ISP essay attempt 2

ISP ESSAY

BRUCE

Online shopping has been a very controversial topic as it expands and makes an impact in the world as it is. Now thousands of people shop online every day and most of them think of it as just another store, but online. Most of them are barely aware of the risks of shopping online, or are aware of how much it makes their life easier. In this short essay I will explain the effects online shopping had over the years and I will explain the issues arising within this topic.

Online shopping began in 1970’s, when videotex was invented to help marketers. It progressed quickly, and in 1995 the 2 online shopping giants Amazon and eBay were founded.  In 2000 there was a huge spike in the NASDAQ stock and it was caused by a huge amount of online stores being created and the huge amount of transactions between seller and buyer that continues to grow even today. Online shopping created many jobs for job seekers in the form of online store modulators and related jobs. Most of the time online stores can basically manage themselves if everything works fine, which is an advantage to online shopping, unlike normal stores, which require a much larger staff to manage properly. In a normal store, you would use your debit card or credit card to buy an item, but in a store, reliability is not always so high. That brings us to the first issue, reliability.

In normal stores, an internet transaction is much easier, faster, and more simple. When shopping online, the transaction takes much longer. First, you order by typing in many account numbers into several boxes, and then place your order. Then your order confirmation, and after that, your order is sent via the internet to the website host server, which would compute your order and flag it to deliver, which is when someone will get your item manually and ship it. Then comes the tedious shipping process, where your item is loaded onto a truck or train and driven to either an airport or boatyard (if your buying from a foreign country, which most people do), where it is then put onto a boat or plane possibly roughly and barely tied down and then the item is shipped, which will probably take between a week and 1 month (max). Once it arrives in your country it takes a bit of time to pass customs, and then it gets back onto the truck that takes it to your home. The entire process takes up to 2 months.

This is the largest inconvenience found in stores online, as many customer reviews are based on how excruciatingly slow the shipping is. Shipping speeds can be increased if the customer orders priority 1 day shipping (which actually takes about 2 days) but it is definitely and never will be faster than buying a product at a store. As of today's technology, we can’t make shipping faster by any significant amount, which means that if your buying a large product (shed, trampoline kit, etc.) you should buy it at the store, because there are no expensive shipping costs and because your item won’t be delayed for a very long time because the item is too heavy for an aircraft.

The second issue I will discuss is online credit card safety. In 2011 alone, $3.4 billion were lost online because of either credit card theft or identity theft or other methods of stealing money online. In 2007, 50,000 credit card numbers were stolen and most of their money was all taken. This number is still increasing as the amount of shoppers online grow. Credit card theft has been and still is the largest risk in shopping online. The country whose citizens steal credit card numbers online is Nigeria, having stolen most of the 50,000 credit card numbers.

As of today, there are few ways to prevent credit card theft online. One of them is to use SSL, or secure sockets layer. This is a security system implemented into almost all web browsers. Secure sockets layer is an encryption system that encrypts all of your credit card data and sends it so that the receiver can decode it, but no one in between. If your browser does support SSL, then you should turn it on in the options settings. Another way to prevent credit card theft is to use the “Restore online shoppers confidence act” (P.L. 111-345 signed December 29th, 2010) to your advantage. The act dictates that the merchant cannot pass credit card data to a third party seller without the shoppers permission, consent, and the shopper must give the numbers him/herself directly to the third party. If credit card theft does occur, the shopper should report this immediately to the store.

Dynamic pricing is pricing a product based on what the shopper has done before on the internet and what his/her priorities/goals are. If you consistently shop for the cheapest item possible and spend weeks hunting for the perfect deal on the internet, then the website might price it slightly cheaper so that it will attract your attention. Also, if you commonly search for a specific item, such as video games consistently on the internet, then the video games priced on the website might be slightly cheaper.

Dynamic pricing is a problem when shopping online because shoppers think it is unfair that someone else might be getting a cheaper item than them just because what they normally search for on the internet. Not very much people are aware of dynamic pricing and the other issues are more widely discussed, but dynamic pricing still deserves to be discussed, as it influences many people that are influenced by it every day without knowing. To avoid dynamic pricing you can delete some or all of your cookies. Cookies are things a website will attach to your browser. They monitor you Most visited sites and your recently closed sites. This determines dynamic pricing. In your browsers options bar, you have the option to delete your cookies. After you delete the cookies, you have a better chance of getting the normal price.

In conclusion, Online shopping has developed for several years, but continues to develop. In the future, there will obviously be additions to the already fortified online safety system, and shopping online will definitely get safer later on, but as of 2012, it is safe enough already to shop online without worries, as long as you follow the basic precautions of shopping online!

i hope ima pass this time -bite fingernail-