The future of pharmacy stores

http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/04/22/why-walgreen-and-cvs-are-becoming-grocery-stores/


Stores which are typically known for getting toiletries and prescriptions are soon to be turning into full blown grocery stores. With the population and amount of local CVS's and Walgreens it is now cost effective for these stores to provide the public with more goods needed in a household.

Would you sell your organs?

Organ donations fall under the typical supply and demand equations. There are too many who need new organs and not enough to save the estimated 4,000 who die each year waiting for a transplant. Because it is completely illegal to sell your organs the idea has been thought of for some time now. After you read the article below, think would you sell your organs if times were bad and money was tight? I don’t believe I would however money is known to push people to do bizarre things in dire need of cash.



http://www.investingblog.org/archives/766/the-case-for-an-human-organ-futures-market/

Commercial spaceport

Virgin Galactic CEO Sir Richard Branson was the first to debut a commercial spaceport to anyone who could afford the heft price of $200,000. You can experience 4-6 minutes of weightlessness soaring viewing the Earth up to 62.5 miles high. Even though the price is rather high, the trade-off of cash to experience being an astronaut may be priceless to someone.

http://www.tuftsdaily.com/features/welcome-to-the-future-commercial-spaceport-makes-space-tourism-a-reality-1.2410879

Flea Markets

From an open parking lot to a full community, flea markets are really becoming popular. The above video shows what the future holds for a San Francisco flea market.

Trading Information - Your phone as a wallet

The Taglet is a system that with one swipe of your cell phone you can transfer information onto the person next to you. This Taglet also allows data to be sent to your phone simply by waiving your phone infront of the object information is required from.



http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/27125/?a=f

Future of Trading Cars

This car is awesome. Beside the typical hybird car who is trying to completely move away from depending on gas this car can basically park anywhere. Traffic still flows through, going in and out between the wheels. Image selling this car - LARGE profit!

Future of Stock Market and Trading

The NY Stock Exchange has shifted to being overcrowed and loud to less people and noise. Speed trading is now moving from the NY Stock Exchange to Mahwah NJ to an undisclosed site which they are in the process of building now.

Restaurant Business in the Future

Restaurant business has spread across the world. A lot of people go out – to eat and chat with their friends and relatives. Sometimes, a great evening in the restaurant can be ruined when an awkward and inattentive server makes a mistake in his/her order. When instead of salmon sashimi, a waitress brings tuna sushi, a smile on the customer’s face can disappear very quickly. Will a server be responsible for taking customers’ orders in the future or new technology will complete this important function? Two videos below can give a clear answer to this question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QST6Hz12mOk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp-D7aHzr6Q&feature=related

What will happen with Amazon.com in the Future?

Amazon.com is a very popular online store. What position in the marketplace will it occupy in the future? In my opinion, Amazon.com will remain one of main resellers. Its sales will increase drastically, and Amazon’s revenue will even reach the income of Wal-Mart in the next forty years. Amazon will be characterized as a marketplace where products are cheap, service is of high quality and it is possible to buy everything. Because of its excellent reputation, Amazon will sell many types of merchandise under its own brand. This online platform will have a vertical market search engine that will allow its users to find desired products easily and quickly. Amazon will develop its own software and will become a competitor of Microsoft in the Office/productivity space. As a result, Amazon will become one of the leading companies in the future.

Near Future of Coupons

Do you remember the time when you were collecting newspapers and cutting out the coupons? This was not long ago, and even nowadays, some people use discount codes from catalogs and magazines, while most customers prefer to find necessary coupons or promo codes and print them or apply a discount online.

Will people have to spend time looking for coupons in the future? Probably not. After getting a permission, coupons will be delivered directly to cell phones when their owners will be close to retail stores (from 4 to 250 feet). Usually, these digital coupons will be sent to a person at the moment he/she is making purchases or is walking near a store. As promotion codes can be used immediately, many customers will not be able to resist the temptation to save money. Around twenty percent of users that will receive promotion codes will make a purchase. Thus, the mobile channel of coupon delivery is an ideal technology that will help reach future customers since it provides a high level of “hyper-local” targeting and is very convenient in use.

