With the prevalence of online shopping platforms many brick and mortar retailers are transitioning to online shopping What positive and negative effects might this have on the retailers

In the last few years, the commerce industry has undergone a dramatic transformation, namely the emergency of online retailers. Such online platforms aid sellers by making trade more convenient, and creating new job opportunities. However, online shopping often entails many middlemen within the payment and delivery process, which can create some problems.

Firstly, online shopping platforms make it easier for shops to sell and promote their products. This is especially true for smaller companies, who can expand their outreach opportunities by utilising social media sites and other tools provided by e-commerce sites and can organise to have their products shipped to anywhere in the world without having to deal with bureaucracy-related problems. For example, previously, an independent bookshop would have to rent a physical location and arrange their own shipping, but they may only reach a very narrow potential customer base. Nowadays, however, such bookshops can promote their products through a Facebook Page or an Instagram account, and have the logistics of delivery handled by specialised shipping services for online stores, or bigger e-commerce sites. By doing so, they can minimise the time and effort needed for marketing and organisational work and focus on improving the quality of their product lineup.

Besides, online shopping is a catalyst for new career paths in the retail industry. Among such paths, the most notable is live stream shop hosts–people whose work entails presenting live streams and convincing the viewers to buy what they have to sell. This new line of occupation started to appear in the latter half of the 2010s decade, with the proliferation of live stream platforms such as Periscope, Facebook Live and Periscope. It has created jobs for people who are interested in working in retail, but whose personalities are deemed "loud" and "unfit" for traditional retail work. By going live in the evenings, a shopping live stream host can earn up to thousands of dollars doing nothing but convince their viewers with their charismatic selves, a salary that is much more lucrative than that of a traditional retail job.

Despite its two major advantages outlined above, online shopping often utilises third-party services when it comes to handling payments and organising shipments, which can create unexpected problems for retailers. To be more specific, smaller e-commerce sites often use services like Stripe to handle their payments and have their shipping handled by courier services such as DHL or FedEx. Throughout the payment processing stage, unexpected errors can happen despite the customer using valid credit card credentials, which can lead to the shops not receiving the money that their customers have spent on their products. Afterwards, when a product is being shipped, the retailer cannot effectively monitor the state of said product. This can result in the unfortunate scenario where a product is damaged during delivery, and as a result, the seller may run the risk of making their customers dissatisfied.

Online shopping provides convenience and job opportunities to sellers, but it can generate unique and unexpected problems. However, I still weigh the pros of e-commerce towards retailers more than the cons. Therefore, I recommend that companies, especially smaller companies, to incorporate e-commerce platforms within their sales strategies as extensively as possible.