Xiaorui
Huang
INTL
280 International Environmental Issues
Term
Paper
Score 96/100
The Environmental
Implications of Online Shopping in Consumption and Energy Use
Introduction
Market value of online retailing
in America has reached 152.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2010 with an average
annual growth of 9.3% since 2006 and is predicted to grow quickly in the next
several years (MarketResearch.com). Together with its expanding scale, the
environmental impacts of online shopping have become noteworthy. Researches about
the logistics of online shopping in USA have found out that the logistics of
online shopping are more energy-efficient than the one of traditional shopping
(Hendrickson et al. 2; Matthews et al. 496-98). These researches somewhat give
the public a perception that online shopping is more environment-friendly than
traditional shopping. However, to examine the environmental implication of
online shopping, isolated analyses on logistics systems are insufficient. The
influences of online shopping on consumption and consumer behaviors must be
taken into account because they directly influence the overconsumption issue
that fundamentally contradicts to the limited resources on the Earth. In this
paper, I will investigate the implications of online shopping on consumption
and energy use in order to examine its actual environmental impact.
Online shopping creates a
shopping environment that promotes consumerism and in this environment several consumer
behaviors that unconsciously increase energy cost occur easily, which at least
compensate the energy saved in the optimized logistics if not outrun it. In the
following text, I will firstly examine four ways that online shopping promotes
consumerism and worsens overconsumption. After that, I will focus on two energy-wasteful
behaviors that online shoppers often do. Then before reaching a conclusion,
potentials of online shopping in promoting sustainable consumption will be
briefly discussed.
Online
Shopping Promotes Consumerism
Online
shopping creates an environment that promotes consumerism and increases
consumption in four ways. First, online shopping enables retailers and
businesses to apply effective marketing strategies that are unachievable in
traditional store shopping and target specific consumer groups and even
individuals. An example is the advertising based on the collection of digital
trait of people’s internet surfing. Specifically, advertising companies track
the sites and contents that people view online and categorize people into
groups according to these information for targeted marketing (Baker).
Furthermore, individual tracking technique is applied on several large online
shopping websites like Amazon.com, which collects the information of items
viewed by individuals and advertises exactly the same items back to these
individuals on the ad column on other websites. The targeted marketing strategy
is effective in converting advertisement viewers into buyers. According to two quantitative
studies, online targeted advertising generates a 79% increase in the number of ad
viewers’ who search for the brands advertised and nearly doubles the percentage
of viewers who make the purchase when compared to non-targeted advertisement (Farahat
and Bailey 9, Beales 17-18). Therefore, by allowing targeted advertisement that
is impossible in traditional store shopping, online shopping increases
consumption by making people buy more.
The
second way that online shopping promotes consumerism is that it allows consumers
to access to huge amount of information about style and fashion, which is
particularly true in clothing and footwear shopping Other than the advertising
discussed above, a major source that online shoppers receive such information
about is from the reviews of goods by other consumers. I have conducted a simple
analysis based on data collected from Zappo.com, one of the largest online footwear
stores in America. I have randomly collected 15 samples[1]
of online consumer reviews from reviews that are marked by two or more viewers as
“useful” (as shown on the website). Among the 15 piece of consumer reviews
about shoes, totally seven of them (46.67%) include simple description about
styles and three out of the seven describe the style of the goods in detail.
These three pieces (20%) also provide additional information either about
desire to purchase or about how the goods match the owners’ status. Although
further research is needed, this simple analysis indicates that consumer
reviews provide can lots of information about fashion and style of consumer
goods and people view these reviews as important source of shopping guidance
(as two or more people mark these reviews as useful). These information
increases viewers’ desire to purchase goods and to keep in fashion, which
contributes to consumerism and therefore overconsumption. To some degree, the
experience of online shopping has replaced need for goods or even the goods
themselves to be the primary goal (Reisch 274).
Also,
in the virtual shopping on the internet, consumers psychologically tend to
increase consumption. According to Lucas Reisch, a scholar in consumer
economics, “the more virtual the buying act and the money involved, the lower
the barrier to impulse buying” (275). Specifically, when shopping online with
virtual money such as credit card, consumers are less self-restrained from
making the unnecessary or unplanned purchase. Thus, the low psychological
barrier to buy things on the internet increases consumption.
