One would think that grocery stores would be safe from all this. After all, everybody needs to eat and they want convenient access to the food products they buy. So, local grocery stores should be safe. Right? Wrong!
What people want is convenient access to a wide range of grocery products. But, local grocery stores may not be the best way to achieve that. Consider the following progression.
1) People start ordering more groceries online and have them delivered.
2) As more people use the delivery service, the cost of delivery goes down. This encourages even more people to take advantage of the delivery service.
3) Delivery services become enhanced with drone delivery so that it is easier to order a can of soup online than it is to hop in the car and drive over to the local store to run in and buy that can of soup.
4) As local stores loose traffic to online shoppers, grocery companies begin reducing the number of local stores in favor of larger warehouse stores which are more cost effective.
5) Eventually, warehouse stores become hubs that supply groceries to delivery channels and local stores focus on items that don't deliver well like fresh fish, deli, bakery, etc.
6) The local grocery store becomes an outlet for only specialty items while all staples are delivered from hubs directly to the consumer.
I know that some people will point out that they like going to the grocery store because they like to see new products. However, this is they same browsability issue that people raised about online bookstores. However, browsability in an online bookstore is far superior to browsability in a bricks and mortar bookstore. And that will be the same with online grocery stores.
To reiterate the theme of this series of posts, when a social or economic institution controls access to a product for which technology can provide better access, that hegemony of access will fold over time.
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