Free Paper Example: The Impact of Online Shopping on Society

Introduction

Explosive growth has been experienced by online shopping in the last decade because it represents a more convenient and economical approach to purchasing than traditional shopping (Neal, 2018). However, the increasingly modern method of shopping and the transition from one another created a sense of concern among customers in the beginning. The concerns raised among the purchasers include unsuccessful shipping, online fraud, leak of personal information, and inconsistency between the desired product quality and the ordered quality. Most people have realized the advantages of online shopping; thus, the earlier raised concerns have significantly reduced. Different reasons exist as to why people conduct their online purchasing of the desired product. The platforms have attracted many customers since consumers can compare the same price of the product on different websites to choose the one that is displayed at a lower cost; being able to buy any product without physically going to the stores helps customers to avoid traffic jams that are mostly experienced on the way to the shopping stores, and also the online shopping platforms reduces the pressure experienced when negotiating one on one with the retailer.

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With the greater product ranges as well as the ease and convenience of selecting the desired products, more information and opportunities are available to online shoppers to compare the products and prices. It is believed that the platforms offer more customer satisfaction to people in need of speed and convenience. If there is enough information, the customer will browse through the online channels to seek the desired information about the product before deciding to perform the transaction. The means of gaining a competitive advantage for online shoppers is through retaining online customers. Customers will purchase more if they get satisfied with certain services offered by a particular online shopping platform. Therefore, the concept of customer satisfaction is increasingly essential for both offline and online stores. This paper deals with the impact of online shopping and society. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the report has three more sections that include historical development, current use, and opinions concerning online shopping.

The Historical Development of Online Shopping

The idea of an online shop commenced long back in 1978 during the moment in which Michael Aldrich utilized service of the two-way message known as Teletext or the Videotext that revolutionized business (Kenny, 2018). The first business-to-business transaction took place in 1981 by Thomson Holidays from the United Kingdom. In 1982, a wired service that could be available via the phone, Mintel, was introduced and used to make virtual acquisitions, book train tickets, check stock prices, and so on. The first-ever purchaser made the online business transaction at a Tescos stockpile in 1984. In 1991, the first browser and web server were developed by Tim Berners Lee, which saw the birth of e-commerce after the internet became commercialized. eBay, founded by Pierre Omidyar, and Amazon, began selling books on their online platforms (Kenny, 2018). Both companies have grown all over the world, building confidence among their customers. They are now the companies that anyone can choose for everything for sale all over the globe.

The emergence of comparison online shopping sites was experienced in 1997 when PayPal was founded in 1998 (Kenny, 2018). Online shopping and commerce have become the norm in recent years, and the world cannot comprehend how it would look without it. Although there has been an explosion of online products and services, the increasing number of online sales has not fundamentally changed much. Cryptocurrency and blockchain are now being experienced, which is believed to be preferred in the coming years over the fiat. However, the ability to turn the cryptocurrency into a spendable currency is the most prominent challenge being experienced. Many business companies are now offering their services over the World Wide Web. Most people are now associating themselves with e-commerce due to the ability to purchase their desired products over the Internet using secure electronic services of payment and protocols, thus making it easy the use any currency in the world.

Current Use of Online Shopping Technology

An increasing number of businesses are being attracted to the productive nature of the e-commerce market domain (Neal, 2018). How customers and retailers interact has been changed by the increasing technology permitting marketers to develop their brand equity and image online. The future of online shopping continues to be transformed by digitization and retail technology. For instance, smartphone shopping has rapidly grown over the years. Brand engagement and e-commerce transactions can be facilitated through smartphones making it critical for marketers to offer fair pricing strategies to maintain an excellent online reputation. Online retailers make every effort to create the experience of mobile shopping informative, pleasurable, and appropriate to the clients to drive online business growth.

Customer behavioral analytics and web analytics are gaining importance due to the increasing comfortability of mobile shopping users. Customers use mobile devices to do online research on goods and services. The analytics of online businesses offer extensive data on the behavioral trends of customers to improve the supply chain, merchandising, advertising, strategic decisions, and marketing of online retailers. Currently, behavioral analytics tracks are being employed to search the interaction and purchase history of customers with market professionals to provide rich information to online marketers. This data is relevant to retailers since it enables them to predict and suggest desired products for the target customers.

