Today is cyber Monday. That means for those of us unwilling to conquer the crowds and storm the department stores, we can sit comfortably at home and claim the advantages of holiday consumerism from our computer.
What are the implications of buying online? Well, since each computer contains a 'cookie' that traces your online activities, you're likely to be ushered towards specific sites where google or bing think they'll get the most revenue because you're likely to buy the most stuff.
Some people are using ebay as their main retail outlet. People are able to post pictures of themselves, and participate in the advertisments themselves.
I think as more and more media goes online, the more and more humans will stay in their homes. Although there are the advantages of going out and trying on the clothes you're about to buy and certainly the speed of exchange... Amazon claims to be making 150 billion dollars a year with over 100 million active buyers. On the busiest day of the year, they shipped 5.6 million products.
A lot of recent articles point out how Amazon is the only retailer to compete with giant Wallmart.
Personally I enjoy the web for intricate little crafts that I can't find except from the buyer themselves... and they often live a state or two or ten away. In a way, the internet is creating successful giants and successful hobbyists. As long as I don't have to buy my groceries online I'll be fine (and believe me, when my mother was trying out Simon Delivers, we got a lot of moldy cheese. ick)
I don't think we ever complained about the moldy cheese. As kids, we were too excited about the dry ice that our frozen products were packed with... it made for very interesting carbon dioxide experiments... come to think of it, that can't be very safe to eat food that was packed with dry ice... hmmm...
ReplyDeleteI'm still happy that Minnesota has Target to contend with Wallmart, though I always am skeptical about corporations that are that large... but the alternatives are so much more expensive and we'd prefer to save our money for entertainment and not necessities...
Where are our priorities? I suppose no matter where we buy something, from a big business or small, it's all coming from China anyways...