Shop ‘til you drop! The war cry of those people classified as avid shoppers. I’m not one of them. I hate shopping. I’m not one to wander through the mall looking for the perfect pair of jeans, or trying to find the best deal on the softest toilet paper. Even before I start the car, I know what I want. I know what store I’m going to and I know where it’s located. I’m in and I’m out as quickly as possible. If I don’t know exactly what I want or what store has it, I do my searching online.
Apparently that is where shopping is going. Online. We’re seeing online shopping growing by leaps and bounds every year. And it’s not just locating what you want and then going to the store to get it; it’s actually buying the item(s) online and having them shipped to you. You can buy practically anything you want now and never have to leave the comfort of your easy chair.
Does this spell the end of the big box stores? Some argue that it does. We used to go to Office Depot to buy our office supplies. Then it became possible for us to go to their website, order what we wanted and have it shipped to our office. No reason to go to the store. If you’ve been in our local Office Depot store, there very rarely are more than a dozen shoppers in the store. How long before Office Depot realizes they don’t need the overhead of that store and close it up?
A lot of big box stores are encouraging you to shop online. I was in Home Depot the other day looking for something when a staff member informed me that the store didn’t stock it anymore, but that I could purchase it online and pick it up in the store two days later. I didn’t want it two days later, so I went to Lowes. Same story there. That’s a downside to online shopping. You can’t have it right away. But thanks to Federal Express and UPS making overnight delivery possible, you can get your product quickly. Amazon, certainly the world’s largest purveyor of online goods is experimenting with delivering goods by drone within an hour, if you are in an area where Amazon has a distribution center. Before too long, you’ll purchase your self-driving car online and it will simply drive itself to you. So much for the joy of driving it off the lot. We won’t be shopping ‘til we drop anymore, we’ll be shopping ‘til our fingers cramp.
Online shopping is here to stay and will likely be a growth industry for years to come. It provides many opportunities for us as investors also. We can invest in the companies that provide the equipment we use to shop online (computers and smartphones); companies that provide the internet services we use to shop on the web; the companies that actually provide the goods online that we buy; as well as the companies that bring them to our door.
I also don’t feel that online shopping will drive the Walmarts and Targets of the world out of business. But if you are going to survive you had better have a way for people to buy from you over the internet.
These are the opinions of Mike Berry and not necessarily those of Cambridge, are for informational purposes only, and should not be construed or acted upon as individualized investment advice.
Mike Berry is a Registered Representative offering securities through Cambridge Investment Research, Inc., a Broker/Dealer, Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment Advisor Representative, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor. Legacy Wealth Management, LLC and Cambridge are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice.
Copyright ©2017 Mike Berry. All Rights reserved. Commercial copying, duplication or reproduction is prohibited.
