Great Debate: Is e-commerce killing brick and mortar?

It's merely a question of when

Jason Perlow

It's not a question of "will" retail Brick and Mortar die, but "when". For certain types of businesses, it will happen faster than others.

Only the biggest and most powerful and most efficient retailers -- such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, and Costco --
will survive the culling. So in the future there may not be as much choice for comparison shopping in Brick and Mortar, especially if these powerful chains, or companies like Amazon, end up owning much of the electronic shopping real estate as well, or end up controlling the channel for smaller distributors of specialty goods.

For durable goods with lots of reviews, which are not highly specialized and aren't as susceptible to the sensual experience in order to make a convincing buy, customers are going to move to online sales much sooner rather than later.

All of this depends how quickly the enabling technologies mature and how much they cost. Technology is certainly moving extremely fast in this area and it is difficult to predict when this retail transformation to a largely online-based model is going to occur.

For the middle class it will very likely happen a lot faster than for the working class, since they will easier be able to afford the enabling technology. But eventually, everyone will prefer to shop online.

Change is always in the air

David Gewirtz

There's no doubt that change is in the air. Change is always in the air. That means that some retailers will go out of business, some will flourish, and we'll even see new players enter the market.

The online commerce world is tapping into the needs of consumers, but it, too, is at risk. For example, while UPS and FedEx can shoulder much of the delivery burden, so too must the very beleaguered US Postal Service. While huge sellers like Amazon can shoulder increases in shipping costs, most small e-commerce vendors can't.

And there's the rub. Even in e-commerce, there's a shake-out. Free shipping programs like Amazon Prime effectively sideline many smaller sellers, or send them into the somewhat unreliable arms of "fulfilled by Amazon."

There are good and timeless reasons to shop retail, from the need for goods today, to the desire to handle, see, and touch a product, to the desire to validate that what you're buying is what is actually being represented as for sale, to validating quality personally, to the inability to reliably get packages, to the desire to not spend on shipping, to the difficulty in surviving the individual package shipping process, to the increasing problem of poorly packed products -- and so on.

Jason is right that clicks will grow. I, personally, buy far more online than in person. But I'm relatively affluent, and when I don't want to go into a store, my wife is willing to put up with the crowds and lines.

I do have to caution that most affluent and even moderately affluent people have no real picture of what the poor in America are dealing with. The more we integrate e-commerce into our daily lives, the more we leave those people behind.

If China can push many of its formerly impoverished citizens into the middle class, so can we. And once we do, they, too, can shop at retailers like WalMart and Target, buy from Amazon and Apple, and bring pepper spray to an Xbox sale.

It's the circle of life and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.