In the past few decades technology has advanced in unprecedented ways. It has enabled us to do things in faster more efficient ways; these technological advances have influenced even the way we shop. As a college student now I do not have the amount of free time I used to have when I was younger and therefore cannot afford to spend inordinate amounts of time going shopping as I did before, so thankfully enter online shopping. This miraculous invention was pioneered in 1994 by Intershop a German company; after that in 1995 Amazon began and in 1996 eBay started its operations.
Today, almost twenty years later, new technology has once again revolutionized shopping. Smart phones have provided a new frontier in online shopping.
An article published in Forbes Magazine is related to this topic, they write that with the growth of mobile networks, stores will have the capability to help customers have a different retail experience. Among the software that is in development, is software that would allow shoppers to check the Internet for online promotions, product descriptions, and even “try on” clothing. New mobile capability, social networks and better analytics will play an important role in the future of the retail industry, according to speakers on a recent Wharton retail conference titled, "E-Commerce: Is It the Future of Retail?" "Mobile will be a critical piece of retailing, even more so than shopping online," said Dave Larkins, vice president of NetPlus Marketing in Conshohocken, Pa., and a co-creator of online boutique The Colony.
One of the leaders in the development of e-commerce is Amazon.com, which started out as an online bookseller but has now broadened its scope to every major retail category. Amazon, a store with no brick-and-mortar locations, continues to dominate the online shopping marked.
There are still a few issues to work out in order to make online shopping as dominant as a physical shopping experience. Among those things is that online stores are unable to provide the instant gratification that buying something in a store and taking it home provides, the wait time and shipping charges are a couple of things that sometimes makes shoppers bail on purchasing. A potential game-changes in the industry would be for retailers to have the ability to get an order to a shopper’s home in a matter of hours, not days or weeks.
Who knows how shopping will be different in the future?
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