Is Online Shopping killing our High Streets?

Online check in, Online Banking, Online Games, Online shopping. This word ‘Online’ has been providing people the opportunity to be in touch with their friends, pay their bills, and order some pizza without leaving their house. We’re now getting used to this new way of living and shopping. Therefore, brick and mortar stores, those in which we used to spend hours in are probably in danger. This post is going to provide the readers with the information on what is happening and why, and how that is influencing our life.

 

Internet and Online Shopping

Internet along with Online Shopping are two topics that penetrated people’s life and are far from becoming outdated. Internet has one extremely important advantage that enables businesses to reach a worldwide costumer population, so that customers can survey, select, and purchase products and services from businesses around the world (Al Kailani & Kumar, 2011). Beside it, this year marks the 20th anniversary of what is worldwide known as the first ‘secure online purchase’, and since then Online Shopping has been attracting more consumers having now nearly 1 in 4 people going online each week to shop (The Telegraph, 2014). The image below show the percentage in several countries.

Figure 1 – Consumer Barometer, Google 2014)

Are we being driven to Online Shopping?

People are now short on time, short on money, and want to be sure of the quality of the products they are buying. Vellido et al. (1999) investigated consumers’ opinion on online purchasing and online vendors that seem to consist of the underlying dimensions ‘control and convenience, ‘trust and security’, ‘affordability’, ‘ease of use’, and ‘effort/responsiveness’. For the last 20 years, Online Shopping has been an extremely commented topic within the media. People, newspapers and blogs express their opinion on how bad it has been affecting the society and how it will close down many brick and mortar stores (The Telegraph, 2014), (The Week, 2012). However, it seems like companies are pushing people to make online purchases. Companies are now, investing fortunes on TV adverts in order to attract consumers and transmit the idea that exclusive items could only be found online. The videos presented below, will provide the readers a view of how this is happening.

 ‘Showrooming’? Why?

Costumers use multiple channels when gathering information about the product, sometimes where to acquire it, although the same consumers purchase their wished item from a competing channel, titled ‘Showrooming‘ by the media (DeStasio, 2012; Darlington, 2012). Consumers visit a brick and mortar store, which is in charge of paying heating, lighting, maintenance costs, security along with many other costs including salaries. During this process the consumer spends time in store, searching for his product and asking information often from young professionals, who also have to be trained (The Telegraph, 2013), ending up buying the same product online. Due to this, Showrooming has been described as a significant issue for companies that primarily have relied on retail distribution channels in marketing their products (Darlington, 2012). In spite of being criticized ‘showrooming’ is happening due to reasonable reasons. The graphic below presents the reasons for showrooming.

Figure 2- Showrooming and the Rise of the Mobile Assisted Shopper, Columbia Business School, 2013)

Figure 3 – http://www.baldwin.be/showrooming-en-hoe-overwinnen/

 Figure 4- Showrooming and the Rise of the Mobile Assisted Shopper, Columbia Business School, 2013)

Are M-Shopper Influencing?

According to a report from Simon Kucher and Partners (2013), there are three engines that have empowered E-commerce for the last 20 years, low cost, technology, and bottom up experience. These three engines have been influencing online shopping and nowadays people already prefer to purchase online (Wall Street Journal, 2013). When it comes, to online shopping, there’s another revolution going on. Not only people prefer to buy online, but by using their smartphone. Better isn’t it? Humans are now joining and accepting this new way of buying on the way. There’s an article posted by Columbia Business School and AIMIA that shows that 6.1% of the people are ‘Exploiters’, these are the ones influenced by lower prices. There’s also an interesting group, called ‘Savvy’s’ (12.6%). These group, after the Exploiters, are the easiest to target with mobile experiences due to their open mind related to technology. These 2 groups are followed by the ‘Prince Sensitives’, ‘Traditionalists’, and ‘Experience Seekers’. These 3 last groups, do not use their mobile while purchasing, however are groups which expect good in store experience (Linked in, 2013).

