An interesting blog post on some of the weaknesses in 90s consumerism in the US

nesf

http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=717

Some apt criticisms there I think.

Arpeggio Milque

Excellent blog post. Thanks for pointing it out.

A couple of observations:

1) What he says there about saturation of retail outlets and saturation of product is certainly not yet applicable to Ireland, which is about where the US was in about the 1970s or early 1980s in this regard.

2) What he says about retailers trying to exploit asymmetries of information as though the internet didn't exist, however, is spot on in Ireland today. Retailers here don't even seem to have understood that shoppers have price information at their fingertips. Far from having figured out that shoppers can go on the internet, they don't even seem to have considered that Northern Ireland might offer some competition for the shopping budgets of even those who don't have access to the internet. My wife and I rarely purchase any big-ticket items in brick-and-mortar shops any more, as they are not price competitive. And this isn't just about exchange rates; things have been like this for a while.

3) Lying just beyond the scope of that blog post is a question about the continued viability of an economic system predicated on endless 'growth.' The current financial crisis merely makes the need for reflection on that question much more acute.

cavedave

Arpeggio Milque

1) What he says there about saturation of retail outlets and saturation of product is certainly not yet applicable to Ireland, which is about where the US was in about the 1970s or early 1980s in this regard.

Why are you certain of this? Ireland is only beaten by sweden and the netherlands in europe in terms of shopping space.

Arpeggio Milque

cavedave wrote: »

Why are you certain of this? Ireland is only beaten by sweden and the netherlands in europe in terms of shopping space.

I didn't know that, but it doesn't contradict what I said. Retail in the US has reached a kind of saturation that Ireland isn't close to. Now, if you provide me with a direct comparison that shows I'm wrong about that, I'll eat my humble pie.

amacachi

Arpeggio Milque wrote: »

I didn't know that, but it doesn't contradict what I said. Retail in the US has reached a kind of saturation that Ireland isn't close to. Now, if you provide me with a direct comparison that shows I'm wrong about that, I'll eat my humble pie.

Would love to get some stats, but I wouldn't know where to look. In Dundalk there are far, far too many shops for the population. How some are still open is beyond me.

nesf

Arpeggio Milque wrote: »

1) What he says there about saturation of retail outlets and saturation of product is certainly not yet applicable to Ireland, which is about where the US was in about the 1970s or early 1980s in this regard.

Agreed. I don't think the Irish market is anywhere close to as saturated as the US in terms of repetition of the same service in slightly different packaging. That doesn't mean we don't have too many shops of certain kinds at the moment though.

Arpeggio Milque wrote: »

2) What he says about retailers trying to exploit asymmetries of information as though the internet didn't exist, however, is spot on in Ireland today. Retailers here don't even seem to have understood that shoppers have price information at their fingertips. Far from having figured out that shoppers can go on the internet, they don't even seem to have considered that Northern Ireland might offer some competition for the shopping budgets of even those who don't have access to the internet. My wife and I rarely purchase any big-ticket items in brick-and-mortar shops any more, as they are not price competitive. And this isn't just about exchange rates; things have been like this for a while.

Also agreed though internet shopping has not taken off to the extent here that it has in other countries and there are disadvantages due to our small market size versus say the UK (as in, I don't we'll ever have an independent "amazon.ie" style online store with the same depth of catalogue etc).

Arpeggio Milque wrote: »

3) Lying just beyond the scope of that blog post is a question about the continued viability of an economic system predicated on endless 'growth.' The current financial crisis merely makes the need for reflection on that question much more acute.

Endless growth isn't actually that much of a big deal when you take growth levels like 2-3% as being standard in big advanced countries. You don't actually need that much technological progress to sustain levels like these. Growth levels like we saw in the 90s are something that can only ever be transitory though.

cavedave

Arpeggio Milque

I didn't know that, but it doesn't contradict what I said. Retail in the US has reached a kind of saturation that Ireland isn't close to. Now, if you provide me with a direct comparison that shows I'm wrong about that, I'll eat my humble pie.

Well i don't think its about humble pie I just wonder what the truth is.

(The United States has 21 square feet of retail space per capita, according to ICSC.)

Thats 1.95 square meters. Shopping Centre space here is .38 meters squared here. I would say there is a good bit of non shopping center space shopping space here but i doubt its over 1.5 square meters each.