NoClueBrewMaster said:
IF you read all of what I have said, my problem is not that he is selling his items on ebay or what he is charging. My problem is that he is willing to part with said items on ebay, yet won't do the same in his store front. To purchase hops from him, you have to purchase other items as well. Thats what seems unethical to me. He should be treating his "E-customers" the same as the guys that actually come into the store.
Again, what you don't seem to realize is that the whole "you have to purchase other items from me as well" practice is, in essence, the same as a price increase. He's essentially selling his hops as a "package deal only" at the store.
Think about it for a minute---let's say a company had some MP3 players to sell. They decided to sell them at a bricks-n-mortar shop and online. They wanted to sell them as a package along with a case for the player, a wall charger and a computer dock, but soon realized that there were similar products online that were being sold individually---and as a package deal, it probably wouldn't sell. On the other hand, since there weren't many retailers near their bricks-n-mortar store selling mp3 players, they didn't have the same competition in the physical world, so they went ahead and decided to sell the package deal in their physical store rather than sell the MP3 player alone.
Again I ask, what about that situation is unethical? You said in the post title that it was "question of ethics", and I'm trying to answer your question. The method in which a retailer sells his wares, whether it's through package deals like this, or with mail-in-rebates, or whatever, is (or should be) up to the retailer, and it's not
unethical to choose
different methods of selling for
different markets.
Also, I have taken Econ as well as other business related classes. I have a full understanding of supply and demand as well as standard business practices due to economy, location, etc.
If that's the case, then I'm surprised that you fail to understand that selling products in a different fashion in different markets/locations is not unethical. Hell, I see it all the time, in different guises. For instance, I'll go into my cellphone company's store looking for a wall charger, but they're selling it for way too much money and they make you buy a whole package that includes a car charger. Since I don't need a car charger, I go online and find the wall charger by itself.
Because online shopping is so competitive and because people can simply open 10 tabs at once and compare deals, it's an entirely different environment from a local homebrew shop. It's not like, after you've driven to the shop and made the effort to go inside and look around, you can just compare prices instantly with 10 other nearby shops. On the internet, you can. Thus, you should not only accept, but
expect different selling methods and prices between the two mediums of commercialism.