There are varying opinions regarding the future of e-commerce. Despite the fact that online sales are growing exponentially, some analysts believe that e-commerce is heading for a fall. Laurie Windham justifies her belief that as time goes on, sales will decrease instead of increasing.
Windham believes that net consumers are very different than mall shoppers and catalog shoppers. Furthermore, she says that dot-coms are responsible for ruining their own chances to sell because they have spoiled customers to the point that consumers expect cheap prices and freebies and if they don’t get them, they just move on to another site. E-commerce, Windham says, is a fickle world with little, if any, customer loyalty (Fortune, 2000).
Windham found some interesting differences between online shoppers and traditional shoppers. For instance, 34 percent of online shoppers describe themselves as comparison shoppers but only 8 percent of traditional shoppers describe themselves as comparison shoppers. Another comparison is that only 1 percent of Web shoppers say they hate stores but 10 percent of traditional shoppers
say they hate stores (Fortune, 2000). Web shoppers are by and large comparison, price-sensitive consumers.
Windham, who spent two years studying the consumers who purchase online, said that as nonusers begin to use the Web for purchasing, they will be less adventuresome than people already making purchases online. They will also be slightly older than the norm and they will be more fearful and cautious about privacy and security. In other words, as nonusers begin using the Web to shop, they will be a more conservative group than current users. It is probable they will also be less fickle and more loyal to brands/stores (Fortune, 2000).
Windham pointed out that there were numerous problems with people receiving exactly what they ordered online during last holiday season. Based on that, she suggested sales may be lower this year (Fortune, 2000). Surveys conducted after the last holiday season suggested online shoppers would continue shopping online. One survey, for instance, indicated that more than 90 percent of consumers reported that shopping online met or exceeded their expectations. Eighty percent said they would increase their online shopping in 2000 (Rutledge, 2000).
Studies found that consumer confidence in using the Internet for shopping reached very high levels, which were
due to a number of factors. Positive comments from family and friends were one of the factors that swayed more people to utilize this option. Better selections from online stores also made the experience more satisfying. Finally,
secure credit card transactions played a major role in increasing sales (Rutledge, 2000).
Consumers were enticed to try shopping on the Internet by the massive marketing campaign last year for both dot-com stores and retail stores online. More than 70 percent of Net shoppers said they bought from e-commerce sites that offered free shipping. Another 54 percent said they were enticed by the discounts offered for their first online purchase. Forty percent used online coupons and 25 percent responded to the offer of free gifts for their online purchase (Rutledge, 2000).
The Direct Marketing Association projected that sales generated from catalogs and the Internet would double in the next four years, reaching $3.33 billion (Entrepreneur, 2000). A study by Jupiter Communications agreed saying that sales would increase this holiday season. This study reported that holiday shoppers would spend almost $12 billion in online purchases between November 1 and December 31 this year, which represents a 66 percent increase over the same time period last year. The increase between the 1998 and 1999 holiday seasons was 126 percent. There is a slowdown in the degree of growth but it is still a substantial increase (Kontzner, 2000)
The Gartner Group predicted a much larger growth this year. They projected sales of $19.5 billion. This group
also believed that dot-com stores and retail stores online
would not spend as much money on advertising this year. Instead, they will spend resources on retaining customers (Kontzner, 2000).
As a number of dot-coms collapsed during this past year, many retailers felt a wave of relief but it was short-lived. The Web’s bite into retail store sales is about to become noticeable and hurtful. Business Week (2000) reported that there is a rule of thumb that says a 10 to 15 percent loss in sales vaporizes a store’s profits. In 2000, online sales of books alone will top 11 percent of all books sold. That is up from 8.5 percent in 1999. CDs and videos will more than double their sales from 1999 and that will bring them to 10 percent of the entire market. Computer hardware and software already totals more than 18 percent of the market (Business Week, 2000).
