e-Commerce: The Conquest Of Consumer Satisfaction (Online Vs Physical Market)

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The influence of technology on commerce, might not completely create an advantageous impact without leaving its perks. Although I think this might differ from market to market, style of operation, government laws, market practices regulatory agencies, and recognized laws on buying and selling. The issue of buying and selling online will always remain in contention, and this is because we will always make comparisons as to which is better especially when there's a change in certain occurrences that might warrant such a debate.

COVID made man embrace e-commerce in detestation of physical shopping and this wasn't because we willingly chose to see the advantages of online shopping. The advantage it brought was merely an illusion since it placated a disaster that was engineered by man himself.

The Freedom To Move Creates The Necessity For Online Presence

Why is this?

So e-commerce/online shopping, majorly attained a certain acceptance, importance, or gratification when people lose their freedom to relate physically with the market when they wanted to buy and sell. However, it's true that e-commerce creates ease and opens doors to endless possibilities.

It's a sector of technological advancement where we have successfully succeeded in turning the planet into a market center, creating further opportunities to buy or sell to any market in the world. This is to say the advancement of e-commerce strengthened it's hold during COVID-19. A pandemic of that magnitude that takes away the freedom of movement surely does not take away to freedom to spend money.

The Biggest Advantage/Accomplishment

So if we're to laud the biggest advantage of the accomplishment of e-commerce, it'll be that it created the ability for human beings to still have commercial interactions even in deep physical restrictions that comes with something game-changing as a pandemic.

Nevertheless, I won't like that man likes the exposure to choice, everyone craves being spoilt with multiple choices, multiple selling points, and multiple markets, I haven't shopped or ordered anything from a foreign market and this is because of the fear of complications. A friend on hive once sent me some expensive cameras and they went through customs and I never got to receive the package and it's been over 3 years now.

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Now I know that I exactly didn't shop, but the fact that I got a package for which I paid part of the shipping fee means I was going to be getting some customer protection on my goods, but the "Nigeria factor" kicks in once in a while and people loses in their bid to shop from a foreign market.

I started shopping online in 2017 and this was majorly because I had to buy certain medications that I couldn't get in any pharmaceutical store around. The ease of the first shopping experience was just too good, I continued shopping online through local stores, and it got to a point, I started ordering almost everything I needed online, however, in most of these cases, I had to pay extra money for the convenience I was achieving.

Achieving Satisfaction: The Main Goal?

If this were just the case only then it would have been fine, I couldn't achieve durability and originality even if I spent more money. Online shopping creates the illusion of choice and ease using the deception of packaging.

The reason why this is so is that it's difficult for a person to ascertain the quality, durability, and originality of a product without touching and seeing what the product looks like, but mostly, online stores use Sophisticated graphics representation to convince people that they're buying the best and even if there's always a return policy, the stress of going through that return policy makes some people choose to stick with bad products even when they paid for an original or durable product.

You see....

in a bid to attain the highest point of choice, opportunity, and ease, we often forget the need to firstly achieve quality and satisfaction which is the ultimate goal for spending*

A lot of people who sell online often take advantage of the fact that their clients are not primarily available to sell inferior products while making more profits in the long run.

Because of the sophistication of graphical representation, it's now difficult for people to spot what's durable from what isn't, or being able to spot what will be more value for money beyond the use of price tags. Online shopping often takes away that assessment, the ability to relate physically with a product to tell or predict the prospective satisfaction that a person is bound to derive.

When people are often exposed to the physical market, they create or establish this mastery;

the ability to detect that product or service which will offer the ultimate satisfaction for money. Online shopping breaks this opaqueness. There's also the ability to make instant choices and how that speed helps us become better at ultimately spending money. Although people who have enormous amounts of money are indeed looking to majorly derive ease when shopping, it'll be unfair to say that all customers are aiming to achieve value for money.

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Physical Shopping Despite It's Crudeness

So, with the numerous experiences I've had thus far, I'd say shopping online brings bigger opportunities for exposure. Especially because it's easy to flip two or three web pages and get over ten thousand choices for just a single product one is aiming to purchase. But the Nigeria e-commerce system turns this into an advantage to saturate the market with inferior or fake products and services in exchange for better profiteering.

Shopping in Nigeria, online, therefore comes with more disadvantages than advantages. Nevertheless, I think it's a technological advancement, that will be bettered over time. People who are in this type of market are after profits. They create the illusion that people are in charge of their choices, meanwhile almost all the choices they'll offer you are substandard, meaning that one is susceptible to making bad choices irrespective of their intentions to buy quality.

Online, price hardly tells quality or durability

.....this is because of the lack of physical assessment to show what is what. However, if you're all out to spend big when shopping online, there's a chance you might buy quality because having more money increases your chances at quality. If you're on a tight budget, there's a tendency you'll buy a bad product because even if you finally made a choice, you'll still be hard done by your inability to make physical assessment. However, circumstances changes and scarcity and peculiarity of a product or service might make us seek to see solace in shopping online, I think this is inevitable and justifiable. So online shopping comes with it's perks and sometimes becomes a necessary evil

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