Criteria C

Online sales have both positive and negative sides. Society is affected by both of the aspects, positive aspects as big companies are growing, and their incomes have been increasing tremendously. Prices are way lower and more bargains are usually offered. For example Amazon is going to open their own online music store and their prices are 10 cents cheaper than other music stores, for example Apple’s iTunes (Benderoff, 2007). Now Amazon is challenging and competing with other online stores in order to offer the best prices and innovations; the music offered in Amazon has advantages over others because the music is now compatible with MP3 device or music-playing mobile phone (Eric, 2007).

Evidence of online sales increasing selling shoes has increased up to 25% and giving $219.9 billion (Sentinel, 2007) this is showing how the income of this particular company has increased. And there are more online shops that are getting more money leading to the failure of some other “weak” businesses.

The negative side of this situation is that small businesses are being affected because the rate of people using online sales has increased and therefore small businesses have been totally closed. Also unemployment has increased because the small stores are being closed and therefore lots of people don’t have jobs leading to an economical crisis. While some get richer others get poorer. This is causing the middle class to disappear, the influence that online sales have over small businesses are that shopping becomes more impersonal because people are buying everything in big stores; people don't know where and how they are buying in those stores is affecting small shops. Another negative aspect is how some sites are dangerous for computers because situations like spywares, hackers, and credit card thefts can easily access to the data contained by the personal computers (Reed, 2007).