The Department Store Culture Before Mid-Twentieth Century and the Online Shopping at Amazon Today - Research Paper Example

The Department Store Culture before mid-twentieth century and the Online Shopping at Amazon Today Culture is a very popular and common term which refers to the customs, ideas and social behavior of a group of people or society it involves all the arts of and their manifestations regarded in a collective way. In the world of business, there are two most popular forms of culture which are the department of store and the Amazon online which existed during the twentieth and the twenty first century respectively. Tomka (235) states that before the mid twentieth century, the most common and practiced form cultural practice was the department store while the most common and popular cultural practice in the world today is the online shopping on Amazon. Introduction of the department store in the mid twentieth century was of great and important milestone to the economic world in the transformation of the trade and consumer culture. The rise in the department of stores as a culture was greatly attributed to changes that took place in the production sector of the world economy in Europe in which was characterized by large- scale production of large amount of goods which, consequently, need a more efficient type of markets. This change was quantitative in nature (Belisle 2011). The department stores offered a wide range of products in which the price was set and there was no bargaining. This culture involved regular product discount as a pricing competition strategy. Clients entering the store had no obligations to but to purchase the goods since mere looking around was not tolerated. The department stores, was middle class oriented as the elite relied on their own exclusives sources until the second half of the twentieth century (Tomka 2013). The middle class people especially the women were the main targeted audience during this time period. In countries like Japan, the employees and customers came into an agreement that the department stores were not only meant to sell goods or display merchandise but there were also suppose to promote the revival of learning and culture which includes entertainment and educational functions such as the sponsoring of the performing arts and attempting to support community crafts. The social role of the department store it that time period was meant to provide enlighten services and knowledge to the people within its vicinity (Bausch 2003). The today 21st century is based on a very popular type of culture well known has the Amazon online shopping. The rise of Amazon saw the fall of the department store as a popular culture. According to Bausch, Amazon online shopping is the world well know online best retailer which mainly dealt with the selling of books during its early days of development. It was formed in 1995 by Jeffrey P. Bezos and it came online in 1995 and it was originally known as Cadabra, Inc. Amazon is designed specifically for e-commerce. It is designed for searching products, purchasing the products, advertisement purposes among many other business activities. Today, Amazon has widely extended its selling options into a wide and larger market that involves the selling of any products that is presented to them by sellers. These products range from books, movies, music, games, electronics, toys, apparel, sports, and groceries, tools to general home and garden items (Belisle 2011). As a company that conducts business through the internet, Amazon conducts its business activities through a business –consumer (B2C) mode to do business whereby the sellers are the organizations and the buyers are individuals. It consists of a large number of buyers who make millions of transactions per day a small portion of sellers. Goods purchased under Amazon transaction system must be well processed and shipped in time to the purchaser (Tomka 2013). Amazon also uses a business to business (B2B) mode in transactions which involves sell-side and buy-side models. Under sell-side mode, the Amazon uses e-commerce to increase the sales, reduce selling, and advertise expenditures. Under buy-side model, organizations are involved in the buying of goods or services from other organizations. There are several characteristic features between the department stores and the Amazon online which makes the two popular cultures similar. This similarities are of importance towards establishing the strength and weakness of these cultures which aim at trying to improve or come up with a more powerful and efficient culture than the existing one. Some of these characteristics are going to be discussed in details in this chapter. The department of stores was a business entity that dealt selling of products customers. This is similar to Amazon in that; Amazon is also a business entity that deals with the online selling of goods and services. Both of them are profit oriented business entities. The Amazon online of today deals with the selling of final products and not raw materials. This is also a similar to character to what the department stores used to deal with during the mid twentieth century (Tomka 2013). Both of them sell ready to use and manufactured goods. They do not deal with a particular product from a particular seller, manufacturer or producers but they deal with a variety of products from several manufactures and producers. Both the department stores and the Amazon online are similar in that they both offered their customers with additional services. Among this service the most common is the delivery services. The department store offered home delivery service to its customers while on the hand the Amazon online ensures the shipping of the bought product to the home place of its customer. There are several things which distinguish the department of stores from the Amazon online. While the department of stores dealt with their customers directly face to face, the Amazon online does not interact with them at that very level. The Amazon is different in that there is no direct contact between them, the sellers and the buyers (Belisle 2011). They only act on the basis of trust in their transactions with customers and interact partially through their online sites. The mode of payment of Amazon is strictly credit based in that not based on tangible money but the department of stores dealt with both liquid and credit transaction in there payment systems (Tomka 2013). This is mainly because there is no direct and face to face interaction between the buyer and seller which exist in the department store. The department of store of the mid twentieth century’s was characterized by large store where goods were stored under a specialized system whereby there was division of the department of stores in to several departments and each department specialized in one line of goods. The Amazon of today is not a departmental kind of business. It deals with the selling of all goods and services available at the disposal. The department of stores was strictly a business to consumer kind of business culture but the Amazon is not restricted to it but instead, it is business to consumer entity and a business to business kind of business. The Amazon online also deals with other services that were not offered by the department store in the mid twentieth centuries. The advertisement services are one of them. Amazon online offers the advertisement service to through its site has part of its business activity while the department of store never offered such a service during the time when it was a popular culture (Bausch 2003). While the department highly depended upon advertisement of its availability to the public domain, the Amazon online offered this services to any party in need and thus the difference. The Amazon online is a worldwide retailer which sells all its products to all parts of the world while the department of stores is not. The system of conducting business between Amazon online and the department is totally different from each other. The department of stores was analogue kind of business enterprise while on other hand, the Amazon online retail is a digital. The Amazon online is internet enabled business which typically depends on e-commerce while the department stores was not internet enabled retail and did not conducted any e-commerce kind of business (Bausch 63). The department stores provided special care in the provision of amenities and facilities reading rooms, children play ground, restaurant, banking, telephone booth, and music and beauty clinic. All these service are not provided by the Amazon online but it only provides information about their availability, locations and costs through there advertisement. In conclusion, the department of stores and Amazon online of today being the two popular cultures, standout to be distinct in various ways but the most outstanding distinctive feature is the use of internet system for conducting business which was never in the department of stores. The incoming of the Amazon has resulted to the fall of the department of stores as a popular culture. The comparison of the two is of great importance since it helps at providing a good and quality of information that aims at identifying various gaps the existed in the past popular culture and its strength. The gaps identified will enabled in the prevention of any further gaps of the same type and the strength identified will provide more additional information on how to improve the existing popular culture. Works cited Belisle, Donica, Retail Nation: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011. Internet resource Tomka, Be?la, A Social History of Twentieth Century Europe, 2013. Print Bausch, Paul, Amazon Hacks. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2003. Print. Asian Department Stores edited by Kerrie L. Macpherson Read More