The shopping experience is simply becoming too good over the Internet. If I go into a CD or book store in the city and find that what I want is out of stock, I can go to the clerk and order it.
(If I'm very, very lucky, the clerk will actually know how to do this for me, but it will still take four weeks.) On the Net, I can order two obscure CDs from Europe and an out-of-print book from the US, and get them delivered to my door in four days. Granted, it's been possible to buy CDs and books over the Internet for some time now--nothing new there. Where the difference lies now is in the variety and the selection--and you'll find that in products much more diverse than just books and CDs. The Net appeals to two types of shopper: the Chooser, who knows exactly what he/she wants and doesn't want to waste time looking for it, and the Grabber, who sees something he/she didn't know they needed and impulse-buys it.
I always thought of myself as more of a Chooser--the ability to use a search engine to look for a book title is so much easier than trying to figure out how a given store "oorganises" their books. Having taken a close look at some of the many auction sites now up and running in Australia (www.sold.com.au, www.ibuy.com.au, www.ausfind.com.au, and Yahoo!'s site, for example) I now realise that I fit comfortably into the Grabber category as well. I never knew there was so much stuff that I couldn't live without.
The very good news about this is that the Web's enhanced selection and availability of products can only put the pressure on conventional shops to offer more. If I want to buy a mass-produced dining chair from a furniture company with stores nationwide, for example, I am becoming less and less likely to agree to wait six to eight weeks for it to be delivered.
Seems pretty obvious to me. But I guess it doesn't look that way to everyone. Toyota Australia recently announced that it would be discontinuing its online car sales. PC Week Australia quoted Matthew Callachor, Toyota General Manager of Marketing, as saying, "We'd set ourselves a target of selling 18 cars over the Net in three months. In fact we sold seven. It was a way of finding out if Australians were ready to buy big-ticket items electronically, and they obviously aren't ready yet."
How many things bug you about that quote? I'm bothered by quite a few: who set a target of 18 cars, for example? Sounds like someone looked at the cost of the site, divided by three months can came up with the magic number. And, to me, the fact that Toyota sold seven cars says that Australians are ready to buy big-ticket items electronically. If you needed any more proof, you could look to Dell and Gateway who are doing big corporate-account business over the Internet.
But I'm convinced that people are not only ready, they're screaming out for this kind of service in Australia, so, to paraphrase another fan of music CDs, do yourself a favour and go online to buy it.
Brian Haverty is the editor of PC Magazine Australia
