Website sales have become so popular that other retailers, even those you’d never think would take the online approach, have come online. A recent example would, of course, be giant retailers like Wal-Mart, now competing with Amazon instead of Amazon competing with them. Amazon recently celebrated its 20th anniversary with “huge” sales for its Amazon Prime Day. Wal-Mart retaliated by starting its own sales and making them last longer than Amazon’s Prime Day. Other examples, some unorthodox, are pizza companies that now allow their consumers to go online and buy products with their computers, even track them.
Even looking back a decade, we’d travel to local video stores to rent movies we wanted to watch. That slowly changed with movies arriving in the mail. That idea quickly spread to online ways to watch TV and new movies. With the rise of Netflix, an online movie provider, many small businesses went out of business, but at the same time it made our lives a lot easier. We no longer have to go to a video store to find movies, we no longer have to remember to return the physical copy, and we no longer have to worry about late fees. All this has been solved with the appearance of the online video business.
The emergence of online business has especially saved consumers a lot of money and that is why we have embraced it so well. It is easier to access the information we need than looking at advertisements on paper or even in a newspaper. Now we Google everything we are looking for and we will find numerous possible purchase options.
With this it is easy to compare the prices of each store and take the cheapest to Amazon, if we want to match the price, or simply buy on the site where we saw the item. This is not a problem because most online websites offer free shipping if you are willing to wait a bit, and some websites offer discounts for becoming a member. Online business has changed a lot in our lives from a consumer point of view and with continuous innovations we are moving in a direction that will only get better. As of now, Amazon is testing one-day delivery, more stores are being added to its price-matching policy, and new items (like groceries) are being offered more widely. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come since the advent of online retail in such a short time, it will be amazing to see where we go.