In a small, family-owned camera shop, a customer spends an hour talking with the owner about some high-end cameras, thanks the owner and goes home. He wasn't really planning to buy a camera there. He just wanted enough information to help him buy one on the Internet, which he does--for $150 less than the store owner's marked price.
A couple walks into an expensive jewelry store and tells the saleswoman they're shopping for an engagement ring. Thirty minutes later, they walk out much better informed about diamonds. They put the saleswoman's expertise to good use when they visit a wholesaler across town, who guarantees ultra-low prices.
All is fair in love, war and retailing. Or is it?
These consumers, I've come to believe, have breached an unwritten ethical rule of commerce. Not only have they taken the local merchant's time and expertise, they also have unfairly raised the retailer's expectations that a sale might be made. These customers have essentially gotten a free ride from their nearby retailers, who saw not a penny in return for providing a place for shoppers to examine the merchandise, ask questions and gain the information needed to make an informed purchase.
Specialty retailers have been taking it on the chin from discounters for years. But now, with the arrival of the Web as an instant price-comparison tool, the potential for abuse of retailers' time and knowledge is greater than ever.
I know. I've done it. With rugs. With window blinds. And with electronics equipment.
I've been fascinated with the question of whether a consumer has any moral or ethical obligations to retailers since I wrote a column about shopping on the Web for the Business section of The Post in May. In it, I described my vague sense of guilt about buying items off the Internet after sampling and researching those items at small, local retail stores.
In some cases, but not all, I'd give the retailer a chance to match the lower price, presuming (sometimes wrongly) that they wouldn't be able to do so. A couple of times I resisted buying from the Web, agreeing to pay a little more because I wanted the after-sale support the retailer offered. But on other occasions I found myself taking up a retailer's time, asking detailed questions and manhandling the inventory, knowing all along I would then go online to find the product at a significant savings.
I had concluded in that column that my angst was unwarranted. I reasoned that consumers have always been on the losing end of the balance of retail power because storeowners simply have had more information. They know how much an item cost them, its true quality and what their profit margin is. The Internet, I wrote, finally shifts the balance somewhat more in the consumer's favor. My column concluded by recalling the French free-market battle cry, "laissez faire," which Webster's translates as "let people do as they please."
Then came the e-mail from readers--dozens of messages, most of them from retailers who were outraged at my bouncing up and down on their Achilles' heel.
"No amount of rationalizing makes your shopping conduct ethical," read one missive. "Shame on you."
"I resent it when someone takes my time, pumps me for information, then gives their business to someone who can afford to give a better price" because they don't have a retailer's overhead costs, wrote one merchant. "So, here's my new price policy: The less of my time you take, the better price I give you."
"Your conduct was jerky," wrote another. "Instead of consulting Webster's dictionary for your ethical code, you might be better off consulting your own common sense and hopefully your passion for doing the right thing."
That last writer, however, did more than just rant. He also alerted me to an ancient code of conduct from the Talmud known as "the Shopkeeper Law." It goes roughly like this: One is not permitted to ask the storekeeper the price of an item if he knows he will not purchase it.
That doesn't mean you have to buy, according to Edwin Epstein, an authority on religious and business ethics and dean of the economics program at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, Calif. It simply means you should be serious about intending to buy.
Nor should the reference to price be interpreted too narrowly, Epstein explained. The rule is aimed at people who have no intention of buying, but who spend time learning in detail about a product from the storekeeper. It also applies, for that matter, to the woman who returns a new dress to the store after wearing it to a party the night before, or the man who buys a big-screen television set the day before the Super Bowl and returns it when the game's over.
It seems intuitive, when you think about it. But in this commercial culture, all the focus is on consumer rights. After interviewing a half-dozen business ethics and religion professors, I discovered that none had ever dealt with the question of whether consumer rights also come with certain consumer obligations.
"The question {of protecting retailers} seems counterintuitive at first blush, because we are accustomed to dealing with the protection of consumers," said Kevin Jackson, professor of business ethics at Fordham University. "Traditionally, the worry has been about the poor consumer, that they don't have the bargaining power."
But now, he added, "with the Internet, consumers are getting more bargaining power. So with that, maybe there has to be some reflection on principles that are a check on that power."
