Jonathan's posterous

Why online shopping is booming

The internet is proving to be the number one for shopping. More and more people are turning to the internet to purchase gifts, services, and even groceries.

As we begin 2009 either you or someone you know has used the internet in one form or another to guide you in your shopping experience. For instance you have probably used the internet to find the lowest price, or just to find out where to purchase an item at a retail shop.

There are several ideas of why internet shopping is booming. As an online shopper myself, I can tell you why I shop online.

As the days get shorter and your free time seems to be getting less, shopping online is the way to go. This is a convenient and time efficient way to shop. You can buy all sorts of products in under fifteen minutes with out leaving your home or work.

Second is the cost. Most generally you can an item much cheaper online at an online mall or auction site. This is because of the relatively low overhead of the online mall which allows them to sell at a cheaper price. And in many cases you can find one with free shipping which is even better.

Another example of why shopping online is better is because economical value of home shopping. If you can save potentially hundreds of dollars in gas in this economy even better. As gas prices soar so does your expenses as you travel from retail to retail shops.

And last is the ability to shop stress free. No more fighting for a parking spot or standing in long check out lines.

Online shopping provides an environment that allows for fast, convenient and economical way to purchase the things you need. As the technological age progresses more retail shops will close and many more people will turn to the internet for their shopping needs.

The Green Side of Online Shopping

E-commerce reduces the environmental impact of shopping by using about a third less energy than traditional retail — but only if you skip the express airmail.

A study out Tuesday by the Carnegie Mellon Green Design Institute offers a scientifically rigorous estimate of e-commerce’s green benefits. E-commerce not only uses less energy, but its carbon footprint is also a third smaller than bricks-and-mortar retail, the scientists found.

Lead researcher H. Scott Matthews and his team compared the energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions required to deliver a small flash drive to a shopper via a trip to a traditional store versus buying and shipping the flash drive via Buy.com.

Coming up with these calculations required many assumptions by the scientists – but they’re a lot more informed than past attempts to account for the environmental benefits of e-commerce, say the researchers. That’s because the e-commerce site Buy.com made available to them information about its data center, last mile delivery practices and other sources of energy consumption. (Buy.com is a member of the Green Design Institute’s Corporate Consortium, but didn’t pay for or direct the study.)

The scientists found that by far the largest environmental cost of traditional shopping is a consumer driving his or her own car to a store. (They assumed that the average person drives about 14 miles round-trip per shopping outing, and buys about three different items on one trip.)

Much of the energy expenditure for e-commerce also goes towards last-mile delivery. But a UPS truck delivering dozens of packages along its daily route uses a less energy per package, on average. That’s where e-commerce really shines.

Data centers and computers, it turns out, are a relatively small energy cost for e-commerce.

The results based on data from Buy.com can’t necessarily be extrapolated to other e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com, warn the scientists. That’s because Buy.com operates with an unusual virtual model in which products are shipped directly from distribution partners to customers, eliminating a step in the supply chain that many other e-commerce companies still use.

E-commerce definitely has downsides: all the extra packaging required to ship products to homes carries an environmental cost far higher than the average store shopping bag. Moreover, energy-intensive airmail delivery nearly eliminates the environmental benefit of e-commerce.

And there is still one scenario by which old fashioned shopping can draw significantly less energy than e-commerce: when consumers walk to the store

Stop all the clocks


Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.