Shopping and Fashion

8 – SHOPPING AND FASHION

Buying and selling goods has probably been a regular human activity for as long as people have lived together. Trade began the moment one person had more of one thing, say fish, and wanted something they had little of, say grain. They would exchange their fish for someone else’s grain. This is known as bartering and it is the simplest and earliest form of economic activity.

History

The Babylonians are believed to have been the first to invent a monetary system. The advantage of money is that it is, in theory, endlessly transferable – in other words, you can always trade money for goods and services. You don’t have to wait until someone wants to exchange what they have for what you have. Plus money doesn’t go bad like food or wear out like clothes. The only problem is the occasional financial crisis. With the invention of money came the invention of shops. The biggest difference between early shopping and shopping today is that customers haggled with the shopkeeper. In other words, the two people negotiated the price. Haggling is still typical in many parts of the world, from Asia to the Middle East, but in the Western world it is less typical. Which means shopping is certainly more efficient, though less fun.

Over time, the market places and fairs or bazaars, as they are known in Turkey, gave way to permanent establishments. Since the nineteenth century most people went to a shop. However, open shopping places still exist today in the form of flea markets, which are a great place to find a bargain or collector’s item. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, shops remained quite specialised. People went to a baker’s for bread, a butcher’s for their meat, the greengrocer’s for vegetables, the fishmonger’s for fish, a tailor if they needed a new suit and a cobbler for shoes. They might visit a carpenter to have furniture made or a blacksmith for something made from iron. By the second half of the twentieth century, the nature of shopping changed again. It became common for people to do their shopping under one roof, going to different sections for the goods they needed, and so the supermarket was born. Nowadays we can go shopping to the supermarkets or larger department stores. For the last thirty years or so, all of our shopping needs have been concentrated into large shopping centres, also known as shopping malls in the US. These large buildings contain one or more department stores, a couple of supermarkets and many specialty stores. The range of shops to be found in a shopping centre will vary depending on size and region, but some typical shops include bookstores, pharmacy (drugstore), shoe shops, sporting wear stores, camping goods stores and fashion boutiques.

Nowadays we can also buy things from the internet. People used to fear this because of fraud, but it is quite safe now, if you are careful. The most common sites are Amazon and Ebay. Buying things from the internet is usually more convenient and cheaper; sometimes it is the only way to get some collector’s items. However, there are problems with warranty, shipping costs and custom duty. The Czech post likes to collect taxes and it gets expensive.