In order to combat this trend, some retailers are trying to lure consumers to their own online sites. They are also trying to use their Web sites to bring people into their stores. Since 94 percent of online buying is nothing but a shift from stores to a more convenient way of shopping, some of these strategies could work. Still, physical site retailers have begun to feel the effect of Net shopping. And, the fact is that sales on the Web are at least doubling every year (Business Week, 2000). The overhead is far less for dot-coms. They sell from a central warehouse and do not have to support thousands of stores
around the country. This fact is so clear that AMB Property Corp., a real estate investment trust in San Francisco, sold $560 million worth of local shopping centers and invested the proceeds in warehouses close to urban centers. The expectation is that the demand will be greater for warehouse property than for mall property (Business Week, 2000).
Zona Research Corporation’s forecast is that Internet sales will soar in the next two years. The survey of Internet product buyers showed that the number of companies that use Internet-based selling will likely quadruple in the next two years, going from 44 percent from its current 10 percent. The reason for the dramatic increase is related to universal standards that will unite millions of businesses with billions of consumers (Menefee, 1998).
Zona looks that the electronic economy in terms of a series of three technology waves. The first wave was able to save companies money by publishing on the Internet and the second wave opened up online sales profit centers. It was the second wave that made e-commerce a component in commerce as a whole (Menefee, 1998). The third wave will “re-intermediate buyers and sellers” through the creation of places on the Internet where buyers and sellers meet to exchange goods and services and complete transactions completely on the Internet and to complete them securely. The third wave has a significant influence on how business
is normally conducted. At some point, the third wave will be similar to a fax machine, or at least, the importance of a fax machine was a number of years ago. If you don’t have one, you won’t be able to conduct business (Menefee, 1998).
Future
8
REFERENCES
Entrepreneur. (2000, October). THE PERCENTAGE. Entrepreneur 28(10), p. 46
Fortune. (2000, October). Don’t Expect A Merry E-Christmas: Online buyers expect freebies, lack loyalty, and purchase on price, says an e-commerce pro. Shopping sites need to retrain them. Fortune 142(7), p. 259+
Hof, Robert D. (2000, July). Online Sales Still a Threat. — Forget the falling stock prices. Web sales are reaching a critical mass. Business Week, (3691), p. EB130.
Kontzner, Tony. (2000, September). Will Holidays Be Jolly Days? — E-retailers hope retaining customers will translate into profits. InternetWeek, p. 136.
Menefee, Craig. (1998, March). Internet-based selling to boom in next two years; Third technology wave to have heavy influence on how normal business conducted, study claims. Computing Canada 24, p. 11.
Rutledge, Keisha. (2000, February). On-line shopping a success despite holiday ditches. Discount Store News 39, p. 16.
Review Of Courtroom Drama “A Few Good Men”
Courtroom drama is a popular type of film which involves at least one trial and pin points much of the emotion and tension within a court of law. “A Few Good Men” is an emotional story of two military men accused of killing a young soldier. Tom Cruise play’s Danny Kaffe, the smart mouth defense lawyer, and Demi Moore play’s Joe Galloway, his nosy special council. The movie starts of by showing us the plot and then begins to tell the story. Compared to other movies with the same genre, I’d have to say this is one of the best. It was boring at times but it did it’s best to show action through words.
The music is very soft and sets the mood. It gives the viewers a tingling feeling inside. It’s not only the music that makes the movie a success, it’s also the acting. Tom Cruise makes himself seem like a no brain marine. That makes him perfect for the job. Demi Moore plays a tough but sexy naval officer (I always liked a women who takes charge). She always wanted things done her own way. She originally ask for the case but was denied, because they wanted someone who would screw up.
The lighting and camera angles in the courtroom does a lot, they make sure to stay on top of the people’s faces, so we as viewers won’t get mixed up with who’s talking. The main thing that really made the movie was Tom Cruise, when he got up their and put on a show, that I think nobody will forget. He does his hotshot act and this is when we knew he was going to do it. He put smiles on people’s faces, he put tears in your eyes, he made sure to win the audiences attention. He made sure to go out with a bang. This movie received fairly good reviews. Some comments weren’t that great, but still it was a good movie. The film reviews state that this movie eliminates the element of surprise.
