In a capitalistic economy, trade is constant. People search for the best deal, the quickest way to get something or the least hassle. We hurry to the store on Black Friday because we think that all the deals happen on that day, at that store and you can’t find deals anywhere else but we would be wrong.
We need not leave the comfort of our homes and get lost in the crowds, only to end up with half of what we want and more than we bargained for; unless our goal is to improve store commerce and increase fat cat cash flow. We have the power to rise above that with our computers.
Online shopping began in 1979 and was invented by a man named Michael Aldrich who lived in the United Kingdom. His system was a B2B (Business To Business) system that connected a modified 26” color television screen to a “real-time transaction processing computer via a domestic telephone line.” The internet would not be invented until the 1980’s but after Thomson Holidays’ online shopping system of 1981 and Gateshead’s SIS/Tesco in 1984, the first online shopper was ready to make a purchase. In May of 1984, Mrs. Jane Snowball of Gateshead, England became the first person in history to do just that.
In 2006, E-commerce product sales totaled $146.4 billion in the United States alone, accounting for 6% of the retail products sold in the country. Consumers also purchased $18.3 billion in clothes, accounting for 10% of the domestic market.
These facts give the history but the real reason for buying online lies in the user. Online products give bargaining power to the consumer because they enjoy a wider choice than they do at any store; they give the supplier power because the supplier doesn’t have the overhead cost of running a store, meaning lowered prices and higher customer volume is a norm.
Online shopping also increases commoditization, which means that when we have access to the lowest price around, the products become cheaper because unless the services are better, we can look for the lowest cost and get the same product for less.
The online experience means getting what you want faster, cheaper, and with businesses competing for consumers and not the other way around.
We already use these services for many other things without realizing it. Google gets paid every time we click on a website and we get the information we need as well. As a student, I know all of us have used Wikipedia.org for projects and other information; in fact, I used Wikipedia and several other sites just to write this paper.
So if we are using online services for most things already, when it comes to doing shopping, why don’t we use them as well? The dissensions to online shopping seem almost idiotic but I prefer to think of them as naïve.
Many say that if we started shopping online, we would never leave the house but that’s not true. If we shopped online at times like Christmas, we’d simply emancipate ourselves to ski, hike, visit with family members, build fires, toast marshmallows and whatever else we enjoy doing around the holidays. Without the hassle of the traffic, if we decided to go to the mall, we could enjoy shopping at leisure instead of the frantic shopping that we suffer today.
Some might say that if people began shopping online, local businesses would see a decline in profits resulting in many of them going out of business but many local businesses already sell online. Barnes and Noble has an online site to buy books, as does Borders Books. Best Buy has an online site as well as CompUSA and Circuit City. If you prefer Radio Shack, they’re online too. Car Dealerships have been online since the days of Thomson Holiday and Enterprise Rent-A-Car will deliver a car, you rented online, to your house.
With all these stores to choose from, going from one to another becomes as short as, “click.” Gas prices are through the roof and walking around all day just to lose your money to a marked up copy of Dickens wastes your time unnecessarily. The online community grows every day and why shouldn’t it when you don’t need to move to visit a mall bigger than the Mall of America?
So as we can see, most businesses are online. Our trips to the store are not necessary unless we need groceries or perishables; so, this season, save some cash, improve your selection, give your car and feet the day off, spend that extra time, that you haven’t had, with your loved ones and order your gifts online.
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