Both buyers and sellers will benefit from these innovations of m-commerce: buyers will save money; sellers will have a chance to attract more customers. Retailers can collect data about the acceptance and rejection of their promotions and will be able to adjust their advertising accordingly. Sales will increase, and, as result, companies’ income will grow. Thus, mutual advantages of digital coupons can contribute to the integration of this trend in advertising, and it is very likely that the next two years will be “Years of Proximity-Based Marketing”.

Future Shopping

     Here is a short video about the new way we will be shopping in stores.  It is a touch-sensitive screen that allows you to browse through hundreds of different items and purchase if they are in stock or have them delivered to your homes.  Adidas plans to install them in stores next year.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/221309/the_future_of_shopping_a_virtual_shoe_wall_interactive_store_windows.html

Vending Machines in the Future

     You don’t see it on campus but vending machines are changing.  It’s not just what is in them but also how you pay for the items in them.  In Japan people are able to use their smart phones to pay things in vending machines.  In Japan you can get a lot more than a bag of chips or candy bar from a vending machine.  They have vending machines that have many things from electronic devices to a live crab.  I do not want to buy a live crab from a vending machine however I would like to be able to use my phone to make purchases.  Here are images I found of real and future vending machines. 

This is an actual gold vending machine, developed by GOLD To Go, that is located in a hotel in Abu Dhabi. 

This is not a real vending machine.  This was done as a marketing strategy and the machine dispenses pamphlets that contain information about the car and where to purchase one. 

Is this one a glimpse into the future?  Purchasing genetic engineered pets from a vending machine?

Capsule Pipelines

Pipelines are already used today to transport many things from oil and gas to minerals like coal. Companies are developing ways to move capsules full of goods through underground pipelines. These capsule pipelines will have less of an impact on the environment then the current method of transportation of goods; freight trucks. One company, Foodtubes, wants to put a physical internet of pipelines under the UK to deliver food and other goods to stores. This technology will not only lessen the impact on the environment but will also mean less traffic for commuters on highways.

Check out this article about Foodtubes on treehugger.com and watch the video. There is also a link at the end to what they think will replace Foodtubes; the MIT food printer.

Future of Shopping Malls

Will shopping malls and stand-alone stores still be around in the future? It’s hard to tell. The growth of online shopping in recent years may lead to the end of shopping malls as we know them. In addition, Americans have changed the way they spend their hard-earned money in today’s economy. People do not want to go to a mall and spend their money on stuff. They want to go and have an experience. And if shopping malls want to continue to be a big part of American life they will need to evolve to meet the needs of people in the future.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/rethinking-the-mall/

Will Facebook be an Essential E-commerce Platform?

Many people got accustomed to Facebook, the online application that serves a great tool for sharing thoughts and online communication with friends. At the same time there are not a lot of people that perceive Facebook as a place where it is easy to make a purchase. Will Facebook users obtain all necessary products without leaving the social network in the future?

Nowadays, there are some companies such as 8thBridge and Payvment that allow Facebook users to open an online store that will allow customers to get a product directly from Facebook, without clicking off to a third-party site. For example, 1-800-Flowers.com has its online store within the social network https://apps.facebook.com/flowers-store/?ref=48386889767.

This kind of stores has many benefits for retailers and their customers. A retailer has access to clients’ personal information and tries to offer consumer products that are liked and needed. For example, a vender can make some recommendations to Facebook users knowing that their friends have birthdays. It can offer some some products that could fit well with the recent purchases made by the customers. Besides that, a user of a social network can take a look at their friends’ reviews of certain products, get a piece of advice and recommendations from their friends without leaving an online store. This can help buyers to make better choices and save their time. It also can contribute to the increase of retailers’ income.

In the future, Facebook will obtain many new features that will make the purchasing process easy and fast. This will give an impulse to the involvement of a lot new participants into social network commerce. Various companies will open their stores on Facebook in order to not be left behind. This trend will spread across the world and different nations will be dragged into the commerce that.

Stores of the Future

In the recent years many electronic devices have become multifunctional. Not too long ago the main purpose of a cell phone was to make calls. Over the past decade, it has become an important tool for the Internet access, navigation and also serves a function of a daily organizer. The next step in the cell phone use will be its introduction into shopping process in brick and mortar stores.

http://bankruptcyscotland.com/living-tomorrow-store-of-the-future.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7476672.stm

What is the Future of Online Business?

