E-Commerce

Do you recognize the wide usage of a trading platform at 11st November which is the Singles Day? That is a well-known platform called Taobao which is especially popular for mainland China and Hong Kong people. There are even news reports about the massive sales of Alibaba that day; there are about 120,000 estimated orders each minute on 2015 Singles Day and the sales worth of 91.2 billion yuan (Celia Hatton, 2015). E-commerce has gradually become the most commonly used trading method, and there are lots of famous platforms, ranging from Amazon.com, eBay and Groupon. With its all-time availability and easy interaction between customers and producers, e-commerce has gained considerable success and adapted by many countries.

E-commerce completely changed the shopping habits of consumers. People shifted to browse the trading platform or social network and use their own devices to conduct their shopping. Just several decades before, people used to travel around to different stores to get the goods they wanted. They find the places that sold the goods by asking their relatives or friends. Finally, settlements of payments were mainly made by cash in person. However, with the rise of e-commerce, shopping habits of people have changed. It is not necessary for people to go out to purchase, the whole transaction process could be done online. Register and read the product descriptions, such as the color and size. After settling the payments, goods will be delivered to their home directly. E-commerce brings convenience to customers by saving their time on searching the goods and going around, thus many people shifted to conduct shopping online instead of visiting real stores.

However, what lead to the success of e-commerce? Technology development such as the wise use of mobile phone is the most important factor. Owing to the rapid technology development, people used smartphone and desktop frequently to do everything including social networking and even shopping. It is obviously not difficult for everyone, even some elderly that do not usually use smartphone, to connect with the trading platforms easily by using their own devices or from their relatives. The market information spreads online through lots of platforms, for example, there will be a lot of advertisements from Facebook or Youtube, which sometimes stimulate people to consume because of the attractive advertisements or some promotions such as discounts or coupons. Apart from it, these technological devices also allow not only a 24-hour-a-day showcase for their products but a quick way to reach the right people in a company for more information (Mihai Moraru, 2008). While the reason for this 24-hour-a-day showcase is due to the connection of Internet under technology development, which further contributes to the success of e-commerce by making it more convenience.

Despite its enormous success and advantages brought to customers, e-commerce also posed threat on people. There is one lasting impact about the overconsumption of products which lead to waste and destroy our environment. There are several reasons that lead to increasing