Additionally, e-retailers use dynamic pricing strategies to change the price of goods and services offered, depending on the nature of supply and demand. Retailers use a flexible pricing strategy to vary the cost of their products grounded on external and internal factors. Dynamic pricing helps organizations monitor the pricing strategies of their competitors, enabling them to make sound decisions concerning the pricing of their commodities. In today's world, a dynamic pricing strategy is essential for the wired shopping market as real-time changes in prices considerably influence the baseline of e-commerce organizations. According to Neal (2018), artificial intelligence will be prioritized in managing 85 percent of customer interactions. Retailers are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence to increase their competition due to their expertise in delivering a customized experience. For instance, chatbots have been designed to simulate online marketing conversations with customers. Artificial intelligence is currently being utilized to handle consumer data, scrutinize and predict the buying behavior of customers, and avert deceitful businesses from enabling online retailers to automate their business.

A buy now present-day customers are experiencing a mindset with faultless service expectations. Consumers anticipate unified and rapid shipping, profits from e-commerce organizations, delivery, and exchanges of their products in recent times. High supply chain efficiency can help retailers to improve the shopping experience of their customers. Also, cross-channel purchases enable business transactions to be made through multiple channels. Shoppers are using numerous channels in decision-making in the selection of products and services with fluidity. E-commerce retailers ought to improve their digital presence across several channels to ensure consistent profits. E-commerce technology is leading to the revolutionizing of virtual shopping by permitting businesses to implement advanced ways of engaging with clients. The continuous use of this innovation will separate real competitors from the laggards.

Impact of Online Shopping

Online shopping has grown steadily over the years. It is not surprising that most people are catching up with online consumer purchases. Most individuals are proving to be technically savvy with high mobile usage and increased adoption of social media. The increase in ownership of smartphones will lead most shoppers to continue getting more information and conduct their purchases using their phones (Vasic' et al., 2019). Online shopping has had several impacts on society. A considerable number of businesses conduct their operation online. This has been found to have many adverse effects on society. Before the emergence of online companies, people would ask about the seller of a specific commodity before going to the shop to interact with the employees to carry out a business transaction. Online shopping has made contact among people impractical since one only needs to look it up online and get it delivered to their home. It, therefore, means that the interaction of the communities to form and keep together has become more challenging due to online shopping. In my view, online shopping has contributed to more harmful impacts on society.

Besides, several online shopping contribute to the leakage of the economy. For instance, explorations reveal that three out of every five dollars spent online by Canadian shoppers go to the retail websites of the United States. A significant amount of dollars spent online still goes to the United States, even if the price drivers may be mitigated by the changes in the value of the Canadian dollar. The survey of online shopping in Canada found that 67 percent of Canadian people conduct their online shopping outside the Canadian web store (Shahjee, 2019). Primarily, this has been due to the dominance of the United States online retailers in Northern America. Several large United States retailers have made many e-Commerce investments in recent years as compared to the retailers in Canada (Smriti, 2020). Large Canadian retail stores have a hard time capturing online sales even though one can only envision those minor local businesses in the social experience a challenging moment while competing online. Most of the large Canadian retailers have been losing a large amount of their market share. Massive economic leakages occur due to the magnitude of cross-border online shopping. Dollars spent by some countries may experience little or no opportunity to recirculate within the local economy, impacting leakage to tax dollars, local employment, local service providers, and inventory suppliers.

Online shopping also causes a shrinking market share of local businesses. Although the decline of independent companies may be a result of numerous factors, the fortune of self-governing retailers is presently a hard-hitting one. The exit rate of small and medium enterprises is reported to be the second-highest in the retail sector at nine percent after the accommodation and food services at 11 percent (Bram & Gordon, 2019). The study by the civic economy reveals that the market share for independent retailers in Canada is eroding slowly. The implication of losing independent retail stores may well experience economic impacts further down the chain of supply. Online pricing makes it less attractive in stores when local manufacturers sell their goods in stores and online. It leads to the undercutting of stores such as bricks and mortar that have higher costs of labor as well as taxes.