Saving the World Through Electronic Retailing
Every morning I listen to the radio while I’m getting ready for work. Today was kind of interesting in that there were several sound bites from the president and would be presidents about various ideas to solve the “energy crisis.” While I have chosen a specific candidate for whom I am rooting, I have to say that my candidate’s response did not impress me. In fact, none of the proposed suggestions impressed me. Each seemed to be a half assed suggestion designed to get votes that would end up costing us more money in the long run and would not present a real solution to the problem.
After the politicians got done railing about things government could do to solve the problems, there was another story that caught my attention. It seems the Rockefeller family is demanding that Exxon Mobil invest more money into research on alternate fuels sources. You see, the Rockefeller family has a $4 billion stake in Exxon Mobil and they have this crazy idea that maybe the company should do a little work to develop potential revenue streams in case the public has actually gotten the notion that dependence on a finite resource for all of their energy needs is sort of a bad idea, or in case that finite resource reaches the ultimate fruition of its finiteness. While this is obviously an instance of the Rockefellers wanting to remain rich (and who can blame them?), it is refreshing to see someone stepping up and saying “Hey, you know what, we have a few billion dollars in record breaking profits this year, let’s get ahead of the curve, stop waiting for government subsidies to support this research and let’s just knuckle down and build something.” In other words: getting America back to the business of doing business, instead of hiding in a corner bitching about foreign competition, waiting for someone to hand them a subsidy, a tax break, and a tariff to cover their ass…
By now you are sitting there thinking, “What the hell does this have to do with electronic retailing?” Well, hearing about the Rockefellers take action made me wonder: Although I don’t have $4 billion invested in a single chunk with a company I can influence, let alone $4 billion, I started wondering if there was stuff I could be doing that would make a little dent in the fuel situation. The consensus seems to be that fuel prices are being driven higher by demand. So, the solution would be to stop buying gas. Well that’s all well and good, but I already use public transportation to get to work (a luxury we have in DC), so the only reason I ever really use my car is to go shopping.
That was when it occurred to me that shopping online or over the phone is the equivalent of carpooling to buy stuff. Here’s the scenario: on my street there is never a parking space… Except, that is, on the weekend when everyone runs errands. So 5 days out of 7, these cars are sitting there idle until everyone hops into their cars and heads off to the supermarket. They drive to the store, load up their car with groceries and then drive back to the house and put the groceries away. Now, we could all get organized and schedule our trips together in one big car, but I’m an optimist, not a lunatic, and I know that will never happen. On the other hand, with more and more grocery stores offering online shopping opportunities, if we all shopped online, the store would carpool for us. One delivery truck dropping off groceries surely uses less gas than 20 or 30 people driving to and from the store.
I know, you’re saying- “But I live in the suburbs. What about me?” Well good news! Odds are that your drive to the store is probably farther than mine and if you and your neighbors all bought online you would actually be doing more to help the situation than those snotty city people! Take that urban elitists (of which I am one)! And it’s not just groceries. Clothes, toiletries, furniture, kitchenware, and vitamins- the list goes on.
And because nobody wants to be Jimmy Carter sitting in the Oval Office in a cardigan saying we should just take the shivering and turn down the damned heat, think about all of the positives of not having to drive to the store/mall/whatever. From personal experience I know I can wake up on a perfect spring day with low humidity, 72º, clear skies, chirping birds on the first day of a three day weekend on the peak day of Cherry Blossom season (which you really should see), and the prospect of driving to the grocery store and negotiating the parking lot then heading to the mall and negotiating yet another parking lot, is enough to reduce me to a scowling scrooge capable of speaking only in monosyllabic grunts and hand gestures that involve the use of only my longest finger.
Imagine the contrast: You can drag your ass to the store, get caught in traffic, pay $70 to fill up your gas tank, and fight with the jackass who took the parking space you waited patiently for, then try to navigate the 13 or so miles of stuff you don’t need to find the small percentage of stuff you do need only to have to try to extricate yourself from the parking lot then drive home, getting caught in traffic again. Or, you could make some coffee, grab your favorite cookbooks, bring your spouse or spousal equivalent a cup of coffee in bed, fire up the laptop, take 3 hours to do your grocery shopping, then play with your kids, or go for a walk in the woods. Hell, hug a tree. A little later, a nice person will bring your stuff to you! They even bring it into the house! No more juggling 40 flimsy paper bags in the driveway! All that wasted gas, wasted time, and all that unnecessary blood pressure medicine looming in my future. Nope, not for me, I am going to start saving money, spending time with my kid, and be a happier person.
Now, about here I am expected to chime in with some mamby pamby flower child crap about how much we could save if we all banded together and did our part. If you want that kind of feel good bull dung, go watch a Wal-Mart ad. Instead, I will go with something more suited to my east coast roots: You wanna have lower gas prices? You tired of how bad traffic is? Pissed off about how much time you waste in your car? You wanna make the world a better place? DO something about it.
But more importantly, it’s time for our industry to step up and take a stand for more sales. If we can get more people to buy more stuff from us, we can be a big part of all those big ideas we keep hearing about. Buying from electronic retailers leads to less driving. Less driving leads to less gas consumed and less traffic. You get the picture. In the end we get a more stable world, political environment, lower fuels costs, greater national security, lower food prices, cleaner air, more jobs for Americans, and, gosh darn it, happier people! Oh, and, more importantly, bigger profits!
Leave the trees alone. Hug an electronic retailer!
Peter Howson is ERA’s director of marketing
Tags: carpooling, Electronic Retailer, energy crisis, environment, ERA, exxon mobile, grocery shopping, peter howson, presidential election, rockefeller, wal-mart