20. Appeal to community pride.—The local retail store is an important factor in the business life of the community. Its owner is usually a resident of the town in which it is situated. Its employes are largely recruited from its immediate vicinity, and they form a most effective force of personal advertisers. Many towns exist chiefly because of the stores that form their nucleus; the stores make the towns. The local merchant can appeal to civic pride in urging support of home institutions against out-of-town competition. The civic consciousness of American communities is becoming a force to be reckoned with, and the retail merchant can use this spirit to his own advantage.
21. Price competition versus service competition. —The local retail stores that compete with catalog houses sometimes make price their appeal for trade. Many dealers advertise to meet any mail-order prices that are offered. When they are given an op portunity to figure on entire bills of goods, they are often able to convince the customer that the aver age local prices are at least as low as the average cata log prices. Even when some business is accepted on this basis at a reduced profit or at a loss, it is good ad vertising for the store and often results in insuring the future trade of the customer.
Service comp'etiti'on, however, is more common and usually more successful than price competition. The local dealers who complain of mail-order competition are not all incompetent merchants, but many of them are. Stores in which mail-order competition is con tinually complained of in terms of fear, hatred and hopelessness are often characterized by poorly se lected stocks with many lines always entirely ex hausted before reorders are sent, careless credit granting, slipshod salesmanship, untidy appearance, failure to use the display windows advantageously and poor advertising or no advertising at all. On the other hand, many of the local stores that are too busy to permit much complaining about mail-order competition show well-selected stock in which no line in demand is ever allowed to become exhausted, care ful credit granting, alert salesmanship based on the evident desire to please, spick-and-span appearance, well-trimmed windows and the kind of effective ad vertising that meets the catalog houses on their own ground.
Perhaps the chief cause of failure of many stores to compete with city mail-order houses is inability or unwillingness to advertise effectively. One has only to compare catalog descriptions with the usual small town newspaper publicity to be convinced of this. In discussing catalog descriptions of mail-order goods, a retailer said: "Most of the descriptions are flowery stuff that would look silly if used by a local house." He was mistaken. Catalog descriptions are far from being "flowery stuff"; but even if they were, they sell goods; and the local dealer who refuses to advertise in the same way will probably continue to lose trade to those wbo know what advertising is for and how to use it.
It has been frequently suggested that the local dealer may compete with the catalog houses by ob taining mail-order business himself. The suggestion is worth considering. Many large city stores have established elaborate mail-order departments, but their efforts have not always been successful and some have found it unprofitable to continue their mail-order activities.
The retail store that wants mail-order trade, how ever, need not go after it with an elaborate catalog. Its mail-order activities should be primarily a service to those people who ordinarily buy the class of goods in which it deals. It should welcome mail and tele
phone orders for its regular goods and its specially advertised offers; it should provide prompt service for those who cannot come to the store to trade ; it should issue small bulletins of "specials" for limited periods ; in other words, it should do everything in its power to extend its influence as far as possible among the people who need the same kind of goods that its over-the-counter customers need.
22. Basis of successful retailing.—For the store that really wants to give service, that really wants to show its ability to compete with distant catalog houses, that really intends to get its share of the busi ness, there are hundreds of ways of spreading its in fluence and increasing its sales. For such stores there is no insurmountable problem of mail-order competition, and it is because the number of such stores is constantly increasing that we can confi dently predict that the mail-order house will not drive the local retail store from the field. Some stores will succumb to mail-order competition, but they will usually be the comparatively weak stores, more or less inefficiently conducted, that could not hope for success under any circumstances. The store that does not fulfil its mission is bound to fail sooner or later, and it is not a very serious indictment of mail order selling to charge the catalog houses with the business death of stores of this type. After all, most retail competitive problems involve primarily the problem of merchandising ability. To an increasing extent the local retail stores are showing the same merchandising ability that is the chief basis of the suc cess of the great mail-order houses. To an increasing extent, also, each factor in retailing is asking for pub lic support solely thru a straight competitive appeal built on the solid foundation of real service to the prospective consumer.
23. Manufacturer's market.—The opportunity for the manufacturer to find an outlet for his goods among the mail-order houses is indicated by an article in Printers' Ink (March, 1916) . The author esti mates that six per cent of all commodities sold in this country are ordered by mail, and that this means ap proximately a round billion of mail sales every year. He concludes: It follows, therefore, that many hundreds of factories can elect to make goods primarily, if not exclusively, for mail order distribution. They may canvass both fields. They will find that the old jobber-retailer channels are compara tively expensive to enter in a large way, and that buyers therein are perhaps slow to respond ; but that such channels supply a stable outlet once they are properly entered. They may discover that it is much easier and less expensive to enter the field of mail-order manufacture, but they are like wise apt to learn that therein lies insecurity, anxiety, and the fiercest competition with those who seek to cut costs to the bleeding-point. But, whatever they may decide by what ever process of reasoning or the taking of a blind chance, the choice is there today ; there is plenty of room in the six per cent field.
Having in mind the patent facts before us, it certainly does not seem to be the part of wisdom for any manufacturer, jobber, or retailer to rest on his oars in fancied security, feeling that the rapid development of the mail-order business is not a matter of special interest to him. For it is, in fact, of vital interest to every manufacturer and distributor, big and little. And right now is the time to think about it and most diligently to study its trend.