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Letter from Boston

A New Kind of Shopping

By MASAKO YAMADA


新しいショッピングの方法

日本よりコンピューターが普及しているアメリカでは、インターネットを利用して買い物をする人が増加中。'98年のクリスマス・ショッピングでも、インターネット通販が大モテでした。雅子さんも、先日、前から探していた本をインターネット書店で見つけ、取り寄せてみました。

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Letter from Boston

A New Kind of Shopping


By MASAKO YAMADA

Thanksgiving weekend is when the rush to buy Christmas presents usually begins, but it seems that the peak shopping period is the weekend right before Christmas. Stores are crammed with people doing last-minute shopping, and people are understandably frustrated with endless shopping lists and endless lines.

Going from store to store to find the perfect gift for every person is impossible, so it seems that many people give in and buy handy gift items that don't require much effort to find — but aren't very appreciated by the recipient either.

The holiday fruitcake is a perfect example of such a gift. It's a heavy cake that is usually crammed with artificially colored dried fruit and nuts, and steeped in sugar syrup or liquor. Poking fun at fruitcakes is quite common in the States, but that doesn't prevent people from continuing to give them as gifts. Gift baskets of fruit, cheese and chocolates are also very common. One of the most convenient features of these items is that they can easily be ordered through a catalog. Therefore, the shopping load can be reduced.

A more recent development in convenience shopping is a variation on mail-order buying. Instead of selecting items from a catalog and phoning in an order, buyers can select items from a Web page and type in the selections right there. Since the Internet is virtually infinite in scope, one can buy almost anything on the Web.

I know that people have been using the Internet to buy airline tickets, stocks, rare books and antiques for a while, but this winter season is the first time that I've seen massive advertising for regular household goods (the kind that one can buy in a typical store) on the Internet. I've read several articles touting the benefits of Internet holiday shopping in major publications, and this hype has in turn caused tremendous excitement over stocks for e-commerce companies.

I must admit that I've been a bit skeptical about doing important things over the Internet. I've always been a bit worried about privacy issues when writing personal e-mail messages over the school Internet system, so it's not hard to see that I wouldn't feel secure typing in my credit card number in an Internet order form. After all, there is the potential for a nonexistent company to scalp consumers.

However, now that Internet commerce is becoming more common, companies are taking greater pains to make transactions secure. Consumers are often guaranteed protection from credit card fraud and they are even promised that their e-mail address will not be distributed to third parties. Any secret information is encoded so that it's hard for pranksters to retrieve the information. There are a lot of legal and technological safety nets to protect consumers.

Because of these advances — and because of the convenience of buying obscure things from the comfort of my home — I decided to finally take the plunge and buy some books over the Internet. One of the books was a book that I'd looked for in four bookstores, but had not been able to find. The other book is famous in the Boston area, but I realized that I could buy it at 30 percent off the cover price over the Internet.

It's hard to compare the quality and content of products over the Internet, but it's very easy to compare prices, so I thought it would be good to buy things that I already knew that I wanted. Clicking on the desired objects and filling out the ordering form were a snap. I received two e-mail messages from the company confirming my order and I was given a tracking number so that I could follow where the package was at any given moment. The books arrived safely at my home, and I've been enjoying them since.

I'm convinced of the convenience of Internet shopping and I think other people have been sold on the idea as well. However, it seems that some Internet commerce companies are being affected by their own shopping crowds! First of all, many Web pages can't handle large numbers of people putting in orders at the same time. Next, the companies may not be able to keep enough products in their inventory to keep up with the demands. Finally, shipping may be delayed due to backups in processing orders.

I hope that these problems are only temporary, since I think this excellent idea is here to stay.


Shukan ST: Jan. 1, 1999

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