No one can resist the temptation: you find an item on Amazon, and even after accounting for shipping expenses, it still comes out
cheaper than what you would pay if you were to get the same item at a local store. I, too, have done this in the past, but not as much as others do.
I like to think of this as a short term thinking, that only benefits the individual making the purchase and Amazon of course. In the long term, you and your local economy are probably both losing.
Weekly-even daily-news of some retailer laying off people is becoming a norm. Not a week passes by without some retailer, big or small, announcing massive job layoffs. Whether it is Sears, Best Buy, Staples or some other small retailers, online shopping is costing the local economy hundreds, even thousands of jobs. Many different retailers are suffering and only one is benefiting. Well, other online shopping giants are benefiting too, but Amazon stands to gain the most.
This begs the question: where does this stop? Or will it? There is nothing wrong with saving money, after all, we all want to maximizer our purchasing powers. Heck, this very blog is all about helping you organize your finances and save money. But when this saving of a few bucks is only a short term gain, we have to start thinking about how we are spending our money. You may save a few bucks today, maybe even hundreds every year. But in the long term, your very job could be lost due to this. If you work for a retailer, be it in electronics, clothing, shoes-even food-you now have direct and fierce competition from some online retailer, mainly Amazon. Of course, Amazon is the name that is most synonymous with online shopping, but there are many more out there, including Ebay, Overstock, Barnes and Nobles etc…
If you prefer the convenience of online shopping, why not shop from your local retailer’s online store? For example, instead of buying books from Amazon.com , why not head to Chapters.ca instead? You will be supporting your local Canadian economy while saving money at the same time. You may not save as much as if you had bought from Amazon, but you will be indirectly responsible for saving someone’s job and that is always a great feeling.