Not necessarily.
What I tend to buy on Amazon is stuff I can’t get locally or in a store.
And as far as food, I make every effort to buy from the grower so the stores and middlemen don’t scarf up all the profits.
I’m all for buying as locally as possible.
And for re-using, re-purposing items.
I try to buy quality items rather than just cheap but this is a challenge.
What steers me more and more to buying online from Amazon and other retailers is when I make the 27 mile, 40 minute each way drive to buy for a specific need and then can't find it once I get there.
I wanted a dish drainer to replace the one I had that was broke. I stop at Target. They had some, but not what I wanted. Drive over to another retailer. No luck there either. So when I get home I go on Amazon and find exactly what I want and order it.
I wanted to get a couple of 30 gallon metal trash cans for storing birdseed. Stop at Menards (pretty much like a Lowes, for those who don't know). They had 20 gallon cans, but no 30 gallon cans. So I drive to a farm/feed store. They had one can, but it was missing a lid, due to a supplier error. When I get home I look on Amazon. Prices look a bit high, so I look around some more. I find the 30 gallon cans I wanted at FleetFarm.com. Including shipping, they cost less than the 20 gallon cans at the local retailer.
I ordered a 50 pound bag of sulfur online once, because after going to three or four garden supply stores, and seeing only 3-4 pound bags available for ridiculous prices I knew that I could burn up time and money driving around for a week to different stores and never find what I wanted at a fair price. Sure, I could have bought enough 3-4 pounds bags locally, but the 50 pound bag cost about the same (with shipping) as 10 pounds bought locally.
Or I go to the store for a new pair of jeans. They have jeans of course, but they just happen to be out of my size after I've made that 27 mile, 40 minute each way drive.
The inability to find what I want in a local brick and mortar store has happened so often that now I just assume they don't have it and order what I want online. I don't like having to settle for what the local store has in stock, when I have every reason to believe I can get what I really want by just ordering online.