How Shopping in Person is Getting Worse for Your Time and Money
Written by
Laura Bogart
Edited by
Cory Dudak
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Before we could find anything from back-to-school outfits to gourmet food to dryer sheets through an app, going shopping was an event. There was the rush of maneuvering through the crowd, the pleasure of walking past stores and hoping something exciting would randomly catch our eye and the satisfaction of walking out with our purchase. However, even as some of us try to go analog with our shopping, the experience isn’t often as enjoyable as it once was.
One major cause of frustration among shoppers is the reduction of in-person staff available to answer questions, help find items, or ring up purchases. Many storefronts across the country reduced headcounts during the pandemic, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting a 12 percent fall in retail sales workers between 2019 and 2020. Customers are often forced to form queues in cumbersome self-checkout lines — and wait even longer if they need assistance.
The reduction in sales associates on the floor has also compelled stores to take stricter measures in preventing theft, including locking up in-demand items. According to a Wall Street Journal report, “Indyme, a company that sells loss-prevention products to retailers, expects its 2023 sales of help buttons linked to locked cases to be up more than 50 percent this year compared with 2019.” In that same report, the WSJ shared a graph focused on the average time to retrieve items from those cases: General store merchandise takes just over two minutes to get out, which adds up depending on how long our lists are.
For Hayley Leibson, a young mother quoted in a Vox article about the decline of the in-store shopping experience, repeatedly asking an associate to unlock baby formula, and watching lines of people form around specific items means budgeting more time. That’s even assuming we can find what we need in person. Leibson bemoans traveling between several retailers to see the formula in the same article. Issues with supply chain and inventory sometimes make stepping inside a brick-and-mortar store feel like a guessing game — especially when browsing items online often lets us see their availability. Shopping from our sofas certainly saves money on gas, subway or bus passes, not to mention the wear and tear on our cars.
Digital storefronts can also be more visually attractive than retail stores these days. Reduced staffing has also contributed to what some shoppers see as more tidy and well-kept stores with uninteresting or disorganized merchandise displays. Unappealing interiors reduce the average shopper’s “dwell time,” or how long they’re likely to stay in a store — after all, why spend hours in an unpleasant environment when we can just as easily order online or schedule a quick pick-up?
Many of us used to spend an afternoon visiting the mall or lingering in the aisles of big outlet stores, but the lower quality of the in-store shopping experience has made in-person shopping more hassle than fun. The ease, convenience, and accessibility of scouting for deals online may be a better use of our time and wallets.
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