How has the internet changed the way we buy - Essay Example

The retail market has dominated commerce and the business world for decades. People in the past were accustomed to going to physical business establishments to make their purchases. The retail world still dominates commerce, but since the turn of the century, the internet has become a very popular tool that has changed the way people acquire goods. Ecommerce is one of the hottest trends in the business world. Many people from the United States and abroad have realized that there are many advantages of shopping online and consequently e-commerce transactions have grown.

Online shopping is a hot and growing trend because the lifestyle of consumers has changed due to the fast pace environment of the 21st century. Americans are working longer hours and in most families, both the man and woman must work in order to be able to pay their living expenses. Shopping online has become a way to acquire goods without the hassles of having to go to the stores. Many people simply do not have the time to commute to a store to acquire goods. Using the internet to make purchases is a mechanism that allows people to browse through stores out of the comfort of their homes.

Another great benefit of online shopping is that most goods online are cheaper than at retail stores. The reason that online stores are able to offer lower prices is because e-commerce websites have lower overhead costs than traditional stores. They do not have to pay fix expenses such as building rent, utilities, insurance, and an online operation can be run with lower labor costs. Another advantage of online shopping is that customers have thousands of websites to choose from, thus comparative online shopping can be achieved at a fraction of the time that it would take a shopper to visit a bunch of stores to find an item in a retail setting.

Another tremendous benefit that e-commerce provides customers is product variety. A person shopping online can search various websites to compare prices at a fraction of the time that it would take a retail shopper. Shoppers online also have the ability to shop from international stores. The internet also offers specialty websites such as EBay in which shoppers can find incredible bargains due to the auction mechanism of the website. We are currently living in the convergence economic age. In this new economic era a wide variety of technologies are converging to allow people to connect devices to achieve penetration of the internet using new innovative tools such as smartphones.

The smartphones are another key instrument that is changing the lives of people. Currently approximately 40% of the owners of smartphones are using the device for online shopping. The online connectivity of smartphones has allowed people to make impulsive buys from their phones any time since everyone that owns one of these phones carries it everywhere. The world is changing and online shopping is a trend that is going to continue to grow for decades to come.