The article addresses the issue of how brick-and-mortar stores have to deal with the continued emergence of E-commerce. Online shopping merchants continue to enjoy more revenues and better sales while bringing a fresh perspective and a change on shopping behavior for consumers. According to the article, Best Buy is the latest retailer to post a decline in their holiday sales. Best Buy cited lowest price drops, which produced lower profit margins and revenues. Major changes in shopping habits decreased traffic into the stores, which has brought a shift in power from malls and other large retailers. Long challenged by the newfound preference of the customers for e-commerce are the traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. However, the strategies that these retailers have instigated have not been successful. Today, many people become interesting to shop online because of the easy way to get their orders. In fact, this phenomenon led significantly to decrease the traffic (Banjo & FitzGerald, 2014).
Best Buy has made some changes including an overhaul of the layout of its stores, but this has not assisted the stores improve sales making the store drop off after the Thanksgiving weekend. Shopaholics are busy and scared to be stuck in the traffic. Thus, they prefer to shop online. This preference decreased the demand for the services offered by the retailer. The declines experienced in traffic are likely to be experienced through the holiday, and the retailers do not see any changes in the near future. Trips by shoppers to retail stores have continued to decrease, and this continues to influence the economic environment of the retailers. In the process, the retailers miss chances customers shopping impulsively since they browse the web and subscribe for whatever products they need (Banjo & FitzGerald, 2014). On the other hand, the online stores have influenced purchase-related decisions as well as prices making the customers visit the stores simply if they are after a discount. The decline in the traffic and the number of brick-and-mortar shoppers have made the retailers pull on increasing the number of stores. These retailers are now looking to expand their business to an online presence so that they can reap the benefits of both sides of the retailing business and avoid traffic issues. By these sides, they will maintain the customers who prefer to shop online.
The article thoroughly discusses the effects associated with the changing behavior of customers on shopping and dealing with the phenomenon of a changing shift in shopping practices. The writers intended the article for a larger audience because graphical statistics that will give them a better understanding of the issue on hand. While online shopping and related practices became a new practice, some entrepreneurs do not consider scrapping the brick-and-mortar system. Instead, they consider implementing both traditional and modern practices in order to cater every customer and adapt new practices in shopping.
Even though the article is straightforward in the points that it wishes to put across, the authors should have expanded more on the emergence of online shopping and traffic reduction. Traffic flow became smoother around big shopping areas, and taking too much time on the road is not a major problem. People can now purchase anything they want using any device within a second if they have Internet connection. This means that people could shop while on the way, and they do not have to roam around shops. Online shopping also helped ease parking congestion – one common reason traffic around streets slowly builds up. Despite the decline in traffic, some shoppers realized that brick-and-mortar shopping became more convenient due to other people migrating to a better, more convenient type of shopping. It would greatly help on doing my research paper, while I could have additional reference, which I can use for testing my hypotheses.
References
Banjo, S., & Fitzgerald, D. (2014, January 16). Stores Confront New World of Reduced Shopper Traffic. Retrieved October 20, 2014, from http://on.wsj.com/1meGrw7
