The Wall Street Journal reports that “salespeople can be as annoying and unhelpful online as they are in the real world.”
No surprise here. Convenience and nifty gizmos like virtual dressing rooms continue to drive millions of consumers from shopping malls to retail web sites. It’s a migration of wallets and attitudes no less significant than the emergence of big-box retail stores and their impact on local downtown merchants across America.
Where there are shoppers, of course, there are bound to be some pushy sales people using every trick in the book to try to ensure that you do not walk out of their store without buying something – or something else. And there will be customer service people who seem either ambivalent or ignorant about what the store sells.
That the retail store is on a computer screen in front of the consumer doesn’t change the nature of the business.
Not that all online retail is as bad as trying to get knowledgeable help from some kid wandering the isles of your local Home Depot. An annual holiday-season consumer poll showed rising satisfaction with many big-name retail sites, including Amazon.com, LLBean.com, Apple.com and OldNavy.com. But big-box discounters like CompUSA.com and Costco.com still have very long way to go.
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