Online commerce is becoming increasingly popular these days. This trend will continue in the future. The percent of purchases made online will significantly increase because online shopping gives customers many benefits (such as 24/7 access to products, convenient search process and home delivery of products). At the same time, the growth of e-commerce will vary from region to region from period to period.

The purchases made from cell phones have been increasing in the last few years and was named m-commerce. Many new applications for smart phones are developing in order to give customers an opportunity to make their purchases in every moment of their lives. The convenience and simplicity of obtaining products using cell phones will contribute to the growth of m-commerce.
Very essential factures that can facilitate to the faster integration of online shopping are marketing strategies, customer support and security of payments. The quality of service and customers’ security will improve; this will augment human involvement to online shopping, and the number of online purchases will increase. Thus, e-commerce and m-commerce will be our future. Eventually, one global online market will be formed. This market will give people a direct access to products from different parts of the world.

Future Pirate War?

Piracy is becoming a big problem; especially off the coast of Somalia. In the first three months of this year, 18 shipping vessels were hijacked. 15 of these ships were in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Eden. As the pirates are getting money from ransoms they are able to buy better boats and weapons to hijack more shipping vessels. And according to an article on Forbes.com pirates in the villages of Somalia are selling shares in future attacks to investors who receive some of the ransom money for their investment.


Piracy is not going to stop any time soon. I found an interesting article on io9.com that is predicting that the attacks could escalate into a war against pirates. According to Casey Christie, with maritime security consultancy Concept Tactical Worldwide, “…In the very near future the number of pirates in a hijacking party is going to quadruple and will not involve less than a dozen, nothing-to-lose professional pirates.” Bloomberg estimates that piracy is costing $2.4 billion annually in transportation costs. Piracy is not only dangerous but also costly and must be stopped before there is a war.

The Future of Money

I found this very interesting article from Wired.com called The Future of Money. Everyone has probably used PayPal at some time to purchase goods over the Internet. PayPal has opened their programming code up to the public and now many other companies are developing programs to allow people to transfer money in new ways. Someday people will no longer carry around cash and credit cards. They will be able to use their phones and mobile devices to pay for everything.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_futureofmoney/

Changing Rooms in the Future

I found this video of how Cisco can change how we shop for clothes.  This will completely change the shopping experience. 

Trade Expressions

This picture shows many aspects of trade in today’s economy. Exchanging goods or trading involves all types of people and products. I feel the artist who created this image express's the hand off of these products along with showing what type of products are exchanged.

Online Bartering

  There are many site that allow you to exchange goods or even services with another person or business.  Some that I found were www.barterexchange.com, www.theinternetbarterexchange.com, and www.worldbarterexchange.com.  On these sites you have to set up an account to use it and some of them charge fees for each barter exchange or a monthly fee for membership.  It is advertised as a great way to expand a small business.  This is a great social networking tool that can bring people together to help each other.

"logo is from www.barterexchange.com"

Pipelines

Pipelines are used to transport many different types of goods. Most commonly they are used to transport liquids and gases but they can also be used to transport solid goods through tubes that use compressed air. Transportation pipelines are long pipes with wide diameters that move oil and gas between cities, countries, and continents. Most pipelines are below ground and under-water but in some places, like in Alaska.


The Alaska pipeline was built across permafrost. The oil needs to be kept above 140° Fahrenheit to move through the pipe and this heat can cause the permafrost to melt and the pipe to break. This can cause lasting problems to the surrounding environment. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) regulate the pipelines in America and the Minerals Management Service (MMS) regulate offshore pipelines. After the huge leak of oil after the explosion on the Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf I’m sure we all hope that our government is looking closer at those who regulate the pipelines and drilling to prevent anything like that from happening again.

Trade in Jail

Prisoners still use the barter system to trade items while behind bars. Many jails do have commissaries where inmates can get many of the things that they can outside of prison. As long as they have money in their accounts they can purchase almost anything from personal hygiene items to Converse shoes. Sometimes these items are used later to trade for other items the inmate might not be able to get at the commissary.


There are items that are not allowed in prisons that are the most value in trade such as drugs and recently cell phones. Cell phones allow inmates to continue criminal acts while still in prison, harass witnesses, and even plan prison escapes. In 2008, 2,800 cell phones were confiscated from inmates in California alone. Inmates are making thousands of calls to people inside and outside of prison. There are laws that are trying to be passed that would allow jails to use cell phone jammers to stop inmates from using cell phones while still in prison.

