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America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

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Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#401

Post by rimunroe »

VLM wrote: post #398
rimunroe wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I didn't comment on it but the idea that engineers are smarter than other people in the first place sounds like a wildly unfounded assumption

I think we're crossing signals WRT I'm talking about engineers shopping like the guy using a parametric search and examining some data sheets to find the correct resistor for a circuit, vs you're thinking I'm talking about engineer as a proxy name for well paid individual, which is admittedly usually true. There is a moderately high minimum required cognitive level to successfully use search interfaces and study what…

I think you’re assuming that the cognitive requirements for being an engineer are somehow higher than what most people can meet. I don’t think that’s true, and it seems like an extraordinary claim to make.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#402

Post by rimunroe »

wutbrodo wrote: post #400
rimunroe wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currently shopping by catalog and spec and datasheet is for the cognitive elite like engineers, but soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation. Sounds like you you're mistaking "wealthy people" for "the cognitive elite"! The shopping behaviors you're describing are just those of people who have either the time or capital to spend trying to get marginally better stuff. > [...…

> Sounds like you you're mistaking "wealthy people" for "the cognitive elite"! The shopping behaviors you're describing are just those of people who have either the time or capital to spend trying to get marginally better stuff. This is a pretty odd assumption. Why do you assume that doing your research means valuing money _less_? If anything, I would assume the opposite. I grew up lower middle class with a scholarsh…

There’s a big difference between comparison shopping for prices and the type of shopping you described with your bike example. The former is something that everyone who’s remotely frugal does, and the latter is something that people who want to get The Best Thing (ie not out of necessity) do. That research to find The Best Thing takes a whole lot of time and energy, and lots of people just don’t have that.

Your bike example doesn’t really make much sense, because for the vast majority of people, the cheapest bike will do. Most people don’t bother measuring themselves first, and there’s basically no need to do so at all.

[edit]

To clarify: I don’t think that doing the type of research you described on a thing you’re buying means you value money less, but that it means you probably aren’t shopping for that thing out of necessity.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#403

Post by headcanon »

duderific wrote: post #336
headcanon wrote: post #249

The free market in action. Retail outlets are simply not equipped to handle the tastes of the modern consumer. It is an industry that saw huge growth in the 80's and 90's and has not been able to keep up with technology. As the segment of the population that still exclusively shops brick-and-mortar ages, unless these businesses can evolve and modernize they will continue to fail. Tough break, but its ultimately bette…

> Retail jobs are some of the worst ones to have too True, but they are also some of the only jobs nowadays that are available to people without college degrees, or people who have effectively aged out of the white collar or blue collar workforce, but still need to generate some sort of income. Notice how many retail clerks nowadays are in the 55+ set.

I know, thats why I qualified it with "so as long as the gross job counts are replaced" Being a millenial, most people I've met in my age group are working in either retail or food service. Many of them also have 4-year degrees, just not in a business or technical field. One could say they should have made better educational decisions, but I would rather live in a world where we can celebrate the variety of human interests and endeavors, and not subject people to a lifetime of economic purgatory just because they didn't learn programming or whatever in school. I'm lucky because I happened to be legitimately interested in something that is very profitable in today's economy. Others are not so much, and I really feel for them. But the solution does not lie in dead-end jobs that give no kind of gainful employment.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#404

Post by dghughes »

dghughes wrote: post #189
cwbrandsma wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing completely, but your location might be influencing your answer. I live in the northern portion of the USA, we get freezing winters and blistering summers. Come mid-winter...I am not going downtown to walk around outside, we don't hang out outside (unless we are talking winter sports, and then FULLY clothed). In summer, there needs to be shade. Fall and spring, we get wet. But really, it seems like…

I'm in eastern Canada and I agree with your weather statement. With 100km/h winds, -25C and 1m of snow it's not worth going out. I wish we had a subway system here and underground shops. Montreal and Toronto have huge indoor shopping areas connected by subway, I suppose technically they are malls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_(Toronto)

And about 300km to the north of my location in Gaspe today winds were 132km/h (82mph).

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#406

Post by readhn »

paulpauper wrote: post #157
readhn wrote: post #76

this is all coming together nicely with this amazing market bull run from 2009 coming to an end some time in the near future. timing the event is hard if not impossible.

not really. All that is happening is that online retail is subsuming offline retail, while total retail sales keep growing. The bull market has further to go . long Amazon

marker is running out of steam. in a year or two we might be looking at this as a very significant market top.
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