But, is it worth you paying $10 more to support those shops who support your 2nd Amendment rights?
It is not always about price! As for RKBA - it's a foregone conclusion that a gun dealer dealing with the
public supports RKBA - guns are his livelihood.
I've been to more than one business seminar that stressed that customers are really interested in value and consciously or subconsciously calculate it everytime they make a purchase.
Value is the whole package which includes price, before and after service, product quality, reliability and durability, and the personal relationship between the customer and the dealer.
All of those things add up to some amount of
value in a customer's eyes. The customer buys where he gets the most value.
Interestingly enough that personal relationship or personal touch adds more value than most business people would imagine. Believe it or not something as simple as remembering a customer's name when he or she walks in the store
is a huge plus. Having coffee and doughnuts present and available (ever been to a car dealership that didn't have that or one where the sales critter didn't try to get on a firstname basis) is a subtle way of making a customer feel more like a guest and less like a customer. A customer who feels like he's part of the group or inner circle is a happy camper as opposed to the customer who feels like an outsider who will end up going somewhere else if he has the choice.
I have stopped being surprised when at seminars or thru a customer simple things like the personal touch are given such a high priority.
Your typical gunstore lacks that personal touch (or even worse gives it to a select few and everyone else is an outsider) so they lose a great deal of value in the equation and when the customer adds it all up he ends up taking the price discount at Wally World or Academy because they provide more value. Better to be treated at least impartially at the chain store than like one is non-existant or worse like some sub-human form like happens at so many gunstores.
Why do gunstores treat customers like that? As many have said a lot of them are owned and operated by gunnies who decided to make their living with their hobby. They aren't business people nor do they understand the importance of good customer relations when it comes to that value calculation customers instinctively and often subconciously do.
What can be done to stop the local gunstores from dying (and I'm not convinced that's a bad thing - Darwin always wins)
Unless gun store owners stop being hobbyists and start being business men I'm pretty sure that Capitalism (the ultimate expression of Darwinism in the business world) will assure that their enterprises will die to eventually be replaced by some other form of business that will provide value to the customer. Whether the replacement is an improvement over what we have now remains to be seen.