They told us what he’s going to do and instead of not succeeding, his plan does work. It had the potential to be better but “the film doesn’t make us work, doesn’t allow us to figure out things for ourselves, it’s afraid we’ll miss something if they’re not spelled out” (Roger Ebert). That’s true movies tend to get boring if we can’t us our brains to try to figure things out. The reviews are very picky, but do get to the point. It’s a very predictable but effective movie that tried it’s best to please all the different genre of viewers. “When the time comes for the big courtroomscen , we realize that it steals the pleasure in two ways:
We are not allowed to discover Cruise’s strategy for ourselves,
Nicholson ‘s (The crown Attorney) behavior seems scripted and inevitable, and is robbed of shock value” (Roger Ebert). Personally I’d have to say that the movie was well written and the acting was pretty good (I wouldn’t give it two thumbs up). The film did lack some action, but who am I to judge a film that doesn’t really fit into my genre.
I like action movies, but for a drama film, I kinda got into it. I really liked Demi Moore’s performance, she really know how to handle sticky situations. Tom Cruise doesn’t really impress me, he always tries to pull hotshot acts. He doesn’t have to show of in every movie. Everybody knows he’s a good actor. The best part of the movie had to be when Tom Cruise is in the courtroom and showing everybody up (this doesn’t mean I like him). That’s when you could feel victory inside. The music was pumping, and the crowd was going wild, and the viewers were just thinking the words “oh my God ! “.
In conclusion I’d have to say that I really did enjoy this film even if it wasn’t my genre. One thing I learned from this is never judge a movie by it’s cover .
The Great Divide: Human Ability To Define And Build Culture
The fine line that used to separate human beings from animals was the phenomenon of speech and imagination. But the great divide between the two was human ability to define and build a culture. What really is a culture? Culture in many forms is defined by language and behavior as key elements. In the words of Stevenson (1994), “Human beings could create and invent and influence their environment as well as respond to it. The collected experience, stored in language, was a culture”. Cultures, just like the evolution of species, keep on evolving. Evolving cultures follow the same pattern as defined by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The strong and the fittest survive. There is a process of natural selection wherein the good influences get carried across while the bad wither away. But just like in living species, there is protectionism built into every culture. There is always a fear of external cultures eroding the value systems and behavior patterns of an existing culture (Stevenson, 1994)
One can infer from the various chapter readings that in the benefit of mankind, cultures should freely diffuse without any opposition that is artificially induced by political bodies. The cultural domination of the US media content in the world is in fact an “internationalization” as the US itself is a hybrid nation that is made up of a multitude of diverse nationalities. Therefor it is logical to be categorical supporter of the American global culture, and the reverberations that it is producing throughout the world.
