4 WAYS THE WORLD IS CHANGING IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES
Over the 1980s and
1990s, we watched the phenomenon of the Walmart revolution. New stores opened
at an amazing clip while people flocked there for their low prices to buy
everything from school clothes to groceries to tires.
They were able to
charge those low prices through the use of first class supply chain technology,
low non-union wages, cheap foreign imports, and many other factors.
Despite the many customers, Walmart had its detractors. People
complained about how Walmart squeezed their vendors’ profit margins and how
they moved into midsized towns, running thousands of traditional mom and pop
stores out of business.
It was always my opinion that Walmart was not who ran those mom and pops out of business. It was Walmart’s customers. If the customers didn’t shop there, Walmart couldn’t have done it. They may have created a market, but the market responded.
Now, Walmart isn’t doing so well. They been “Walmarted” themselves. New technologies have emerged that have caused Walmart to experience a hit to their normal upward trajectory.
It was always my opinion that Walmart was not who ran those mom and pops out of business. It was Walmart’s customers. If the customers didn’t shop there, Walmart couldn’t have done it. They may have created a market, but the market responded.
Now, Walmart isn’t doing so well. They been “Walmarted” themselves. New technologies have emerged that have caused Walmart to experience a hit to their normal upward trajectory.
This, and many other
shifts in markets are taking place that show that the world
is changing. And the way business is transacted will change for some time
to come.
THE AMAZON
MARKETPLACE
Although it has been
around for twenty years now, Amazon (and many other portal websites like it)
has become the go-to place to purchase next to anything. Anything you used to
be able to buy at Walmart can now be found online in seconds. You can also find
millions of items you can’t find at Walmart or any other store.
RadioShack used to be
the place to go to for electronics supplies that couldn’t be found anywhere
else. No more. RadioShack is now feeling the effects of everything available on
the internet.
The internet has
caused many brick and mortar companies like Blockbuster Video to go down in
flames. Don’t be surprised if many more begin disappearing, unable to compete
with the low overhead of online companies.
EVERYBODY’S AN AUTHOR
Speaking of Amazon,
through their Kindle publishing for ebooks and their purchase of CreateSpace
for print, they have removed virtually all barriers to entry for
self-publishing. Independent (Indie) authors can now publish their works on
both print and electronic formats for free and have their works available on
Amazon.com within hours.
The traditional
publishers like MacMillan and Hachette are quickly losing their strangle hold
as gatekeepers of the publishing industry. Certainly a fair amount of bad
content will be entered into the market. But the consumers will be the ones to
decide what is good and bad for themselves.
THE END OF PRIVACY
In my carefree teenage
years, I could tell my parents I was going one place and go somewhere
altogether different. As long as I wasn’t spotted by someone they knew, and as
long as those people didn’t tell them they saw me, I was safe.
That’s no longer true.
Parents today have constant contact with their children and their smart phones.
They can even use GPS-based apps that allow them to track everywhere they go.
Even without the
electronic tracking, people use social media to tell people where they are,
what they are eating, who they are with, and every other detail they can think
of to share. Companies will soon be able to track who is in their retail
location and send them deals to their smart phone during their visit.
PUBLIC OPINION IS
MORE PUBLIC
Word of mouth used to
be exactly that. You had to talk to someone you knew to get a recommendation
for a restaurant or a good book. Now, with apps like Yelp, you can find out
what restaurants are near to you and get countless opinions from complete
strangers reviewing their experience there.
Back to Amazon, if you
find a book – or any other product – that sounds interesting on their website,
you can look at the reviews, where sometimes hundreds of people have given
their opinion. You can see how many gave ratings of 1, 5 and each ranking
in-between.
CONCLUSION
Walmart changed the
way we purchased products in the 80s and 90s. It also changed the landscape of
retail as we knew it. Now, as the internet becomes more ubiquitous, the
retailers that ruled the roost are getting ruled by more agile organizations
with lower overhead, using more advanced technology. The world is changing.
http://blog.consulting101book.com/4-ways-the-world-is-changing-front-eyes/#more-1954
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