Shopping is an appeal to innate human rapture. New ideas rise and old shops fall, but we still shop.
People used to shop in stores; swiping through hangers or caressing items on supermarket shelves. Now, products are mere digital images that you can scroll past. You can log on to an online shopping platform from anywhere and order even chicken and papaya. Shopping online is all about ticking boxes: species, colour, size, number and grade of quality which are all options appearing on the screen of your computer or mobile phone, with no need for personal touch. It is a mechanical process but worth on its own.
Online shopping can never completely replace some shops especially those restaurants where romantic ambience is the reason for enjoyment. It will not replace shops selling luxury goods where you want to be treated like a VIP. For shops which are ordinary and cannot offer competitive prices of their products, it is hard to see how they will be able to battle against their online counterparts. At the end, only the convenient shops satisfying a customer’s daily needs may survive. This is why I still frequent 7-Eleven or Circle K. In a competition, there are always winners and losers. Losers will disappear.
In Hong Kong, Taobao(淘寶) is the market king. It is an online shopping platform headquartered in Hangzhou(杭州), China and owned by Alibaba which at first targeted at a ‘B2B’(business-to-business) and later at a ‘B2C’(business-to-customer) operating model. Taobao is almost the most-visited website for shopping among the Chinese.
Few years ago, I resisted but now Taobao is too hard to resist for me.
My friends said the following: “China used to produce low-cost and low-performing goods, and the focus, in recent years, has shifted to high-quality goods. The trick is to look for the mid-range prices and you seldom get disappointed.” “Most shops in Hong Kong typically close at 7pm. With the rise of e-commerce, I can buy what I want from the comfort of my own home, any time of day or night.” “Buying something online is often cheaper and delivery is much faster, usually within 1-3 business days.” “My God! One of the benefits of online shopping is that specialty items, hard-to-find products and almost everything under the sun particularly out-of-stock goods can be found on the internet.” “Shoppers’ comments are available on Taobao and I can assess at once which is good and what is bad. I can also know how many items that the manufacturer had sold. I just wisely follow the crowd.”
Chinese people are very creative and this is why you will be amazed by the innovative products which emerge from Taobao every day: curtains without drilling nails, bedside tables with different lighting ideas, fake muscle T shirts which can make you look like having a six-pack abs, slippers which feel like jelly, ladders that can be turned into a chair and more…
Some Taobao sellers hire Hong Kong transportation companies to take back the goods back to the Chinese Mainland if you are not happy with the quality that you have bought. Some Mainland suppliers display their samples in Hong Kong and let you go to check out the grade. Some house fittings manufacturers employ local Hong Kong workers to provide installation services at your home.
Taobao is a wonderland where you can pay no mind—just relax, enjoy and spend your money in full swing.
Online retailers such as Taobao, Amazon, Carousell, eBay and Tmall are popular in Hong Kong and are quietly forcing many small street shops to close down. Land and labour in Hong Kong are expensive. This is why the prices of products in physical shops with the same quality can be 3 or 4 times more. Only those who are not accustomed to ‘cyber shopping’ or who insist on personalized encounter still do in-store shopping.
The big challenge to cyber shopping is the cost of ‘e-commerce logistics’ which term refers to the movement of goods in online retail. It involves managing inventory, order fulfilment, warehousing, transportation and delivery. The latter two are not cheap. Often, transportation charges are equal to the price of a product and you are forced to buy many other things at the same time in order to justify delivery charges. It encourages ‘prodigal spending’.
It is also a pity that most e-commerce sites are just a product list. They do not have stories or human inspiration. They do not tell you why the products are made or who developed the idea behind.
My life has changed. I seldom go out for aimless shopping. I simply wait happily for an order to show up at my door every single day. It is always like Christmas! Online shopping wins because I can do it in bed or even in my toilet! Carrying stuff which is a kind of heavy lifting can cause a problem to us after a certain age. There is already too much stuff to carry around like cellphone, wallet, keys and a briefcase when we go home. Grocery bags surely piss us off now!
Great shopping is when laziness finds respectability.
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