Retail Rant

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

I was called to work on my day off yesterday, which was no surprise. The department store is shorthanded in workers and asks all its regulars to help above and beyond.

These days, the retail industry is in crisis. There are many confusing price cuts, much pushing for credit applications, incredibly complicated online competitions, and growing numbers of empty brick-and-mortar stores.

While I am working in the department store, its customers keep me aware of the confusion in navigating current retail processes. For example, they have learned to compare online and in-store prices and may enter an actual store to negotiate for the best price. Upon finding an item online that they want but that a physical store doesn’t stock, disappointed customers are essentially forced to shop online.

Price cutting is rampant, and nobody knows where that might go. Retailers must make profits, so price-cutting is an art; sale pricing is a game–a tease designed to draw would-be customers. All retailers are doing whatever’s needed to make buying quicker and easier, to attract customers.

Customers know all this, are highly aware and still purchasing like crazy. Retailers keep pushing sales and offering rewards as incentives. Meanwhile, buyers are struggling with debt from easy buying.

You get it because most of us overbuy readily available products. Nonetheless, retail must keep changing and solve the current burdens of disappearing storefronts, its hugest retailers competing mightily to keep and gain customers, and a central issue of pricing dancing with the unrest of inflation and interest rates.

Dear Friends: This commercial climate stresses a hard lesson of restraint. Diana