The Age of Online Shopping

The shift from retail shopping to online shopping is increasingly apparent in today’s society where services such as Amazon are heavily advertised. Within the past decade there has been a rapid increase in online sales coupled with a decrease in retail sales. There are advantages and disadvantages of this shift. For example, it is extremely easy for consumers to access online markets such as the previously mentioned Amazon or eBay. Sellers also have easy access and anyone can sell products online. Another is that retail can be very expensive; it requires a physical location to sell, and staff members to interact with customers. This money can instead be invested in marketing or website improvement. There are of course disadvantages as well. Websites can be rather expensive to create and maintain. People need to be paid to code the website in many situations. Domain names aren’t cheap either and need to be paid off on a regular basis. While it is expensive to have staff and a location in the retail sector, you do need a place to store goods and you need people to run these warehouses and fulfil orders. Security software is essential as well with hacking occurring with increasing frequency. The goal of this project is to examine the change from retail to online shopping in terms of money and also the overall economy. We will also look at how big retail corporations have fared as a result of increased online shopping. We interviewed Raj Ramesh who is in the industry of online shopping to get an insight on the change to this form of shopping.