Donate to Science & Enterprise

S&E on Mastodon

S&E on LinkedIn

S&E on Flipboard

Please share Science & Enterprise

Online Shopping Pros and Cons

– Contributed content –

Woman with laptop

(Pexels.com)

29 July 2017. When it comes to shopping, many of us can feel as though we’re wasting time and energy on repeat purchases, and that’s understandable. However, it must be done. This is the eternal struggle of all living things, after all: we must continually deplete and replenish resources to survive. That being said, though, there is one great way to take a bit of the fatigue out of repeat shopping, and that’s online shopping.

Online shopping is the descendant of previous delivery services done over the phone or by mail, so you can see that shopping fatigue is nothing new. However, the internet has provided us with the best iteration of convenient shopping to date. It combines the speed of a phone call with the lack of direct human contact of mail order shopping, and it adds to the mix more automation and, therefore, less human error.

Another upshot of shopping online is that jumping from one online store to another is almost seamless, a far cry from having to hang up the phone and call a different number or mailing an additional order form for a different company. And, of course, the internet provides the ability to shop just about anywhere, not just online only shops. Historically, delivery services were solely delivery services. Now, however, anywhere you can go in person, like Walmart, is also represented online.

The only downside to online shopping is a lack of a grocery option, though services like Schwann’s and Blue Apron come close, and I’ve heard Amazon is trying to make this a reality, as well. However, this is a drop in the bucket of otherwise all pros. Just about anything but groceries is available online, be it from the department store of online retailers, Amazon, or something more specific, like PetSmart.

*     *     *

Comments are closed.