People of a certain age will remember what life was like before the use of the internet became so widespread.
When recalling the world before the internet, most people focus on the positives of that comparatively primitive time, such as people spending more time talking to one another and life generally being calmer and slower. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the internet has unquestionably brought about many positive changes in the world.
And that’s something you’ll experience on a near-daily basis as a consumer. After all, as we’ll see below, it’s hard to think of anything that has had such a positive impact on the consumer experience as the internet.
Range of Choice
If you needed a product back in the pre-web era, you’d have to hope that the local store had it in stock. If it wasn’t available in the store, then you’d have to make a journey — sometimes a long journey — to get your hands on the product. Today, you can buy anything you need with just a few clicks of a button, and it’ll be sent directly to your home. It’s impossible to quantify just how many more products consumers now have the option to buy thanks to the internet, but it’s safe to say that it’s a whole lot.
Deals and Offers
Businesses have long offered deals to entice customers, but nowhere near the scale that we see today. No matter what consumers are looking to spend money on, they’ll find discounts and offers that allow them to save more money than ever before. And this extends even to products that were historically offer-free. A gamer wouldn’t expect to get a deal from a traditional casino, but online casinos such as Wildz routinely offer attractive deals that give punters more bang for their buck. And of course, a quick online search can lead to huge savings on electrical items, clothes, travel adventures, and everything else. Indeed, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a product that you can’t save money on online.
Product Research
Nobody wants to buy a subpar product. Alas, there are plenty of those on the market. When you buy from a physical store, you’ll have to hope that the store does its due diligence to ensure that the product is up to scratch. If it’s not, then you’ll be left with an expensive mistake on your hands — and you’ll likely have to buy another, better replacement, too. The internet is a bastion of research for everything, including product research. Even if you do end up buying in a brick-and-mortar store, you can use your smartphone to double-check that the product you’re buying is worth your money.
Consumer Complaints
Stores in the olden days would sometimes handle customer complaints. But in truth, they didn’t really need to. After all, they could handle losing the aggrieved customer and the friends and family they might complain to. Today, it’s all different. The consumer has a lot of power when it comes to getting back at a business they feel has left them down. They can leave reviews on websites that the business cannot remove, or, if they have a lot of social media followers, blast out their thoughts to the digital world. Businesses take bad press seriously, and proactively work on preventing it in a way that they wouldn’t have done several decades ago.
All-Out Convenience
Finally, there’s the matter of convenience. They can find a product they want, at a price that suits them, and then have that product delivered straight to their door. In other words, modern customers are essentially living in consumer paradise, and long may it continue.
