Mail order has historically been a large part of US consumer buying. This is due to the number of people that lived in remote rural areas for most of this countries history. Access to goods was severely restricted due to that problem. And didn’t really start changing much until post WW2 and the growth of urbanization. Mailing a cheap catalog to everyone was the best way to show off your goods and get necessary goods to those who wanted them and would have no access otherwise.

Amazon is merely the latest in a very long line of those businesses that developed that marketing stratagem. And since I live in one of those remote areas, Amazon does provide me with easy, fast, and generally competitive priced goods that I would simply never be able to access without making a 600 mile round trip to get. But if you live a large dense city, there is little need for Amazon. But then, people order uber eats or whatever it’s called to get supper when they could cook something to eat cheaper instead.

I could spend hours googling for items from small and possibly sketchy websites and wait times than can stretch to several weeks or more, and sometimes I do out of boredom, but time is money as they say, and I do have other things to do.