 

 

Figure 5- Consumer Barometer, Google 2014)

Future

It’s a fact, online shopping has been rising its sales and is affecting how people shop. In my opinion, we are now becoming intelligent consumers, looking for convenient ways to get our products faster and cheaper. Brick and mortar stores need to take the in-store experience to a different level in order to attract and retain more consumers. As Jeremy Bogaisky Forbes Magazine said, ‘Retailers who understand their customers, leverage technology to evolve the costumer experience, and focus on their differentiators and assets have the opportunity to thrive’. However, I think online shopping will never be able to provide such a memorable experience as we find in a traditional store.

Is Social Media depriving us from human interaction?

Everyone must have heard at least once the quote: “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction, the world will have a generation of idiots”. After some research, there was no substantive evidence Albert Einstein made this quotation. Neither plays part on the extensive collection of quotations “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press. However the person who actually stated it might be probably right.

1000+ digital friends vs a handful of real ones

Social media is ‘‘a group of internet based applications that builds on the ideological and technological
foundations of Web 2.0, and it allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content’’ (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p.61). Since the launch of ‘Social Media’ websites, human beings have been changing the way they interact with each other. People are replacing one hour at the pub catching up with a friend, with hours online connecting with their 1000+ friends most of whom they rarely meet. With so much time spend looking at screens, people are quickly forgetting how to interact face-to-face. It seems like little by little, technology is destroying the meaningfulness of interactions, disconnecting us from the reality around us and leading us to isolation in today’s society. The image below shows the reader what kind of Social Media people are using the most.

 Figure 1- Desktop and Smartphone Social Engagement Per User (Business Insider, 2014)

Human behavior

According to Dr Larry Rosen the author of IDisorder, when humans speak face-to-face they have access to behavior cues like the use of voice (paralanguage), touch, (haptic), distance (proxemics), and physical appearance. When we move to other types of communication we lose these cues even when using Skype or Face Time. This transitioning to text messages and Facebook posts are crushing the human interaction, removing the ability to read faces, understand body language or even reading lips in same cases. This makes us rely on grammar, along with emojis.

24/7 Phone-Dependent

Nowadays people text or email during corporate board meetings. Students text, use Facebook and shop online during classes, presentations, and actually during all meetings. Parents text during breakfast and dinner, while their children complain about not having their parent’s full attention. The same children deny each other their full attention when together with their friends. Within an online environment, Laroche (2012), pointed out that people like the idea of creating, contributing, and joining communities to fulfil needs of belongingness, being socially connected and recognized or simply enjoying interactions with other like-minded members. Some of us even text during funerals (The Times, 2013). It seems like we can remove ourselves from our pain and go into our phones. Death is no longer seen as an excuse not to use our phones, and even when solemnly paying their last respects people can put their attention somewhere else only due to the need of feeling connected.

‘Alone Together’

This is setting us up for trouble, changing the way we relate to each other and also how we relate to ourselves. Professor Sherry Turkle at MIT, has coined the phrase being ‘Alone together’ and people are getting used to a new way of interacting. Individuals want to be with each other but also elsewhere. People want to meet their friends but avoid the boring moments, and to do so, they reach to their devices, looking up interesting items to entertain them at that exact moment. This is the reason why we see various public places like cinemas, restaurants, pubs, etc. with people being together but using their devices at the same time. This is probably why it is so attractive to have a Facebook page or a Twitter account.

 These social network websites provide people with these automatic listeners who seem to care about us, or about our feelings, and possibly the reason we expect more from technology than we expect from each other.

Falling Apart

The number of devices per person has been rising and it is getting to an extreme where people use on average 3.1 connected devices in UK and 3.6 in Netherlands (Google, Consumer Barometer 2014). Along with these facts, the little devices in our pockets are changing the way we feel, the way we behave when surrounded by people and the most important thing are changing human emotions. Even Apple’s Kevin Lynch said onstage early this month ‘We’ve created something called digital touch‘ (The Guardian, 2014).  Our little imaginary friend seems to provide us with the fantasy that we can put our attention anywhere whenever we want; as well as with the fantasy that we will always be heard and will never have to be alone. Due to this technological change, humans are now afraid of being alone, and panic when seen without signal, or access to their connections.

In spite of this, the connections we’ve recently created are great for networking if used in the right way. Those who sadly don’t, should keep in mind that talking to someone face-to-face is something intangibly real and valuable and shouldn’t be wasted. So disconnect from the need of being heard and defined by the number of likes or retweets.

Look up from your phone, and shut down the display, in order to enjoy the most of your day.