The most popular retail establishments

The most widespread places for making purchases have become supermarkets, department stores, and hypermarkets in the contemporary world. They are very similar since these stores are retail establishments that occupy the big area and contain a variety of products that should satisfy people’s needs. At the same time, there are some differences between them. Supermarkets propose a great range of groceries while department stores offer a wide array of consumer’s personal goods of different categories. Hypermarkets are the combination of supermarkets and department stores.
An excellent example of hypermarket is Wal-Mart Supercenter that leads the country in sales, with greater than 15% share in 75 main markets. Its average size is around 197,000 square feet. This store sells variety of non-grocery products as well as baked goods, frozen foods, meat and poultry, and fresh seafood. Many Wal-Mart Supercenters also have a pharmacy, pet shop, portrait studio, optical center, and numerous nook shops, such as video rental stores, hair and nail salons, and phone stores. Thus, when a person goes to Wal-Mart, he can obtain pretty much everything in one place. As Wal-Mart offers reasonable prices, a customer does not have to worry about costs and can obtain a great amount of necessary products there. He also does not have to travel to different shops and locations and can save time and money on gas. Thus, convenience and low costs attract many customers, and this makes hypermarkets and other big stores profitable.

Marketing

Attitudes of firms towards their products, consumers and end-users have changed drastically through history. If 60 years ago companies focused only on the process of production and all products could be sold easily without any marketing, these days in order to be sold products have to satisfy customers’ tastes. Thus, today marketing specialists are needed in almost every company. They identify customers, satisfy their needs, make them regular clients, and help to develop new products in accordance with people’s preferences.

With the evolution of technology and e-commerce expansion, many new ways of marketing have come into service. One of the most important ways to attract buyers is to make an informative and easy to use website that gives customers an opportunity to find the necessary information about the products being sold, companies’ polices and contact data. At the same time, many firms do not rely only on the placement of the ads only on their own websites. The most widespread form of the Internet advertising is banner ads. They are represented by small messages that are placed in high-visible areas of the websites that are visited frequently. The other type of online marketing is pop-up ads. They are marketing messages that pop up in separate widows. Many people perceive pop-up ads as an ineffective way of marketing that irritates customers instead of attracting them and making them purchase certain goods and services. Yet another type of advertising which is gaining its popularity is preroll video ads. These are marketing messages that are played before the beginning of a desired video.

These varieties of advertising techniques are newly emerged art forms since they are the result of the expression of creative ideas that deliver specific meaning to its viewers, and influence them emotionally. Ads often impact human perception and very often make individuals buy the products that they do not need.

Thus, marketing has become an integral part of every company. It is evolving under the influence of technology. Marketing professionals are constantly looking for new ways to attract customers and to make them purchase goods and services.

E-commerce

E-commerce has increased significantly from the moment it emerged. In order to give better understanding of the e-commerce growth, some statistical information about retail e-commerce sales (e-tail) released by US Census Bureau is provided in this post. E-tail sales have reached 4.1% in 2010 while they were only 1% of total retail sales in 2001. The diagram below shows how the percent of e-tail trade was increasing gradually during the last ten years.

Total sales via e-commerce increased from $27.6 billion in 2000 to $143.4 in 2010. A compound annual growth rate is about 20 percent. It is impressive how fast many people have changed the way they obtain products. As it is shown in the diagram below, the rate of growth is slowing down, but e-tail sales continue to rise steadily.

Electronic commerce

Electronic commerce is becoming one of the most essential ways to sell and buy products in the contemporary world. E-commerce is represented by the mutually beneficial exchange of goods and service over the Internet and other computer networks. This type of trade started to evolve in the late 1970s and has become more popular with the increased accessibility of computers and the Internet. Electronic commerce has many advantages that attract a lot of new participants to the online market every year. It allows consumers to find necessary products easily by using such criteria as category, price-range, location, and color. Online markets are available 24 hours/day, 7 days/week and lets customers to get additional information about goods or services immediately and make a purchase at any time. Some products such as music, movies, and e-books can be downloaded at the moment of the purchase and be used instantaneously. Prices of products in online stores very often are lower than in ground ones. The delivery of purchased products is not costly. Some other advantages are explained in the video below. This video adds up to the understanding of the e-commerce evolution process, its disadvantages, and the role that electronic commerce plays in the society.