Online shopping has been frequently used by customers for many years, in almost every country, every area around the world. It has been loved by many users due to multiple reasons: its convenience to just sit down where you are and wait for your purchase, cheaper prices than offline purchases, and the chances of finding rare goods that are difficult to find offline. One can also find a wide range of things; apparel, electronics, intruments and even furniture, can all be found easily while you sit and stay comfortable on your chair. Online shopping has always been very popular in Korea, and recently, online shopping even for food has started to become very common.
Food prices here in Taiwan may not be too much of an issue, but in Korea, prices of food are rising continuously, to an extent that it is becoming a threat to citizens. During the past winter break, my mother has went back to Korea for a few weeks to manage some family affairs. When she came back here in Taiwan, she tends to talk a lot about the costly food in Korea. Every time our family eats something that reminds her of the price of that certain food in Korea, she mentions how costly it is there, and how you can't eat that certain food so lavishly like how you are able to in Taiwan. From chunks of raw meat to piles of cabbages to bags of tiny sesame--even the sesame sprinkled on bread counts! The bread with sesame topped on cost a lot more than plain bread.
It could be because the value of money itself is rising. In other words, as the price of goods rises, the amount of income increases as well, balancing the rate of spent and earned. However, in Korea's case, it seems that the velocity of prices rising is faster that of income increase, income cannot catch up with prices on the run. Plus, some foods were already expensive even before prices rose, either it is because it is rare or because the time period it is able to be produced is short, due to the country's climate (if to compare with Taiwan, while some crops are only available during one season in Korea, it is available year-round in Taiwan). So how can Koreans save money? The "well-being (웰빙)" or the "being-healthy" craze is still commonly existent in the Korean society, they cannot boycott their own meals. What they need to eat still needs to be eaten.
So going online is what many Koreans chose as a solution for their crisis. No, it is more accurate to say that farmers in the countryside started to directly target on consumers. As long as internet access is available, farmers could display their fresh, healthy yields with a decent price. Since there are no tax or any other monetary fluff added to the products, consumers are greatly appealed by it, and day by day there will be more and more customers. Selling a lot with a cheaper price outnumbered selling less with a higher price--farmers are happy. Buying healthy organic raw food in a cheap price brings more beneift than buying pricey pesticide-decorated supermarket veggies (and also tiny in size too)--either in terms of financial or health concerns, the consumers are happy, and all they have to do is sit and wait inside their homes (especially when the weather is severely freezing).
Online shopping indeed has some dangers, since consumers cannot directly look at and touch what they are going to buy. If we walk into a market, we can always see consumers scrutinizing and touching the quality of the products, and pick their own that matches their expectations. However in the internet we are not able to do that, since all we see is a photograph on the screen and the actual products are a distance away. Unlike uniformed factory goods, every unit of raw crop is different, just like how every person is born and grown differently. Also, raw crops sellers send is picked randomly, so the photograph on the screen would not make a perfect representation of what consumers actually get. They never know.
However, there is a solution: customer reviews. If the seller has his/her morals, he/she will definitely not send already rotten apple on purpose. He/she would most likely pick the fairer ones and ship them to his/her customers. Then the customers will post a review on how were the apples and also comment about how delicately the packaging was done and how much the seller seemed to care about customer satisfaction. On the opposite, if the seller just blindly pick random apples, with fair ones and bad ones among them, the customer would not be so satisfied of what he/she gets, and would reflect with a negative review. When it comes to other customers' turn, smart customers would read the reviews first, and then decide whether to buy or not.
As online shopping becomes more and more popular, more and more people want to try this method of convenient shopping. At the same time popularity rises, the questions rise as well. The idea of online shopping is there for our own benefits, satisfaction, and convenience. But of course, there is no such thing in the world that only has pros and no cons. As long as we are careful and look into the right places, we can always fulfuill our needs safely.
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