Let's face it, this Australian summer has been horrific. What few parts of the country that haven't been underwater have been on fire, and thousands of people have either lost their homes or had them substantially damaged. Crucial infrastructure has been destroyed, particularly in Queensland, and the rebuilding effort will take years. To top it all off, our exhausted emergency workers now have to fly over to Christchurch and Japan and deal with the devastation caused by the recent earthquakes.
There are very few positives to all this, but one small one is that the band of large retailers behind the campaign to start levying GST on on-line purchases have thankfully crawled back under whatever rock they emerged from. I don't know if the disasters had any contribution to this but one would hope that even they realised that with so many of their countrymen facing dire circumstances, the limited public sympathy they got in the first place would pretty much evaporate when the first images of the Queensland floods started showing on television.
In fact, it's hard to grasp why Harvey Norman, Borders and the others thought the campaign was going to garner public support in the first place. Australians have about as much affection for big retailers as they do for the big 4 banks, which to be brutally honest is not much higher than the level of affection they have for child molesters. Did the people behind the campaign really think the public would get on board with a campaign that would have the sole effects of: (a) boosting their profits relative to on-line retailers; and (b) Australians paying more tax?
I think there definitely would have been a secondary agenda at play, in that running a big and splashy campaign would highlight to the Gillard government just how much tax leakage they were suffering due to the rise of on-line retailing and therefore cause the current tax exemptions to be put on the government's radar. However, based on subsequent comments from Gerry Harvey in the media, there seems to have been some genuine shock at the backlash, which suggests that the group expected the campaign to push the public's patriotic buttons. Which in turn shows just how out of touch retailers are with what their customers and the general public are thinking. There are of course other factors at play but when you consider this disconnect with their customers, is it any wonder therefore that retail sales across the board are in the toilet and groups like Borders are going broke?
I have to declare before going on that like most non-metrosexual men, I enjoy a shopping expedition slightly less than I enjoy a visit to the dentist. I recognise that in an industrialised economy, unless you are Bear Grylls, hunting and gathering is highly impractical (not to mention illegal) and shopping is the most efficient means of procuring the things required to ensure your survival. However this obvious logic doesn't counteract the sick feeling I get at the pit of my stomach when one of the children blithely suggests a trip to Chadstone on a Saturday morning. Very few experiences are as frustrating, annoying and stressful as visiting a major shopping centre. It all starts with trying to find a carpark within a 15km radius of where you are going, all the while trying to stay out of the way of some idiot in a 4WD who is either chattering away on a mobile phone or stopped in front of you blocking the carriageway. You then have to pick your way through a crowded foodcourt with its ghastly Subway corn-syrup odours before arriving at your destination only to be told by some sullen teenage clerk that the Wii game your child had their heart set on is either sold out or in fact, isn't due to be released for a few more weeks. You then leave the premises with your distraught progeny in tow and drive home, fuming all the while with a form of atavistic rage similar to the one that our distant ancestors must have felt when they'd spent all day out on the freezing tundra and failed to spear a single caribou.
Which, in a nutshell, is why on-line retailing holds such appeal. Why waste precious leisure time driving to and from Borders when you can simply hop onto your computer and download the title you want directly to your iPad? Why risk being led up the garden path by some clueless Harvey Norman employee with English worse than Borat when you can browse an on-line catalogue and pick exactly the size, model and make of plasma that your kids can throw their Wii remotes through? I know which method of procurement has my vote. Furthermore if the item you are looking to buy happens to come from overseas, then the argument becomes even more compelling given the current strength of the Australian dollar.
In defence of large local retailers, it is reasonable for them to argue to the government that they should not be disadvantaged relative to foreign on-line retailers. But to think given the universally awful shopping experience they inflict on their customers, the public would be worked up into a impassioned frenzy to demand the governemt change the rules? Please, give me a break. It's about as useful as running an ad campaign directed at 8 year olds extolling the virtues of brussels sprouts. This is the sort of issue that is best dealt with behind closed doors in Canberra, not in the media.
My message to the retailers would be simply this: by all means continue your campaign for a level playing field, but leave the rest of us out of it. However please don't spend a lot of time and effort on it. You should direct that instead to working out why exactly people are choosing on-line shopping as opposed to visiting your stores, and what you can do to improve your service to your customers so as to arrest the decline.
Because, let me tell you, the reason we are choosing to shop on line has everything to do with that, and nothing to do with avoiding a piddling amount of tax.
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