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Subject: 
Re: Proper place to post US S@H Phone Specials
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Tue, 5 Jan 1999 05:51:53 GMT
Viewed: 
1438 times
  
Todd Lehman writes:
"Tom McDonald" <radiotitan@yaspamhoo.com> writes:

Wow, I just looked up "retail" in online Webster's -- it says that retail
means (among other things) to sell directly to the consumer (i.e., as
opposed to wholesale).  I guess I never really understood what it meant; I
always thought of TRU, Target, etc. as retail, but S@H and eToys as
non-retail.  Then again, Sam's and CostCo sell directly to the consumer and
they position themselves as wholesale clubs rather than retail outlets.  Is
mail-order (eToys, etc.) retail because the consumer buys it directly?  Or
is it non-retail because the consumer isn't there to buy it directly in
person?
I've always thought that a retailer sells directly to Joe Gritz even if they
slap on the word "wholesale", the meaning of which has been slightly widened
these days. I do not consider CostCo to be strictly a wholesaler. In cases
like that, "wholesale" is a marketing technique to appeal to Joe, where in
many cases he does save money. As for mail-order actually being retail, I
would say yes it is if you sell to consumers, but mail-order does not have to
be wholly retail.

Alternatively, doesn't the word "shopping" have quite a diverse set of
spin-off/derivative buzzwords these days? -- "online shopping", "cable
shopping", "home shopping", "phone shopping," "catalog shopping," etc.
True, but just by looking at the group name it makes me think that I can buy
things from .shopping, whereas we won't be able to buy things from those
groups (will we?).

In other words, doesn't "shopping" have a very wide range of
interpretations?  I think we want a word that does have a very wide range --
one which leaves ample room for later expansion into subgroups under the
general premise of "buying and shopping for primarily-brand-new LEGO sets"
Or rather is it, "consumer information and hot tips about "buying and shopping
for primarily-brand-new LEGO sets""? Get my drift? Can we shop from this
group, or can we gain knowledge about (cheaply) acquiring (rare/old) unopened
lego sets from it? I guess I'm splitting hairs here, and I should let
.market.buy-sell-trade do its job. But since you quoted Webster's above, maybe
the word "consumer" is something to consider. Like shopping, it's pretty
general too. .consumer.discount, .consumer.service, .consumer.lsahs...

The lugnet.retailers group / hierarchy probably should be an announce-only
forum type.

Do the advantages of an announce-only focus outweigh the advantages of an
announce+discussion focus?  (Playing devil's advocate.)

(briefly off-topic: I once had a high school teacher that would play devil's
advocate in front of the class and he used a plastic red pitchfork :)
It depends on the subject. If it is basically to announce a subject of
interest without needed discussion, except perhaps for corrections of any
error made by a poster, then discussion is not needed. But compared to traffic
in other groups such as .robotics, .announce is usually quiet, so I guess any
hot buying tips can be posted there, unless you want to make a separate group
announcing only .shopping-type stuff. But that's probably picking nits at this
point in lugnet's life.

-Tom McD.



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Proper place to post US S@H Phone Specials
 
(...) Oops, yes, thanks -- I meant "_discussions_of_ buying and shopping for primarily-brand-new LEGO sets." What you wrote is cool too -- but I'd like to see it be discussions as well, not just pure information dispersal. --Todd (26 years ago, 5-Jan-99, to lugnet.admin.general)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Proper place to post US S@H Phone Specials
 
(...) Yup -- great! -- that's exactly what it was intended as. (...) Yup -- I agree, that would make a lot of sense (assuming it was done in a friendly and non-spamful way :). (...) Wow, I just looked up "retail" in online Webster's -- it says that (...) (26 years ago, 5-Jan-99, to lugnet.admin.general)

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