Epstein also emphasized how this new age of Internet commerce "exacerbates the potential for misuse or possible exploitation of a retailer's time and expertise."
It was the arrival of the discount stores in the middle of this century that separated, in a profound way, the acts of learning about a product and finding the lowest price. "Comparison shopping" today mostly means comparing price, while the act of seeing and learning about competing products can be achieved without comparison--indeed, all it takes is a visit to a single, friendly specialty shop.
As a result, family-owned camera stores, apparel shops and jewelry stores have closed their doors because they can't beat the prices of large chain stores and mail-order outfits. And along the way, people for years have been appropriating store-owners' time and expertise before taking their cash to those discounters.
The Internet merely automates the process for those who bow at the altar of the lowest price. On Pricewatch.com, for example, dozens of competing retailers battle over the slimmest margins on computer and camera equipment. I've used general search engines such as Yahoo! and AltaVista to find the best price by typing in the brand name of an item and searching for the right model number.
The Web also eliminates the physical effort of going store to store, or making repetitive phone inquiries. To be sure, Web prices aren't always lower than those of mom-and-pop stores. In fact, the best online shopping sites often belong to savvy local retailers around the nation. But most successful Web shopping sites are the ones able to eliminate the overhead of maintaining a physical retail presence.
Ease of use is what's crucial, and online shopping will only get easier as the Internet matures: All customers will need to know is what item they want--and they can find that out, and physically sample the goods, free of charge at any local retailer. That is, if the retailer is still around.
Growing numbers of people, fearful that too many small neighborhood stores are disappearing, are rethinking the long-term effects of constantly demanding the lowest price. An ethic that people should gladly pay a little more to keep such stores from closing is the impetus behind recent community efforts to preserve small local businesses along MacArthur Boulevard in the District and in Takoma Park (sparked by the arrival of CVS discount drug stores).
"Every day, it seems shopping is becoming more of an ethical experience," said Michael Gildenhorn, a Bethesda investment adviser. He would know: It was his e-mail that alerted me to the shopkeeper law. "We all want the lowest price," he said in a phone conversation last week. "It's how you conduct yourself in the search for that lowest price that raises ethical considerations that probably didn't even exist five years ago. It entails another level of decision making: Did I conduct myself properly in the transaction?"
Ask Ronald Kahlow. The 55-year-old Reston software engineer is quite possibly the only person ever arrested for violating the shopkeeper law. With no intention of buying anything, Kahlow walked into the Best Buy in Reston in 1996 and began typing model numbers and prices into his laptop computer. He wanted to put the data up on a comparison-shopping Web site he was developing. Angry store managers called the police, who arrested him for trespassing.
Kahlow ultimately was acquitted of trespassing charges, and in March of this year, a jury rejected his countersuit asking for $360,000 in damages. When I asked him about the experience last week, Kahlow was unrepentant. The small guy, he told me, "gets ripped off all the time." Consumers "are constantly deceived with false advertising and they have no way of checking these things out." The Internet, he predicted, "is going to put retail out of business."
Then I explained the shopkeeper law to him. Not surprisingly, he had never heard of it. He also denied breaking it--he said he had told Best Buy's management what he was up to when they confronted him. But when I asked him if he agreed with it in spirit, to my surprise, he said he did.
"There is a problem there and I've often thought about it," he said, adding that his mother had owned a small apparel shop that discounters had put out of business. "In essence, you are deceiving a shopkeeper if you ask the price and don't intend to buy."
So what has all this soul searching amounted to? Well, I don't think I'll stop logging on to find the best price. But from now on, I'll use that price information for what it is--another set of data, to be balanced by other equally valid factors. I'm also going to "intend to buy" before I take up a retailer's time. But I'll also tell them I'm shopping all the sales channels--and will ask them to persuade me that their higher prices are justified.
That won't be as tough as it sounds: In several recent significant purchases--a guitar, some jewelry, bathroom fixtures--I've adopted a new willingness to pay a little extra in exchange for the benefits of shopping at well-informed, service-oriented local retailers.
I just hope they stay around long enough to profit from my newly righteous attitude. Mike Mills covers telecommunications for the Business section of The Washington Post.