilot program with such an experience.
Either way, I do try to support my local retailers as much as I can; and my usage of Amazon has seen a slow but steady drop-off over the last 3 years. But that's mainly due to the fact that Amazon makes