Lol, at saying this is "common knowledge" and that it applies to all businesses. Yes I've heard this before and yes tons of businesses out there ignore it or believe it doesn't apply to their situation (and some of them are even right). It depends hugely on what the business is and there's a difference between ignoring "browsers" and actively kicking them out or just wishing they weren't there.

In this magical world that Henry inhabits where these customers can be identified (which often isn't the case for stores like best buy with large customer bases and large low paid staff) retailers would still prefer to have these customers in the store than not - although they might not waste staff time on them.

It is very common knowledge. I think it would be difficult to find anyone in business that does not know this. The problem is that most of the people who hold this cheap person view of the world have never owned or operated a business. That being said I highly doubt that even experience would matter since the entire view of people who hold these position-- and this is common throughout their lives-- is non-reflective and based completely on selfish egotism. What is right is always what serves their self-interest without any thought to others. To the majority ethics are just answers picked because they happen to support what they want to do anyway -- that is not how ethics work.

Your reading comprehension is horrible. That is in no way my position and I've said twice that the reason exclusion does not happen is because in a typical retail environment there is no way to effectively filter out customers that are a waste of time.

So you're saying that no matter price difference, if you viewed/touched a product in a store because you wanted to make sure it was to your liking, you would definitely buy it from the store rather than saving money online? No matter the price difference?

Man, I wish I was as well-off as some of you guys.

I, too, was thinking of Gizmo's traditional window shopping example. Think of the classic, quaint scene of a small town main street lined with nice little shops. For ages, people have loved going into these stores with no intention of buying anything, just to see the wares. Shop owners know that tons (maybe even the majority) of people do this, but they don't kick them out. Their presence does not cost them money and unless the visitors have no cash or cards on them at all, there's still a chance they might by something after all.

To be honest, I haven't read all of your latest posts because, well they're not that deep. But the first quote above with the bolded part was the one you wrote in repsonse to me earlier ITT. So now you think its pretty standard to get rid of customers but in a typical retail environment (which is exactly what this thread is about) its not actually possible to do? Standard impossible actions. Nice.

It's also hard to read and comprehend your posts because you just redefine words randomly.

I recently spent a couple of hours at a car dealership looking at and test driving the models I was interested in. We couldn't come to an agreement on a fair price though so I left. I then called a dealer in the next town over and reached an agreement in a 2 minute phone conversation.

I guess that makes me morally bankrupt.

You can actually think of tons of examples where stores are actively encouraging non-buying behaviour for purposes of just getting people into a store and creating a better atmosphere.

Best example I can think of is big book stores offering sitting areas and allowing reading of books/magazines right in the store.

Like I said you can't read. This was the first post on that particular tangent

You questioned this which then led to the post you quoted. Since I was responding to you after you responded to this post there should have been no confusion about what we were talking about. I then return to the tangent and make the same point at least twice after this.

Not if you went in with honest intentions of buying the car and you engaged in negotiations fairly. We are talking about scenarios where people have no intention of buying the product.

The only way your scenario would be comparable is if you know a dealer-- say in a state over-- has a huge competitive advantage and so the local dealer would not realistically be competitive. You want the cheaper car but don't want to drive all the way out there to test drive it so you go to a local dealer and waste their time.

Ok, so just to be clear, you believe in most retail stores (aside from big box stores) the owners are actively kicking out customers that come in just to browse? They're even doing this to up to 5-10% of their customer base.

The problem Henry is that retail stores deal with (and are often operated by) the segment of the world you understand extremely poorly. You know, normal people.

This is not really comparable to what we are discussing. When it comes to discussing ethics intentions are quite often much more important than even the actions.

Window shopping is a completely different subject and the morality of it really comes down to the situation. In your scenario likely no but change the scenario to a bunch of scary looking teens loitering at the mall and the answer becomes yes. The number of factors that would come into play in evaluating a window shopping situation are just too numerous to give a succinct answer but in many cases where you have no or low intentions of buying it is morally wrong to go while in a fewer number of situations it is perfectly fine.

I test drove my car in Canada and then bought it from an American dealer. Ouch.

I did make it clear to the Canadian dealer that I wouldn't be buying the car there but he didn't care and offered me a test drive anyway. Was this morally ok? I'm so confused now.

Owner-run retail is extremely rare here but yes they do qualify customers and if they don't explicitly ask you to leave they at least treat you in such a way as to make it clear you should. No this is not going to happen at Banana Republic or the Gap-- except possibly in extreme cases where the person is a repeat nuisance-- but I do know plenty of stores it will happen at. I need to buy a pair of shoes today and I will be qualified by the staff upon entering the store and depending on how I choose to present myself I will either be treated well, ignored, or accosted and subtly insulted until I leave

That being said when I said that I was thinking more of licensed venues where I have a much larger sample size than retail owners. I know a lot of venue owners and they have absolutely no issues kicking out low consuming individuals. I was also think a lot about B2B transactions where again it is much more common to just fire annoying ****ty customers. My point which you failed to understand was a rebuttal to the idiotic consumer-centric idea that business owners are just so grateful for any business including annoying cheap customers -- they are not. Some businesses simply lack the ability to exclude them. My point was that they would if they could.

If you fully disclosed your intentions beforehand and he nevertheless wished to continue then there is nothing wrong with that.

I can't believe you really need this explained to you.

Aside from the stores you go to (which by the way aren't the majority of stores) you won't even get insulted. Which is why my comment of retailers will still be fine with these people because a) they can ignore them and not invest additional resources in them and b) there's still a chance they'll buy something and that chance is higher than the 0 if they don't show up.

I have no doubt you know more than me about licensed venues and maybe also about B2B businesses - but both of those have little to no relevance on this thread. I definitely agree that B2B is one area where getting rid of your most troublesome customers is valuable.