Although the idea to write this blog-post came from eBay's blogging contest (bit.ly/eBayCheck_Extention) on Indiblogger, I must confess the appeal was strong enough for me to drag myself away from my now-often-taken sabbatical from blogging. The idea was to imagine how the future of shopping would look like. Below are a few events that I believe are the future.
All in one
This I believe is the next obvious step and is going to happen everywhere soon. I believe all the online shops are going to eventually get together under one big umbrella company. The major headache for all of us customers now a days is that there are too many options available. It is a matter of too many riches. Although more choices are always useful but too many options sometime can also lead to more confusion and and added to that is the ever-present insecurity that some other online shopping portal may be selling the same stuff at a cheaper rate. So all online (at least the major ones) should and will get together into one big entity. Already progress has started in this field with for example companies like eBay, Amazon have already started bringing lots of small retail suppliers together.
Smarter and more interactive web portals
With the boom in online shopping, the role of the salesman has now merged with the Site/Web designers. This is an area where a lot of changes will occur. The sites of the shops will become more and more smarter and interactive. Irrespective of a person's prior knowledge one will have lots of reviews and ratings from past users immediately at his/her disposal to assist inn purchases. We will be able to exactly customize the purchase according to our needs. The zenith of this will be when the artificial intelligence enters into the picture or we reach a stage when we just have to think what we want and we get it!!
Renewal and Recycling guarantee
This concept is going to take a lot of thinking but will be implemented in the future. This is especially true for the always evolving electronics industry. The idea here is to give a guarantee of immediate renewal to the latest model at a cheaper price or smaller but fixed annual fees. Although this may look a very costly venture in the beginning; one must understand that in electronics the older models which are many generations earlier are literally rubbish. However if there is a guarantee of immediate renewal and renovation. Then the customers will have always the latest set-ups and the companies will have lot of slightly older version components that can be hopefully put to some use and be recycled. The renewal guarantee will the next smarter version of the current exchange-on-destruction guarantee that are now available.
Improved banking process
With Internet banking this process has already begun. Now a days many companies in Europe have started selling stuff which you may pay for by monthly installments. This would be especially great for salaried people as psychologically shelling out 30 € a month is much more easier for 10 months than paying 300 € at one go. Also many times when before accumulating those 300 € one usually buys a cheaper or different version. So this idea is going to pick up in the future.
Things are changing so fast that it is very difficult to exactly predict what will happen. But whatever happens the future will be extremely exciting..
An idealistic though it is, but I still believe that the best shopping is done when both the customer and the seller are happy in the end!!!
All in one
This I believe is the next obvious step and is going to happen everywhere soon. I believe all the online shops are going to eventually get together under one big umbrella company. The major headache for all of us customers now a days is that there are too many options available. It is a matter of too many riches. Although more choices are always useful but too many options sometime can also lead to more confusion and and added to that is the ever-present insecurity that some other online shopping portal may be selling the same stuff at a cheaper rate. So all online (at least the major ones) should and will get together into one big entity. Already progress has started in this field with for example companies like eBay, Amazon have already started bringing lots of small retail suppliers together.
Smarter and more interactive web portals
With the boom in online shopping, the role of the salesman has now merged with the Site/Web designers. This is an area where a lot of changes will occur. The sites of the shops will become more and more smarter and interactive. Irrespective of a person's prior knowledge one will have lots of reviews and ratings from past users immediately at his/her disposal to assist inn purchases. We will be able to exactly customize the purchase according to our needs. The zenith of this will be when the artificial intelligence enters into the picture or we reach a stage when we just have to think what we want and we get it!!
Renewal and Recycling guarantee
This concept is going to take a lot of thinking but will be implemented in the future. This is especially true for the always evolving electronics industry. The idea here is to give a guarantee of immediate renewal to the latest model at a cheaper price or smaller but fixed annual fees. Although this may look a very costly venture in the beginning; one must understand that in electronics the older models which are many generations earlier are literally rubbish. However if there is a guarantee of immediate renewal and renovation. Then the customers will have always the latest set-ups and the companies will have lot of slightly older version components that can be hopefully put to some use and be recycled. The renewal guarantee will the next smarter version of the current exchange-on-destruction guarantee that are now available.
Improved banking process
With Internet banking this process has already begun. Now a days many companies in Europe have started selling stuff which you may pay for by monthly installments. This would be especially great for salaried people as psychologically shelling out 30 € a month is much more easier for 10 months than paying 300 € at one go. Also many times when before accumulating those 300 € one usually buys a cheaper or different version. So this idea is going to pick up in the future.
Things are changing so fast that it is very difficult to exactly predict what will happen. But whatever happens the future will be extremely exciting..
An idealistic though it is, but I still believe that the best shopping is done when both the customer and the seller are happy in the end!!!
2 comments:
Renewal and Recycling concept is well worth one to be done in future.Well put!
Thanks Uma.This is a great topic.Best for generating lot of ideas.
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