We have all felt the effects of a downturned economy, and in the coming season, holiday bargain shopping has taken off like never before. When I went home for Thanksgiving, local news covered “Black Friday” shopping all over Los Angeles. People lined themselves up outside department stores at crazy hours of the morning in hopes for the best deals and the lowest prices. In regards to the 2.0 world, how has our current economic status affected online consumerism, will e-commerce take as large of a hit due to the economic health of the nation? This CNN article tries to explain this, using statistics and numbers from “Cyber Monday.”
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1862938,00.html?cnn=yes
This article states that online consumerism is speculated to rise an estimated 4% since last year, but overall budgets have shrunk, and the items being bought will yield smaller revenues. The article also describes tactics that this years e-commerce sites have used to draw in a bigger profit. Many sites have enhanced their videos, offering more customer reviews and making sure their product images are user-friendly. “We saw a lot of online retailers making the investment in their sites earlier this year so they would be ready when the season came.” It looks like that for this holiday season, deals and low prices have a higher priority over the Internet’s convenience
More for curiosity than anything else, how will your holiday shopping be effected by our economic status? Will you be faithful online shoppers, or return to the malls and department stores that used to define our consumerism.
3 Comments
December 2, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I work in a retail store back home, and over thanksgiving break I worked on black friday and again on saturday. WHile the store was PACKED with people all day as expected, we were forced to lower the prices and create more promotions and sales for all of the items because people would not have bought as much because of the current economic situation. The stores website also had its own collection of sales and promos which it usually doesnt have.
December 2, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I think that using the internet for shopping has its ups and downs. Something that might deter people from using it would concern safety issues with their personal privacy. there are online predators that look for the best opportunities to learn someones credit card number and facts about them in order to steal money/identity from that person. However, if you’ve been following the news, on black friday there were reports of deaths due to the shopping frenzy. In valley stream new york which is close to where i live on long island a temporary walmart employee was trampled to death because of unruly consumers. In california there were reports of shootings. We have to ask ourselves which safety we prefer. Do we want physical safety or safety of our property. The question becomes harder when we see more reported cases of online crimes than these in person scenarios so people may be reluctant to say physical safety.
December 8, 2008 at 11:48 am
While obviously we are in the worst economic situation since the Great Depression, that does not mean we are not going to shop. People are going to need food, clothes, and other essentials, however it is the technique in which we purchase these goods that will be affected in my opinion. AM i going to stop shopping? No, I love shopping (yes I am a guy who likes to shop) and although I am a poor college student, I still need clothes to keep me warm. I have changed my focus when in retail stores to solely the sales. Black Friday I feel is exactly what America needed in a time like this, and although I did not get the opportunity to cash in on the amazing deals, I know there are many Americans who did.