Over the centuries, many cultures have been extinct and many have become mainstream. The populist cultures of China and India have been thriving for eons. But in the 20th century, the world has seen the American culture take the center stage with its influence spreading all around the world. As Stevenson puts it “The two trends of global communication in the 90s are a resurgence of demands for cultural identity and at the same time the emergence of the foundations of global culture. The notion that each culture should be a sovereign political state grew out of the nationalism movement of the nineteenth century. This in turn has led to resurgence in the assertion of cultural independence in the 1990s” (Stevenson, 1994). But the American cultural juggernaut has been so invading that a lot of cultural protectionists in these nationalistic countries have been scared of the fact that their carefully preserved cultures might get diluted. That however is inevitable. It is obvious that “Survival ability is one criterion for measuring cultures” (Stevenson, 1994). The adaptation of the American culture and English as a form of a medium has been really profound. There are countless examples that can be cited in support of this argument. America has been the symbolism of freedom and a perfect democracy in the post WWII world. Mass media had brought together disparate individuals, which included migrants, foreigners and domestic people. In the late 19th century, groups of immigrants formed segregated communities, clinging to the customs and cultures of their homes. The need for a larger community with which everyone could identify was obvious. American mass culture facilitated this. America is unique in the sense that all 50 states of the US have people speaking the same language. And almost all states sport a common culture – which has the same characteristics – Independence and freedom of speech. As in the words of Paul Farhi, (In the article “Exporting America”) “From films, to language, to commercial products, the US power is felt all over the world. Global consumerism and expanding channels create more demand for entertainment. The reason being partly linguistic, partly economic and partly a reflection of the unique historical, racial and ideological developments of the United States. In the same light of consideration, US products enjoy the competitive advantage of being created in English, the first or second language of choice for almost the entire developed world and much of the developing world”. Films produced in English account between 60 and 65 percent of the global box office, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Producing in English gives a film immediate entrée to some of the biggest movie markets in the world. It is clear from the article “Exporting America” by Paul Farhi that that American movie and TV culture has revolutionized the way people watch broadcast media in Hungary, India, Cuba, Greece, Russia and so many more countries of the world. While intellectuals debate the benefits and the disadvantages of this dominance, the penetration of the US culture in a post Cold War world in which scores of countries have abandoned state controls for policies of free trade and free markets is beyond dispute.
There are two points that can be analyzed when looking at the idea of “Cultural Protectionism” and efforts taken by various nations to protect their culture. First, one should look at the relationship between economic and cultural protectionism, and argue that, many suggestions to the contrary notwithstanding, they are not really different at all: cultural protectionism can be easily reduced to economic protectionism or in other words ‘economic patriotism’. It has the same sources, displays many of the same characteristics, and is driven by the same motives: principally, ethnocentrism and greed. And it fails for the same reasons. In the article “Making money abroad and also a few enemies”, the author Judith Miller explains how governments often cite religious or cultural objections to a film merely as pretexts of their political discomfort. Miller says that “It is ludicrous to believe that Egypt or Arab countries banned Schindler’s List” because of its presumed salacious content and sexual thrill”. Annette Insdorf, director of undergraduate film studies at Columbia University referring to Steven Speilberg’s film about holocaust which won the academy award for the best picture said “They banned it because they feared it would evoke sympathy for Israel”. This comment by Annette Insdorf is an obvious example of the government’s ethnocentric motives.
Secondly one would want to address the most frequent claim that is put forward to recommend cultural protectionism, and to distinguish it from economic tariffs. This is the claim that there is something called “cultural identity” or “national identity”, which cultural protectionism is required to guard, and that the arts are central to the definition and expression of. (In economic terms, the identity argument is, in effect, a positive externality argument: the services that the cultural sector performs for our national identity benefit us all, but that sector cannot be compensated adequately for them through ordinary markets. Hence the need for anti-competitive measures like quotas, or limitations upon the entry of foreign performers, books, and CDs into the nation.) It is rational to suggest that the notion of “national identity” is not only driven with internal contradiction, but also implies a limited and unproductive view of the arts, and of their function in individual and social life. Once even the national identity carpet has been pulled out from under its feet it becomes obvious that cultural protectionism cannot remain standing for long.
If we leave aside, for now, the argument about national identity, many of the arguments for cultural protectionism, have taken the same form as those for its economic first-cousin. A prominent example is the “infant industry” argument: protectionism is required to get the nascent cultural industries up and running. The problem here is that the “infant industry” case only applies when a local producer can claim some comparative advantage, whereas at most times especially in a country like India, these local producers claim a comparative disadvantage relative to overseas competitors. Moreover, the infant industry argument, on its own logic, should lead to a progressive lowering of import restrictions as the industry grows in maturity and strength.
Closely related to the infant industry argument is the argument that says we wouldn’t have a publishing/film/television/music/advertising industry without protectionism. Again one will point out that there are any number of industries a nation does not have that would thrive there instantly if only they banned imports but only at an enormous cost to the rest of the nation’s economy.