Nothing But ‘Net
If you’ve been alive and semi-conscious for the past ten years, you’ve witnessed one of the major cultural paradigm shifts in all of human history – the rise of online shopping via the Internet.
For centuries, people bought products and services mostly from their neighbors and people they knew. Strangers were usually regarded with suspicion when they came to town peddling their wares.
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One of the first major shifts in cultural buying habits was the rise of “mail order” shopping in the late 1800s. Entrepreneurs took advantage of the latest technology (which in those days meant the railroads, printing presses, and the ubiquitous Postal Service) to market a variety of products – even brides! – to customers they had never met.
For example, two young men named Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck started Sears & Roebuck in Chicago in 1887 to sell watches and jewelry to farmers via mail order catalogs. By 1895, they were producing a 532-page catalog with a wide variety of items and their annual sales volume topped $750,000. Then in the early 1900s, they also opened retail stores in the cities to compete with another new marketing trend – the “chain” stores that were starting to sweep across the U.S.
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