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.