As of this weekend, new taxation
laws on e-commerce will be implemented. The lack of sales taxation has been a
great advantage to online retailers and will now pose the challenge of figuring
out how to keep their costumers by balancing out fair prices, shipping costs,
and sales tax. Big online retailers such as Amazon could be greatly impacted by
now having to charge sales tax on all orders because many of their costumers’ reason
for shopping online is that they can avoid sales tax on items such as
electronics. There is a possibility that they would lose many customers who
would rather purchase products at a physical store and avoid paying for
shipping and waiting for their products to arrive. In an age where people rely
on the internet for most of their daily activities and obligations such as
paying bills, searching for information, and, and shopping; I believe retailers
will be able to make up for the sales tax by having more warehouses all over
the country/world in order to lower or eliminate shipping costs.
I recently coordinated a fashion
show and ordered most of my decoration and other supplies online because of the
convenience of being able to search the items and find them quickly online and
because it saved me time by not having to travel to a store to buy anything.
For most of the events I have coordinated and also events others around me have
planned, we have resorted to online research and shopping for the necessary
products. The convenience of being able to purchase things from the comfort of
your home or office will continue to be an incentive for people to buy online despite
having to pay a little more for shipping.
I believe it is very likely for
Amazon to resort to establishing physical stores in order to continue their
business by offering their low prices and avoiding shipping costs but I think
their main market will continue to be e-commerce. On Anthony Miyazaki’s post
titled “Will Amazon be the next Walmart? New tax laws may be the catalyst.” on http://www.sensibleemarketing.com/
, Miyazaki writes : “ Even in an internet world, face-to-face has often seemed
sensible. I agree with this quote but in this internet world, e-commerce will
continue to thrive and overcome any changes or obstacle.
Amazon and Walmart do have some ravishing similarities between the two. Amazon is like the online version of Walmart, but this taxation law really throws them off. If Amazon were to open physical stores, they would be in direct competition with Walmart and in my opinion, that is not a good thing. As we all know, the early bird gets the worm and for Amazon to enter the brick-and-mortar store market; at this stage in the game, would put them in a major disadvantage.
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