What's a reasonable "support local independent sellers" penalty?

[rhu]

Given that just about anything costs less at Amazon.com, but that it's a good thing to support local independent sellers, how does one balance the two? How much extra is reasonable to spend to support the locals?

Yesterday, we went to the New England Mobile Book Fair and bought a bunch of stuff for about 5% more than the same things cost at Amazon. That seemed reasonable.

But I just comparison-shopped Settlers of Catan (which I first saw played over Shabbat and now want to learn) at Amazon ($33) and at Eureka ($42); that's about 27% more at Eureka. (Yes, Eureka would give me back a percentage against purchases next quarter, but I don't shop there often enough that I'm certain I'd use that before it expired.) That's a much steeper penalty.

In halacha (Jewish law), over- or under-charging becomes actionable when it's one-sixth. Does a 16% penalty for buying local seem a reasonable cutoff?

I'm curious what tradeoffs others consider reasonable for supporting local small businesses.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

For me, often it depends on the ease of acquiring the item. If the local store has it in stock right now, and I can get it immediately, I will try to patronize them. But if it's a specialty item, or one that requires special ordering, I tend to order it from an online dealer.

Another example: if I want to buy a book and have it autographed by an author who is signing at a local store, I always buy the book at the local store.

[tinhorn2.livejournal.com]

And buying games from online game stores is usually cheaper still -- for example, Settlers is currently $27.55 at Fairplay games.

I buy virtually all my board games (I have over 200) at online game stores. I support my Friendly Local Game Store by buying lots of last-minute gifts there, and regularly donating to their resale shelf games that I no longer want (and not taking any store scrip in return, though they offer it).

But in the end, go with what feels right to you. If the online discount were 0% or 80%, the choice would be easy. When it's somewhere in the middle, only you can tell what feels right to you. And keep in mind that there are other ways of supporting your local retailers, even if you buy most of your games elsewhere.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Small local businesses have overhead that Amazon doesn't have: they have to pay their rent (which money helps to maintain the infrastructure of your town), and they have to stock smaller quantities, and one hopes they pay their employees (your neighbors, maybe) more than Amazon pays theirs. For your premium, you get the convenience of being able to pick up the book (or game, in this case) today, plus personable customer service, plus the satisfaction of walking through your town's shopping district and knowing that your purchase does its small part to keep that district relatively lively.

My interpretation of that bit of halacha is that it's reprehensible to drastically overcharge *for profit*, but the prices at Eureka have to be higher not because they're making more profit than Amazon but because the rents (and other overhead) around here are ridiculous. 16% penalty cutoff for buying locally seems reasonable, yes, but if that won't keep the local business afloat, what to do?

I'm not trying to moralize at you: it's a valid dilemma, with which I too struggle on a regular basis. In general, I buy locally if I can, but there are so many products which just aren't available locally, I do wind up ordering a lot online.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

The point of that halacha, I think, is to define what a "normal" range of prices is. If the seller charges more than 1/6 above the prevailing average, he's price-gouging, and the buyer has the right to revoke the purchase; if the buyer pays less than 5/6 of the prevailing average, he's taking advantage of the seller, and the seller has the right to revoke.

I understand the economics of why Amazon can undersell just about anyone else. I was bringing in the 1/6 halacha not to suggest that David and the fine folks at Eureka were ripping off their customers, but rather as one external datum regarding what a "normal" span of prices would be. (One could argue that by offering deeper discounts, Amazon's pricing would be regarded by the Talmud as predatory.)

But at the end of the day, if I'm going to pay $x more to support my local merchants (because I like having local merchants around; because it's good for the local community; certainly if I have taken advantage of the opportunity to actually browse), I don't want to feel like a chump by, in effect, overpaying for the intangible value that I get from the local merchant.

And if the extra percentage (10, or 16, or 30) isn't enough to keep the local merchant afloat, then the extra value that the merchant's presence brings to the community is not worth the extra cost. If there's a local sushi restaurant and not enough people like sushi, the restaurant will either raise prices and discover that enough local people love sushi to be willing to pay the premium, or the restaurant will fail. I, as someone who enjoys sushi, am not morally required to pay an unlimited premium for the benefit of having a local sushi restaurant.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

If I can buy something locally, I will. If I can only find something online, I'll buy it online. Generally speaking, if I can't afford to pay full retail, I can't afford to buy it at all.

But as someone who spent many years in retail, I may have a different perspective. I know how razor-thin the margin is for independent retailers, and I know that my purchase may decide whether or not they can order new product. (Which in turn attracts more customers, who in turn generate more sales...)

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I think this might be a situation in which ancient law doesn't apply to present-day conditions. Nobody a few hundred years ago could have anticipated how the Internet and world marketplace would affect today's economy. Because of these crazy times in which we live, the letter of the law (1/6) isn't necessarily applicable -- although by all means, the spirit of the law does and is worth thinking about.

And again, I don't mean to argue the point (we'd be talking past each other) -- just saying it's a very interesting question that you ask.

[cellio]

This is about what I was going to say. If they're going to order it anyway, I can do that on my own and save myself a second trip. If they have it right now, I'll buy it up to about a $10 difference. (When I'm in the store I think of raw dollars, not percentages.) And no, I don't price it locally, go check Amazon, and then decide; either I've seen it online and know the going rate or I go by gut feel in the store.

We recently set out to replace analog recordings that exist on CD (and are recording the rest ourselves). We compiled a list of about 150 CDs to buy (used and thus cheaper if possible). I would have been happy to give a local, independent store the business -- but was not willing to dig through all their bins. They were not interested in taking my list and filling what they could from it. So we ordered from various folks selling online (some of which were clearly "guy selling out of his basement", so we still supported some independent sellers).

[jadelennox]

As long as you are basing it in halacha, here is another way of looking at supporting local businesses. My dad's kosher butcher shop went under in the 1990s, because the large supermarket chains could afford to buy so cheaply that he could sometimes buy Empire poultry more cheaply from Stop & Shop than he could from Empire. To the outside observer, I'm sure it looked like he was price-gouging. Masses of the kosher-buying populace of the North Shore switched to buying at the supermarkets -- that is, whenever the supermarkets bothered to carry kosher goods. Now everything but the Butcherie is gone, and when the north-of-Brookline crowd want something more specialty than supermarket kosher, they don't have many options.

In other words, if you rely on the deep discounts the chains can provide you for non-specialty items, knowing that your local shops are around as fallbacks for local-interest items or providing other services, you will feel like a chump when the local businesses all go under and those local specialty services are no longer provided.

Now, that being said, for some things I still go for the deep discount, especially if there really isn't a tradition of strong local businesses providing the product (e.g. DVDs). But with books it's pretty easy to tell if you are being overcharged by an unscrupulous merchant or undercharged by a merchant trying to undercut its competitors: look at the price printed by the publisher on the object in your hand. If the price you're being charged isn't more than that, then you weren't a chump. If the price you are being charged is substantially less than that, then you have to ask yourself how the vendor is supporting that business practice. Seriously, what kind of business practices are enabling Amazon to sell $21 hardcovers for $10? Maybe they aren't unscrupulous business practices, and maybe they are. (Which you point out with your parenthetical; the question is whether or not you agree. I have mixed feelings, and I admit that my mixed feelings sometimes follow with my convenience and my price sensitivity more than any underlying sense of ethics.)

For me, the intangibles aren't all that intangible. I know that Porter Square Books is never going to hide fiction about GLBTQ teenagers on closed shelves so that nobody accidentally gets offended; I also know that Amazon did exactly that when it removed said books from search results and sales rankings. So except when I am feeling extremely price sensitive, books at least are where I support the locals.