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Originally Posted by XWGT
What I want to know is this. Why does everyone equate online shopping with the death of Australian jobs. And why dont most retailers understand they can move their business ONLINE and remove all of the evil property costs they keep talking about?
Some examples are (yes I know they hav e shop fronts but they are modest and teh net is the king for them)
http://www.kogan.com.au/
http://shop.1wow.com.au/productcart/pc/home.asp
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/default.php
etc etc etc
The list is endless.
These stores still maintain warehouses, have distribution staff, IT staff, social media staff, procurement staff, not to mention the new line of work everyone keeps forgetting DELIVERY / TRANSPOPRT services which must be booming at the moment. So they still generate a fair level of activity locally.
My point is you DONT have to be based in Asia to have a successful online only business. The hard part for most established retailers is making the transition.
And here is another point
A recent survey revealed only 15% of people read past the first page of Google search results.
So if thats the case.......and the customer sees a product they are comfortuable with and the price is right online, shipping is free etc.........how many more online retailers do you think they check with????????????????
It aint the end of the world people. In fact its the start of a slightly different one......... |
Online shopping will reduce the number of retail jobs - if you compare two companies one a traditional retailer vs a online store, the traditional retailer will always employ more people.
Online store as you mentioned you have distribution staff, purchasing staff, retailer will have the same staff (retailers have warehouses etc to store goods prior to shipment to the retail store) But in addition to that the retail store employees sales, cleaners, shopfitters etc, then you have the transport costs between their warehouses and the actual retail stores. Therefore if traditional retail shops all shut up businesses and moved to online only there would be a large number of jobs lost.
Dont get me wrong I am not against online stores at all, but I am suggesting as we move to more online shopping retail jobs will be lost.
Regardling transport I think the biggest winner is Aussie post, they would have been concerned as we moved towards the electronic age (mail would have dropped off) But now they would be happy as they would see a large increase in the parcels they deliver. Strangely enough though I have seen probably about 6 tranposrt companies get liquidated in the past few months - go figure I guess.