It wasn’t so long ago that the internet was just a means of exchanging opinions with strangers. Today, it still serves this function – and a whole lot more besides. It provides our entertainment, informs our politics, and allows us to do most of our shopping.
Over the last decade, the proportion of shopping we do online has almost tripled, from around 8% to more than 21%. Enormous businesses like Amazon have emerged, and, thanks to sites like eBay, smaller businesses have access to markets that simply weren’t viable before.
But exactly what has contributed to this revolution? Let’s look at why e-commerce has taken off so dramatically.
More Bandwidth
The network infrastructure of today provides more bandwidth than ever before. Thanks to innovations like 4G (and now 5G), we can enjoy online content from wherever we are in the world. And this extends to shopping, too. Increasingly, we’re placing orders via our mobile devices, and this trend is at its most pronounced in the youngest demographics. Now that it’s easier than ever before to shop online, it follows that more of us will do so, more often. And that’s precisely what we’re seeing.
Better Marketing
Our online behaviour doesn’t just vanish in a puff of zeros and ones after we’ve engaged in it; it’s logged, bought and sold afterwards. Though the implications of this can be troubling, for the most part, this isn’t such a sinister activity. It allows smaller online retailers to target us with more relevant advertisements, and, in theory, unite us with the products that we really need. The result: more consumption!
Better Products
Doing away with the running costs associated with a physical shop allows online retailers to offer a wider selection of products. This, in turn, has increased customer expectations, to the point that many will walk out of a brick-and-mortar shop with a feeling they’ve been short-changed. This, in turn, drives consumers back to the web.
Better Couriers
When customers couldn’t be sure that the package they’d ordered would arrive promptly, they’d understandably prefer to go to a real shop and have the product in their hands. But the logistics industry has come along in leaps and bounds. International services like Pacel2Go provide prompt, reliable deliveries at prices that, just a few years ago, were unheard of.
The shipping industry has also benefited from economies of scale. The more items we order online, the less expensive it is for a haulier to get it out to each customer. And this encourages more of us to shop online. The resulting positive feedback spiral has seen online shopping become more convenient than ever before!
