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My Caveat Emptor is Full, Try Stuff Before You Buy Stuff

That’s how it should be, right? I mean, there’s a certain finality to making a purchase. It’s as though when you buy that new smartphone or that fancy dress shirt or that organic jar of mayonnaise, you must have given it due consideration and now you own it in perpetuity. It’s the universal code of cash. Oh, maybe you can return it, whatever it is, maybe. But, ultimately, it’s the classic caveat emptor. You’re the buyer. You beware.

But, maybe there’s hope. Amazon is tinkering with their newest model for allowing customers to try items before deciding whether to purchase them, though as recently as November 2017 that model was still undergoing major changes - recode.net/2017/11/12/16141414/amazon-prime-wardrobe-try-before-you-buy-fashion. Macy’s and its internal cosmetics brand Bluemercury “is finally testing some ‘open-selling’…for emerging brands…at 250 stores” – See - How Macy's Is Turning Beauty Store Bluemercury Into Its Secret Weapon. Warby Parker, a giant - maybe the giant - of the online eyewear market, lets customers experiment with a set of frames for five days before their ultimatum; if purchased, the company sends the same pair anew while retrieving the test pair - denverpost.com/2017/09/06/online-retailers-who-let-you-try-before-you-buy. That’s an interesting transit-intensive process.

It surprised me at first when online commerce or e-commerce became as integral to retail and to our consumer-based lives as quickly as it did, partly because I was surprised at the number of early adopters to the methods of consuming. Putting the convenience of internet shopping with the security of try-before-buy policies makes it implausible to refuse spending money via click anymore.

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