実践ビジネス英語 ディクテーション (2/16,17)

こんにちは。NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。
Lesson 21のテーマは、’Retail Crisis’（小売業の危機）でした。Vignetteでは、インターネットが消費者の買い物の仕方を変えてしまい、ショッピングモールの終焉をもたらしつつあることや小売業者の独自の工夫などが話題になりました。ショールーミング（showrooming）という単語が面白かったです。買い物客が実店舗で店員から説明や情報を聞き出した後、ネットで商品を買うことだそうです。“Talk the Talk”では、Heatherさんが　オンラインショッピングと実店舗の利用や未来の買い物形態について話されています。

Retail Crisis
（S: 杉田敏先生　H: Heather Howardさん）
 

S: In our current vignette, the A&A staff talk about how the convenience of shopping malls has been replaced by the convenience of online shopping.

H: It is amazing how much our daily habits have changed because of online shopping.

I checked my shopping history, and over the last six months alone my online orders have included a filter for the humidifier at my house, a bottle of Swiss skin lotion, and googly eye stickers for a craft project at my daughter’s daycare.

Just that would have sent me to three different stores back in the day.

But now I can go to my laptop and order them up in a few minutes, and often for next-day delivery.

I know millennials, the digital natives don’t see this as remotely impressive.

Well, of course we can order everything online.

But for someone like me, who grew up with mail-order catalogues and ordering pizza over the phone, there’s still a sense of wonder about it.

And don’t get me started on using my smartphone to order things. Twenty years ago, who would’ve thought we could buy and download a new book while speeding to work on the train?
 

S: Do you ever do showrooming―ask a clerk for information and then go buy the thing online?
 

H: Well, I have seen things in stores and later bought them online.

But I’ve never deliberately pumped a salesperson for information and then gone home to get something; think I’d feel guilty.

If a clerk went to all that trouble to help me, I’d probably feel obligated to buy the item at their store.

Not always, but I mostly use the internet when I know exactly what I’m buying and I need to save time.

I like going to physical stores when I can and browsing around, especially bookstores.
A few years ago I went to a bookstore in Honolulu because a friend had asked me to get some magazines for her while I was on vacation.
It was an overwhelming experience.
 

S: Why was that?

H: I hadn’t been surrounded by that many English language books at once in years.

Obviously I can buy English books at some Tokyo bookstores and online, but this was an enormous place filled almost entirely with English books.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed it.

I wanted to buy out the entire history section and all the children’s books.
 

S: Would you be interested in buying from the roving automobile showrooms?
 

H: My gut response was that it sounded a little creepy.

Driverless cars endlessly circling our neighborhoods until we buy something out of the sheer desire to make them go away.

But no, seriously.

Let’s see…I might be interested in it for household staples―boxes of tissue, printer ink, cartons of milk, maybe that sort of thing?

It doesn’t seem like it would work for clothing, since we wouldn’t be able to try things on.

Maybe accessories like handbags, scarves and jewelry.

I wonder how they handle payments and avoid issues of theft.

Will staff be monitoring the vehicles and shoppers from some control center?

And thereby discourage people from making off with merchandize?

Though if people are using an app to summon the vehicles, maybe their personal information will be preregistered along with the credit card and such?

Maybe they’ll even use face recognition software to confirm people’s identities; match them against the verified image in the retailer’s files.

お読み下さり、ありがとうございます♪