The under-appreciated price pressure from the online trade

The desire for shopping has decreased in the last few months, the official statistics. But in the digital world of Amazon none of this is to feel. 512 billion dollars spent by American households in the past year in Online transactions and 40% of this at Amazon.

The economic advantages of Online shopping, according to a team of researchers from the University of Stanford is undisputed. Savings of up to 1150 dollars can be charged to a household, if the same products are bought on the Internet instead of in a house. But: even Though Amazon offers lower membership fees for poorer households and the range of cheap own products as extended, has not kept the digital retail for many so far, what was expected.

insight into the American consumer behavior

The researchers are amazed, according to the Stanford Economist Peter Klenow, how fast is the E-Commerce has grown, and how, contrary to all expectations, the gap between the poorer rural regions and the urban areas on the two coasts is not shrunk. If the online consumption continues to grow so strongly, what everything indicates, the economic distortions could increase.

The study is the largest ever study carried out to the digital retailers. The researchers were able to evaluate using the credit card house Visa 400 billion in Online purchases between 2007 and 2017. Of the examined sales of 21.2 trillion dollars is pretty much exactly the 2019 expected economic performance of the country. Important alone the huge data is not a lot, but the insight into consumer behavior in different regions, as Visa, by far, the largest map provider in the country and more than 22 percent of all retail trade recorded sales.

households with income of less than 50'000 dollars to make only 3.4 per cent of your purchases on the Internet, households with higher income almost 10 percent.

The biggest Benefit of online shopping is that the customers save a trip to the Department store and in the Internet, thanks to the direct price cheaper compare products more easily than in the shops. Contrary to expectations, however, households in poorer, rural regions benefit less from these advantages, although the closest Department stores are further away than in urban areas. One reason is the inferior development with high-speed Internet is likely to be compounds. This disadvantage should be resolved with a massive programme of investment in the infrastructure that was left of the government Trump but fall.

another Problem is the low number of power of poorer households. It makes it difficult to Finance with credit cards. The disadvantage is considerable, the study shows. Households with income of less than 50'000 dollars to make, only 3.4 percent of their purchases on the Internet, while households with higher income is almost ten percent. On average, the annual savings thanks to the online amount purchases at 1150 dollars, for the purchase of more powerful households, you are twice as high.

Video: Amazon's shopping robot Amazon wants to deliver online orders in the future with a robot. Video: Tamedia, with Material from Youtube

the Online-shop to the most powerful engine in the retail sector. The growth in the Internet, with about 15 percent, five times higher than in the retail trade as a whole. E-Commerce accounted for last year, more than 14 percent of the detail sales, almost three times more than in 2007, an analysis of the market research from Internet Retailer shows. From the sales of 517 billion Amazon cut of 207 billion dollars. The dominance of Amazon is due primarily to the Marketplace, where traditional Department stores as well as smaller Resellers to present their offers. A third, or 176 of the 500 largest us retailers are already on this platform.

An end to growth is not to be seen. Only 15 percent of baby boomers shop on the Internet, but there are already 67 percent of Millennials. However, this change is likely to have been underestimated by the other economic optics. The official inflation figures underestimate according to a further study of the price pressure from the online trade. "The Internet is a massive Deflation will take place," says Austan Goolsbee, one of the researchers and former economic adviser to President Obama.

he and his Team have Studied the online prices of monthly and 2.1 million products. These were collected from the Internet group Adobe. As is shown, for example, that the computer prices between 2014 and 2017 have fallen in the Internet to 12.3 percent. In the official inflation index was reported only a decline of 6.9 percent, even though the Computer will be mainly bought online. The Same applies to photo equipment or toys. The distortion of the Inflation reached 2.5 percent in the year, say the researchers, and may explain why the inflation rate was always lower than the Central Bank had predicted. (Editorial Tamedia)

Created: 01.04.2019, 20:05 Uhr