How the Internet Revolutionized Shopping

While computers rapidly became more common in households during the early 1990s, the thought that they could be used to purchase anything from fine art to baby diapers from sellers throughout the world seemed impossible until the arise of the first major e-commerce stores in 1995. With the arrival of online stores such as eBay and Amazon.com, the Internet revolutionized shopping in such a way that the marketplace has been forever changed.

The concept of a global marketplace has been around long before the Internet, but now it has taken a more personal turn by connecting individuals around the world through online commerce. A person in California, for example, can now buy cheese from Paris, sell a computer to someone from Sydney and bid on a rare book auctioned by a library in London – all within the course of an afternoon. Hard-to-find goods are becoming a problem of the past due to the massive number of available sellers, and the number of foreign goods exchanged online today has transformed consumer tastes more rapidly than earlier trading methods. Truly, the world has become a much smaller place thanks to online shopping.

Now that people from all over the world can engage in e-commerce as buyers and sellers, the number of competitors has risen dramatically. No longer are customers confined to their geographic locations when it comes to making a purchase, and this has created some adverse effects for the retail industry. Many of the chain stores that used to blanket large portions of the U.S., for instance, have either closed down many of their outlets to focus on their online stores or they have shut down entirely. This is especially true for the retail video industry, which has had trouble competing with online video services that require very little overhead. While this news may seem dire for established retailers without an Internet presence, the lower cost of doing business online has encouraged more individuals than ever before to engage in their own enterprises.

Addressing the ways the Internet has revolutionized shopping is incomplete without acknowledging the many advances in computer software that make e-commerce possible. First of all, nearly everyone who shops online uses search engines to find the products they want. While Google.com remains the most popular search resource in the world, there are many others that cater specifically to shoppers. Instead of clipping magazines and browsing mail-order catalogues to find a good deal, customers can now compare prices offered by hundreds of different stores at once. Additionally, online stores use various kinds of shopping cart software to make browsing their websites more convenient. Customers can save purchases through the shopping cart, retrieve information about a product from a database, and even receive suggestions from store search engines about products they might like. In short, shopping cart software gives online store owners everything they need to make their businesses run smoothly.

The Internet has transformed the marketplace so profoundly that it is likely that it will continue to affect the way customers shop for a very long time.

Brandi Tolleson received her M.A. in English in 2007 and now writes prolifically for the Web.

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