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Gas is expensive, Brett Favre didn’t want to retire, & working on Fridays in the summer is lame. None of this should be new to anyone with electricity.
What I find new & interesting is this latest eMarketer article which talks about high gas prices possibly boosting ecommerce sales. It makes sense, on the surface; people don’t want to drive so they buy what they want online. Although, if you ask most retail clients in the industry right now, sales are down. Cut budget, get a better return on investment, and drive more sales. Can we get more for less? Please turn that magical dial on our paid search campaigns…I can continue to get a 10:1 return on my marketing spend if I dump a million more dollars into Google, right?
Sorry, mini-rant.
If gas prices are boosting ecommerce, is this something that is sustainable? Sure, in the short run, higher gas prices may keep people from driving to the store. But, how do those products get delivered? Trucks & airplanes are the most common mode of transportation for FedEx, DHL, UPS, etc. Last time I checked, those vehicles use gas.
So my question is, will this increased cost in gas negatively affect shipping companies & will they, in turn, pass this cost onto online retailers? If they do, does that cost get passed along to the customer? Granted, the customer will probably have no idea…but it’s something worth thinking about. Everyone LOVES free shipping; ask anyone which of their promos consistently works the best & they will tell you it’s FREE SHIPPING. Will online retailers be more reluctant to offer free shipping if they are losing too much money on it?
Ps. eMarketer…can we get on board with the 21st century & remove the hyphen from ecommerce? No one calls email e-mail anymore unless they’re from a third-world country or come from the direct response or retail catalog industry.
I wrestled with this just yesterday. I had two options to buy new running shoes: Drive to a store and buy a new pair, or order a new pair on Zappos.com and wait until after the weekend — a weekend with two scheduled runs — to get the shoes from Zappos.com.
I wrestled with the decision and ended up going with Zappos.com. I didn’t want to deal with the hassle and cost of driving. Part of the reason, too, is Zappos.com’s customer service, which makes me trust them as a consumer, and I had a store credit. Plus, I buy the same pair of running shoes, so I didn’t need to try anything on. If I’d needed a new style, I would have gone to the store. The bonus: I was worried about not getting the shoes until Monday. Because I used a store credit, I got upgraded shipping. Ordered the sneakers at 5pm last night, they were at my house by 10:30 this morning.
But this is also the time of the year when I usually go to websites and shop the summer sales. I’m not doing it this year given that the price of fuel and food is so high. I’m cutting back everywhere. The only reason I bought new shoes was because running shoes are the only thing I really spend on that isn’t food. I’ll hurt my knees otherwise.
So it seems, like you, that I’m not sold on this whole high gas prices will help ecommerce. Overall, I’m spending less online.