Today’s market place is very different than forty-years ago. Forty-years ago if you wanted to open a business you had to have upfront costs, property, large amounts of inventory, and your best bet for advertising was the local paper and direct mail pieces. Of course, this took a lot of effort and even more money. You had to hope and wait for people to get your ad and decide to come and purchase a product from you. Going out and getting them to come into your store would have been a difficult feat. Additionally, forty-years ago your ability of growth was limited to local purchasers for the most part. If what you had to offer was not in a reasonable distant from your potential consumers, your company suffered. Moreover, because most shopping was done near home, any bad publicity could really hurt your company’s reputation; thus, leading to your company being shut down.

Forty-years ago consumers had to find local places to purchase their goods at; everyday shopping was done within a modest radius from home-base. To know what merchant had new products or sales, one had to wait for either the Wednesday Flyer or the Sunday paper. Options for product purchases barely existed beyond one’s living area. Jump forward to the modern day and we know all of this has changed. Today, any individual can purchase whatever they desire from anywhere in the world. Most likely shipping will be free and the products returnable. There is nothing that cannot be found – the Internet has everything from the rarest of coffees to cheap rubber bracelets. It does not matter what is wanted, it is there for the purchase. And, that ability to purchase whatever it is wanted can be comparison shopped in the blink of an eye; thus an environment that is exceptional for the buyer and a tough one for merchants.