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The curious origins of online shopping
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The Start Of Online Shopping
While online shopping was huge enough before 2020, it has become truly mainstream due to the push provided by the pandemic.
- It started in Gateshead, England, when an old lady used the Videotex system, an interactive computer terminal connected to the TV, to order for groceries (margarine, cornflakes and eggs) using the remote control, back in 1984.
- In 1994, the first online marketplace was set up, and was called NetMarket, and even had advanced encryption.
- The first purchase in cyberspace using technology similar to the present was an audio CD of the artist Sting.
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Online Shopping In The 90s
- Pizza Hut started selling pizzas online in 1994, using a flat, grey website to take the addresses and phone numbers of pizza-hungry customers.
- Amazon.com too was launched in 1994, when we could only buy books on the site and is now the biggest online retail store, making the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people on the planet.
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Online Shopping and The Smartphone Push
- By 2017, Smartphone usage hit 80 percent worldwide, and online shopping apps became a common thing to use.
- Since then, online shopping has been topping every sales chart, with Shopify providing the worldwide sales figure of USD 3.5 trillion in 2019.
- A majority of stuff ordered online included electronics, books etc., with groceries not a huge priority, until this year.
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Online Shopping 2020
The watershed year made the world go back to basics, with people ordering groceries and essentials online.
The increasing adoption of e-commerce as well as new technologies like 5G, click-and-collect and many more is bolstering the use of online shopping. The ongoing pandemic is changing the demands and needs of the consumer, with companies adopting hybrid models to stay relevant and useful.
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Why Black Friday Is So Popular
Black Friday is the conventional starting day for the holiday shopping season.
Historically, it’s also been the best day to find great deals on the year’s hottest toys, gam...
The 20th Century: The Parade of Sponsors
- In the middle of the 20th century, Thanksgiving parades drew crowds in most major cities and in some of the smaller towns too. Many were sponsored by local or national retailers. Back in the day, that meant mostly department stores.
- By attaching their names to the most visible events on the preholiday calendar, department stores reminded their customers that they were open for business in the coming holiday shopping season.
- Over time, Thanksgiving parades came to mark the unofficial start of that season.
The Modern Holiday Shopping Calendar
- Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday of November since 1863 until 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November (starting with 1941), influenced by the request of a powerful coalition of retailers.
- When Thanksgiving fell on November 30, it left only 24 holiday shopping days and this worried retailers who reasoned that busy holiday shoppers would simply shop less in a shorter season.
- They promoted the idea that a longer holiday shopping season would be good for the American economy.
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Panic Buying
The world is seeing panic buying in supermarkets, with items like toilet paper, milk, soda, hand sanitizers, etc. flying off the shelves, especially in places with confirmed cases of the virus.
...Downsides of Panic Buying
- Panic buying makes people feel in charge of the situation, while seemingly mundane measures like hand-washing, which are actually impactful, seem ordinary.
- The problem comes when people overbuy in their over-panicked state of mind (irrational stockpiling), making the shortages worse than they really are.
- Speculators also take advantage of panic buying and raise prices of essential items like face masks, forcing companies to take appropriate measures.
Loss Aversion
..is a principle which makes people do things so that they don't feel regretful later.
People are panic-buying for the same reason too, with social media and news media amplifying the sense of scarcity.
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Buying endless stuff
Before the internet, we had to set time aside to walk and browse a physical store, which was only open for a certain number of hours.
Now, it has become effortless to buy things online from a...
Dopamine and online shopping
According to research, we get a dopamine surge from buying stuff that causes us to want more and more.
Delayed gratification when the order arrives a few days later also makes is more physiologically rewarding than shopping in stores.
Online shopping
Some online shops have made it especially easy to shop with a one-click buying process. Most major retailers offer free shipping, and only one in ten consumers return stuff they've bought online.
Americans are also taking up more space with all the stuff they are amassing. Self-storage units are rapidly increasing too.