Some Drawbacks of E-commerce

While many feel that the proliferation of E-commerce has helped to make shopping more convenient for consumers and more far-reaching and cost efficient for marketers, it has not come without a toll. In fact, there are many negatives stemming from the popularity of E-commerce and this blog entry will serve to outline a few of those as well as comment on their repercussions.

First, e-commerce creates negative consequences for our environment. When people buy online, they usually have the items shipped to their homes. This increases the logistics costs for companies, which many times results in irresponsible use of resources. For example, with the ease of online buying, people are making more purchases online. Companies have to increase transportation to get their customers the items they order. Vehicles like boats, trains, and trucks are used to transport goods, and as we know, these forms of transportation create damaging pollution and use up vast amounts of fuel. The costs of shipping also includes the product packaging, which use huge amounts of material like plastic, cardboard, and styrofoam which also have negative effects on the environment. 

Another consequence of e-commerce has to do with the ease of buying. People are able to access millions of stores, products, and brands instantly from anywhere and have the option to purchase them. This process is a lot more hassle free than physically going to a few different brick and mortar stores to find a particular item and results in more purchases from consumers than ever before.  For instance, on many sites such as Amazon.com, once you have made a purchase, all of your payment information is saved and linked with your login name. When I go visit the amazon website I am usually automatically logged in, so if I find a book that I am interested in, I can basically click the buy button and the transaction is done. It is that easy. People are able to meet all of their product needs right from their own home without exerting much effort at all. In fact, this process is so thought-free, that people don't even have to give thought about how the item was paid for. In addition, the delayed payment of credit cards makes it seem like users can simply click and get things sent to their doorstep, never even thinking about the money involved until their enormous bill arrives at the end of the month. Unfortunately, the ease of online commerce, fosters irresponsible consumerism, allowing many to temporarily ignore financial repercussions of purchase behavior until it is too late. 

Lastly, with many companies switching from brick and mortar stores to online locations, outsourcing is becoming an issue and many American people are losing their jobs to both computers as well as people who will work for less money in other countries. Ever since the inception of the Internet, the issue of outsourcing has been a problem. This is because the Internet can essentially outperform and replace many jobs traditionally held by humans. However, the internet has not just alleviated jobs, it has also shifted them to other countries where people are trained to work with computers and are willing to do it for a lower price than many American workers. For instance, many technical jobs for companies like AT&T, Dell, and the 3M Corporation and others are held by people in countries such as India.
These are just a few of the negatives that can be associated with e-commerce, but there are many other harmful effects that stem from this trend, which will no doubt only increase as the use of e-commerce is continually increasing.