The
fourth way that online shopping increases consumption is through the policies
of combined shipping discounts. Many online stores and retailers adopt the
policies that if consumers purchase goods that worth over certain amount of
money, they can get discounted or even free shipping. For example, Amazon.com
has the FREE Super Saver Shipping policy providing customers free shipping for
orders worth over 25 dollars (Amazon.com). Such policies can encourage
consumers to combine several items that they want to buy in a single order (but
not necessarily deliver in a single shipping). However, sometimes consumers tend
to buy something they do not necessarily need just to make up the value of the
order to qualify the discounted or free shipping. In such cases, consumers will
get the illusion of taking advantages of the combined shipping discount, yet,
the consumptions especially unnecessary consumptions increase due to these
policies. Therefore, the combined shipping policies adopted in online shopping
increase consumption by encourage consumers’ unplanned and unnecessary
purchasing.
Online
Shopping Causes Unnecessary Energy Costs in Shipping
Other than creating a
pro-consumerism environment, online shopping also encourages several consumer
behaviors that unintentionally increase energy cost in shipping. Firstly, in
online shopping, consumers rarely consider the shipping distance that directly
influence energy cost. This is because the shipping distance is made invisible
by the free shipping or flat shipping rate. For example, on Amazon.com, for the
same item, shipping rate is calculated based on its weight, size, packaging
condition, and means of delivery. The distance from retailers to consumers will
not influence the shipping rates. As a result, if a geographically further
retailer provides the exact same item on a lower price than a geographically
closer retailer, consumers will simply buy from the further retailer because the
shipping rates of the two are the same. In this process, unnecessary energy
cost of longer shipping is generated by the rational consumer choice to buy
goods on a lower price. In contrast, in traditional store shopping consumers
have to pay for the transportation that is positively correlated to distance
between them and the stores, which reduce unnecessary energy cost because
rational consumers will choose a store from which they can buy stuff at the
lowest total cost (including the price and the transportation cost). Thus,
compared to traditional store shopping, online shopping make consumers increase
energy cost unintentionally because of the flat shipping rate.
The second energy-wasting
consumer behavior encouraged by online shopping is the preference to faster
delivery. After making payment for goods, consumers psychologically tend to
have what they have paid as soon as possible and thus often choose the fastest
shipping service they can afford. As a result, in a virtual environment where
barrier to spend money is low (as discussed above), hotheaded consumers often
choose one-day shipping (Plepys 520). Consequently, air transport is
substantially used in online shopping, which becomes a major source of its
environmental impacts (James Wilsdon 62). According to a study about the online
book retailing in America, the increased energy cost in air transport could
neutralize or even outweigh the energy saved in the optimized logistics system
(Matthews et al. 499). Therefore, due to the consumer preference on fast
delivery, unnecessary energy cost is caused in online shopping.
Potential of
Online Shopping in Promoting Sustainable Consumption
So far I have discussed several
ways that online shopping promotes overconsumption and increases unnecessary energy
cost unintentionally, nevertheless, great potential exists to use online
shopping to promote sustainable consumption and green products. Firstly, if online
retailers use its powerful marketing channel such as the recommender tool on
websites to promote green products, the great advertising power that previously
promotes consumerism will be transferred to promote sustainable consumption
(Zureik and Mowshowitz 51; Lee, Huang, and Hwang 552). Besides, the internet
can easily connect consumers with the producers and sellers of green products and
provide consumers the access to “how-to” information about sustainable
consumption (Wilsdon 62). Therefore, online shopping has great potential to
advertise green products and sustainable consumption.
Conclusion
Online shopping creates a
shopping environment that greatly promotes consumerism and overconsumption.
Besides, several unintentional consumer behaviors that cause unnecessary energy
cost in shipping are very likely to occur in online shopping. In general, the
overall environmental impact of online shopping is much worse than the results
provided by researches that solely focus on the logistics. Specifically, online
shopping could subtly increase the total resources consumption as well as
energy use per capita of online shoppers. With the expansion of online
retailing in America, the national resources consumption and energy use may
increase, which poses challenges for us in addressing energy crisis, global
warming, and the inequality of living standard between developed and developing
countries. Nevertheless, great potential exists in using online shopping to
promote sustainable consumption and green products. Real practices are called
for to make full use of this potential.
Work Cited
"Amazon.com Help: FREE Super Saver Shipping
." Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books,
DVDs & more. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2012.
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=help_search_1-1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=527692&qid=1338353863&sr=1-1>.
Baker, Loren. "Behavioral Targeting and Contextual
Advertising | Search Engine Journal." SEO & Search Engine News : SEJ.
