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McCook Gazette

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Editorial

Online purchases can go both ways

Monday, October 11, 2010
McCook Daily Gazette

More and more of us are shopping online, according to the latest Nebraska Rural Poll conducted by the Center for Applied Rural Innovation at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In fact, online shopping has more than doubled during the past 10 years, according to the poll.

Of the 2,797 people who responded, two-thirds made online purchases during the past year, compared to less than a third in 2000.

And they do it often, according to the poll. Forty-two percent who buy online do so at least once a month, and 53 percent of them spend at least $500 on those purchases.

Bad news for local retailers?

Well, it's a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full situation.

The same poll showed most rural Nebraskans purchased at least half of their retail goods and services in their own community or nearest community in the past year.

More than a third, 37 percent, purchased up to 49 percent of their retail goods and services in their community, while only 3 percent purchased none of their goods and services in their community or nearest community.

Yes, that's down from 2000, when 67 percent of rural Nebraskans purchased at least a third of their retail goods and services locally.

Instead of just lamenting the money that is flowing out of our community over the Internet, we need to remember that it can just as easily flow the other way. Most businesses have some sort of presence on the Internet, and many individuals are supplementing their income or more through online sales. For nearby customers, they even have an advantage over distant vendors who have to add hefty shipping charges to the price of their products.

Like so many technologies, the Internet can be an angel or a devil depending on your point of view. Yes, it provides competition for local business, but it also provides distant markets as well as making a wide variety of goods and services available to local customers.

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  • The distant markets when folks buy online are not the ones that sponsor your kids little league teams, donate to the community hospital, nursing home, local churches, YMCA, give to the folks that had a major medical emergency or fire, help host community activities like Heritage Days or supplies jobs for your friends and neighbors. The same is true when you drive 150 miles and drop over $20 in gas to go to North Platte. And what about servive after the sale? If we want the local businesses to remain we need to shop there whenever possible.

    -- Posted by dennis on Mon, Oct 11, 2010, at 3:47 PM

  • Denny old boy, I would wager a pound that most of the local establishments have a web site and if they put their minds to it they could generate some sales from outside the nest.

    Perhaps an idea for the merchants in McCook would be the education of how t' use the technology that's available to them for free.

    There's an idea for the EDC to chew on, a bloody good one at that.

    -- Posted by Nick Mercy on Tue, Oct 12, 2010, at 12:45 AM

  • The times they are a changin' and globalization is here to stay. Either learn to adapt and compete or get ran over.

    If the small businesses of McCook want to stay in business they need to figure out why people are going to The internet, or North Plate, or Kearney or Lincoln, or Denver, or Omaha instead of shopping in McCook.

    Amazon has 26,100 and not a single store front. They also had revenue of 24.5 Billion dollars in '09.

    Netflix has over 2,000 employees and revenues over 1 billion.

    Google has 21,805 employees and revenues of 23.6 Billion.

    Maybe selling online isn't such a bad idea.

    The great things about those companies is they can be located anywhere in the US and a couple of them have multiple shipping locations.

    McCook has a population of 8,000 and shrinking. Maybe it's time for the small businesses to think outside of city limits and look for growth elsewhere.

    Or maybe it's time for the council to sell McCook to companies and get the population to grow.

    -- Posted by npwinder on Wed, Oct 13, 2010, at 3:29 PM

  • The problem as I see it, is the local retailers are used to making 40%-80% markups before the internet, because no one knew what items where worth. Internet sellers can sell alot of items at minimal markup, because they don't have the overhead of a retail store. The local business would never survive selling online because they cant charge as much and be competitive, if they lower there prices online, people would expect those lower prices in the store. If they have the ability to survive with the lower prices, then they should have lowered them already and they wouldn't have the problem. Im not saying that I dont support local business,but for example im not going to buy a new tv local, when I can have it shipped to my door and carried in my house for $600 less, that is a lot of money.

    -- Posted by repairguy on Thu, Oct 14, 2010, at 8:25 PM
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