Ask a neighbor if they’ve ever tried to purchase something online and you’ll no doubt get a yes for an answer. In today’s age, online shopping is a part of everyday life. Between booking flight tickets, reserving a hotel room, downloading the new hit single, and winning the bid on that signed baseball, we’ve all run into e-commerce. Webster defines e-commerce simply as “commerce conducted via the internet” which leaves quite a spectrum to fill.
You’d be hard pressed not to see the current news on Toy-R-Us closing stores. Traditional merchants are struggling with the rate at which consumers are taking their business online. The online market is expected to have a 56% growth in 2015-2020 while brick-and-mortar markets will only expect to grow by 2%. The nature of an online shop equates to much less overhead. This leads to e-commerce markets often selling products at more competitive pricing or even at cost. We save where they save.
There are many e-commerce markets to surf through. Google Music, Amazon Music, and iTunes are top digital music stores used each day by countless people. eBay, Amazon, and even online shops belonging to traditional brick-and-mortar retailers such as Walmart or Target provide effortless shopping of household items without ever leaving the house. Most banks these days offer online banking, allowing you to pay bills or send money with just a click. Online shopping has grown to a scale that has become dominative in how people make purchases. We live in an ever evolving community of technology and the maturity of e-commerce is a part of that.