N.p., 1 Sept. 2004. Web. 29 May 2012.
<http://www.searchenginejournal.com/behavioral-targeting-and-contextual-advertising/836/>.
Beales, Howard. The Value of Behavioral Targeting. Network Advertising Initiative
24 May. 2010. Web. 29 May 2012.
< http://www.contact-mcs.com/crimtan_newsletter/resources/bealesbt.pdf
>
Farahat, Ayman, and Michael Bailey. How Effective is Targeted Advertising?. Proc. of WWW 2012 Conf., 16
- 20 Apr, 2012, Lyon, France. Web. 29 May 2012.
< http://www2012.wwwconference.org/proceedings/proceedings/p111.pdf>.
Hendrickson, Chris,
Scott Matthews, Amy Nagengast, Rachael Nealer, and Paulina Jaramillo. Life cycle comparison of traditional retail
and e-commerce logistics for electronic products: A case study of buy.com. Proc.
of Sustainable Systems and Technology Conf., 18 – 20 May, 2009, Carnegie Mellon
Univ. Weber: UP of Carnegie Mellon, 2011. Web. <http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5156681&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5156681>
Lee,
Ying-Lien, Fei-Hui Huang, and Sheue-Ling Hwang. Green Advocate in E-Commerce. Proc. of the 13th
International Human-Computer Interaction Conf., 19 - 24 Jul, 2009, San Diego,
CA, USA. Jacko: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2009. Web. 29 May 2012.
<
http://www.springerlink.com/content/pl8h38250650604x/about/
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Matthews, Scott, Eric Williams, Takashi Tagami, and Chris
Hendrickson. "Energy implications of online book retailing in the United
States and Japan." Environmental Impact Assessment Review 22.5 (2002):
493-507. ScienceDirect.com. Web. 25 May 2012.
"Online Retail in the United States by MarketLine in
United States, Consumer Goods, E-Commerce & Online Retailing."
MarketResearch.com - Market Research Reports - Business and Industry Analysis.
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<http://www.marketresearch.com/MarketLine-v3883/Online-Retail-United-States-6652758/>.
Plepys, Andrius. "The grey side of ICT." Environmental
Impact Assessment Review. 22.5 (2002): 509-23. Web. 18 Apr. 2012.
Reisch,
Lucia. "The Internet and Sustainable Consumption: Perspectives on a Janus
Face ." Journal of Consumer Policy 24.3-4 (2001): 251-86. SpringerLink.
Web. 27 May 2012.
Wilsdon, James. "E-topia? Scenarios for e-commerce
and sustainability." Digital futures: living in a dot-com world. London:
Earthscan Publications, 2001. 39-68. Print.
Zureik, Elia, and Abbe Mowshowitz. "Consumer power
in the digital society." Communications of the ACM - The Digital Society
48.10 (2005): 46-51. Web. 26 May 2012.
Appendix
The following are samples of consumer reviews collected from Zappo.com. They
are randomly chosen from reviews that marked by two or more viewers as “useful”.
Notes:
“**” This piece of review contain
detailed description about style
“*” This piece of review contain
simple description about style
“__” The underlining text is the
description about style
l http://www.zappos.com/dr-scholls-jennie-parchment-white?zfcTest=fw:1
**They
are quite comfortable, except the strap on the back of my ankle rubbed me the
wrong way. Also, I just really don't like the style of the straps on top. I
think the straps look a little cheesy and aren't especially hip for my age
group (late 20s, early 30s.)
l http://www.zappos.com/product/7786233/color/355665?zfcTest=fw:1
I
bought these for my husband for his half-marathon training. He is a minimalist,
very no-frills type of man. He liked these shoes the first time he wore them.
They are as described: a lightweight but high-mileage trainer with plenty of
arch support and cushioning. He regularly runs hilly 14-milers, and these seem
to provide the cushioned support on the downhills. He also wore them for his
half-marathon race. They gave him no blisters and have a zero break-in period -
can be worn right out of the box for a long run.
