The Positive Influence of Online Shopping

Outline:

I. People need to embrace this technology and tame it to their needs because e-commerce has innumerable advantages and excels in comparison to traditional shops and stores in the matters of investment, and exposure.

II. A.  To begin with, e-commerce is significantly less expensive to start a business with than a standard physical shop.

1.      Being exempted from paying a renting expense

2.      Having less number of employees which decreases the salaries paid by the owner

    B. In addition to what has been discussed, creating an e-commerce business guarantees a wider exposure to the products and appeals more to potential customers which in turn generates more money.

            1. being exposed to a variety of items due to international business

            2. enjoying the accessibility of online shopping

III. All in all e-commerce is inarguably the economic way of the future because it excels in probably every category one could imagine over traditional stores.

 “Sixty-seven percent of the Lebanese population try to avoid online shopping and e-commerce in general because of numerous reasons that will scare away any normal customer…” says a recent study conducted by the JRF through a survey. The preceding data implies that e-commerce is a service that is merely unusable for the majority of citizens. But is it really something that people should be “scared” of? People need to embrace this technology and tame it to their needs because e-commerce has innumerable advantages and excels in comparison to traditional shops and stores in the matters of investment and exposure.

To begin with, e-commerce is significantly less expensive to start a business with than a standard physical shop. This is because when starting a traditional business, founders have to consider the expenses of renting a shop space which is generally thousands of dollars, and even if someone owns the place and he or she doesn’t have to worry about the rent, he or she might not be happy with the design of the space because it might not be created and optimized for the purpose of selling products. While on an online shop, one only must pay a mere hundred dollars and can create his or her own shop designs through services like Shopify.com where a page is as customizable per the desire of the owner. Traditional business owners, especially ones with a mediocre size business where the products and sales are flowing but not quite all the products fit in the store, so they also rent storage units to store their products. Obviously, this is an additional expense that could be avoided with e-commerce. Not to mention hiring employees, since in a traditional store, having a fair number of employees and cashiers is a necessity to ensure all customers get the best experience. In online shopping, almost no human contact is made so the only employees one will need is a handful of customer support agents. That said, even these can be replaced by automated AIs that can do the same job.

In addition to what has been discussed, creating e-commerce business guarantees a wider exposure to the products and appeals more to potential customers which in turn generates more money. This is due to the fact that starting an online business directly puts the client in the international business. Because the World Wide Web is accessible anywhere across the globe, and the number of potential customers will surely skyrocket. Added to that, customers will be able to purchase products at any time, unlike what happens in standard stores where customers are limited to certain parts of the day, this also opens more opportunities for extra sales. Online shopping also facilitates impulse buys; where personalized websites, using certain picture sizes, and using pictures of attractive models to create a sense of urgency to buy in customers. Another way this is achieved is by adding limited time sales and offers that do the same job.

All in all, e-commerce is inarguably the economic way of the future because it excels in probably every category one could imagine over traditional stores. Governments should start investing in this sector thorough creating a special department in the ministry of trade to monitor and tailor this field from any sort of corruption.