E-Shopping

E-Shopping

Online shopping has impacted the economic, political and cultural development of the financial markets and the economy. Many consumers have been using the World Wide Web in order to purchase items. The computer technology has allowed consumers to use the internet to their convenience to shop. Online shopping has impacted the United States economy greatly. The impacts of online shopping have been advantageous as well as disadvantageous.

The beneficial impacts of online shopping are greatest on the nation's economy. Consumers do not only purchase items online, but the internet allows consumers to compare and browse items online. This then results in consumers going out and buying those items at stores. "But because people also go online to investigate merchants and compare products, the internet winds up influencing about six times that many offline purchases" (Freeman Evans 1). The internet has allowed holiday sales to grow twenty one percent from last year to $16.8 billion. December 9th seems to be the busiest day of shopping online. Purchases totaled in $367 million. Another example of online shopping is Overstock.com. This site's sales were up 75% from last year. Another benefit of online shopping is free shipping and no waiting in lines. With all of these advantages online shopping has become very popular. "Online sales will represent 4.5 percent of total holiday sales- an estimated $12.2 billion of a total of $271 billion" (Suneel Ratan 2). With all of these consumers buying, the businesses throughout the nation are doing well and aiding in the U.S. Economy. Online shopping is a multibillion dollar growing market growing at 35 percent a year.

The economy is not the only thing impacted by online shopping. Surprisingly enough, online shopping has impacted political and culture development. Many of the American people show no interest in politics but Amazon.com did something to change that. At Amazon.com consumers were able to see the politicians running for office and then make a small contribution online to the certain candidate while purchasing an item. The cultural impacts of online shopping have also been great. As the holiday seasons are coming closer, there are many consumers with families living in different parts of the country or even the world. Therefore, instead of buying flowers and having them shipped, now the consumer can go on a website in that certain country and purchase flowers there with no heavy and expensive shipping costs. The World Wide Web allows consumers to see different goods from different countries. Now shopping is no longer done in a limited area but can be done, nationwide and even world wide.

However; there are some disadvantages of online shopping. Although many businesses are prospering, many non-internet based businesses are suffering. For instance, many people purchase traveling tickets online. Twenty five percent of all travel is now booked online. Therefore; many small travel agencies have suffered a great financial loss. The convenient shopping done at home has hurt many businesses that depend on consumers to pay for rent. Many online businesses do not have to worry about high rent or pay to numerous amounts of sales representatives. Therefore, as many large businesses such as Paris-based companies that own status manufacturers such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Dom Preignon saw its stock