Why mars?

Every time i watch a documentary on YouTube about space exploration and colonization; a not so radical thought comes to my mind which is
Do we really need to do this?
As we all know that Britishers and other European empires colonized Asia in particular for its market and Africa for its natural and human resources therefore the question which arises is a very simple one.
Do we have a great market for goods in the mars?

I guess "no" unless we are counting on the unconfirmed microbial life crawling beneath the martian surface claimed by many alien enthusiasts.
Also natural resources available on mars are too difficult to extract and insanely more difficult to transport it back to earth which will be the case for atleast next 50 to 100 years.

Now some doomsday ideologues will start arguing about an alternative planet needed in order to insure our species survival but here is a point that in order to save the planet we don't need a colony in mars or elsewhere but the technology to repopulate the earth or any other planet with the same genetic diversity using artificial embryos and intelligent robots with capability to mine and process the resources and repair itself  after a catastrophe hits earth and situations comes back to normal.

Although a team of scientists can live and continue to explore the surface of mars like we do in arctic by way of rotating every 2 years or so which even if it sounds boring to many of us will be the most likely course of action in near future as far as the space policy with respect to Mars is concerned.

One more point is that their are numerous islands in our planet itself which are still uninhabited but we don't go and colonize those islands just for the sake of colonizing and putting up a financially nonviable outpost in the middle of nowhere without any tangible benefits or strategic importance and moreover NASA scientists are wise enough to take decisions in this regard without making it an ego issue which many people now think it(colonization of mars) has become.