l http://www.zappos.com/product/7894619/color/347?zfcTest=fw:1
*These
are cute but there is absolutely no cushioning
in the footbed. I'm returning them. I guess I'll have to keep shopping! Good
thing Zappos has awesome customer service, an easy return/exchange policy, and
fast shipping
l http://www.zappos.com/blowfish-timo-blue-belize-blanket?zfcTest=fw:1
*The
back strap was a bit too long for me. Wish I could adjust a bit tighter, but
fits well and looks cute
l http://www.zappos.com/naturalizer-prissy-cosmic-dust-metallic-foil-leather?zfcTest=fw:1
**Great
sandal! I bought this shoe a few weeks ago and I absolutely cannot wait to wear
it! It's ridiculously cute on. I bought it in black and had to have
the silver. It's great for work and for going out. Very comfortable, though
the strap does rub slightly against my pinkie toe (nothing some surf wax won't
fix - a trick I was taught last year that completely changed my life! No more
blisters!)
l http://www.zappos.com/product/7925314/color/337396?zfcTest=fw:1
**Love!
This new Free Run+ is really a hot item right now and I couldn't resist
buying them! I went into the Nike store, they didn't have my size, and I
was so happy to find it on Zappos! Ordered these Saturday night, and got it on
Monday afternoon. love the speedy delivery! When I opened the box, the
vibrant hot punch color just made me so happy! How could anyone not want
to run when they have this pair! I tried them on, they are so light.
compared to the Airmax ones I previously wore to run. I was concerned after
reading one of the reviews about the tongue of these shoes, but they did not
affect me at all. They are so comfy, and light and i love it so much!
l http://www.zappos.com/reef-fanning-brown-gum?zfcTest=fw:1
Reef
Fanning - I bought these shoes for my husband. Mainly because the bottle opener
on the bottom was a novelty. He loves the shoes though and insists that they
are the most comfortable flip flops he owns.
l http://www.zappos.com/sperry-top-sider-billfish-3-eye-boat-shoe-tan-beige?zfcTest=fw:1
These
shoes are extremely comfortable but lack good, lasting construction. I'm now
relegated to tossing my second pair due to a tear in the cloth portion of the
shoe which hasn't lasted more than a year. I won't be buying these again. Too
bad because they are so comfortable but I can't justify paying this much for
something that just doesn't last.
l http://www.zappos.com/asics-gel-kayano-18-white-black-hot-blue?zfcTest=fw:1
Awesome
shoes. Buying a new pair to replace ones that I wore out. My only complaint is
that ASICS only makes the one style in the wide widths.
l http://www.zappos.com/birkenstock-gizeh-birko-flor-metallic-silver-birko-flor-trade?zfcTest=fw:1
Why
the plastic thong? I like the birkenstock footbed, but found the hard plastic
"thong" uncomfortable. Mephisto uses leather, not hard plastic, I
can't understand why the birks folks don't do the same.
l http://www.zappos.com/product/7925831/color/337799?zfcTest=fw:1x
Love
them, as a college football player and avid weightlifter these shoes are great
for running and lifting!
l http://www.zappos.com/crocs-kids-keeley-sandal-infant-toddler-youth-fuchsia-bubblegum?zfcTest=fw:1
I
ordered these for my 3-year-old. She cannot wear flip-flops with anything
between the toes. I ordered these a half size up so they will fit her all
summer. The ankle strap adjusts with velcro. The footbed is squishy but still
supportive. The only thing is, if you don't put the kid's heel far back enough
in the sandal, the toes can be pushed too far up front and risk stubbing. We
had to play around with them a little to get the right fit. I would recommend
ordering either true to size or a half size up for extra toe room.
l http://www.zappos.com/orthaheel-tide-pewter-metallic?zfcTest=fw:1
*Got
these in black. Expensive for a flip-flop, but well-made and very supportive
(and cheaper than chiropractic). Shiny black makes it a little dressier than
normal flip flops. Took about a week to break in the uppers. Bottoms are
very supportive & I am already feel my feet, knees and back realigning (I
got plantar fasciitis after being pregnant). I normally wear a 7.5 and got
these in an 8, so I'd say order up if you're a half size.
l http://www.zappos.com/brooks-adrenaline-gts-12-bright-green-cactas-flower-black-ombre-blue?zfcTest=fw:1
These
are the greatest shoes. Nice to have good shoes for walking that look better
with slacks or jeans than white running shoes. Totally prompt delivery. No
problems. In terms of just the shoes, they are really sized well except that I
notice a little too much movement in the heel. Solved by wearing 2 pairs of
socks. Wouldn't not buy them for this.
l http://www.zappos.com/dansko-jute-pro-multi-stripe?zfcTest=fw:1
*Very
cute in the picture but not so much in person. They
run large, ordered my regular size and they were huge. Also not a fan of the
Gummy sole on these and the feel was very clunky...even more than regular
Danskos. Sadly these are going back.
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