I feel in the past 5 years there has become an increasing blurring of the offline and online shopping experience. As customers have become more informed, businesses have had to remodel to fit this. When somebody enters a shop today, they are likely to know what price they would usually pay for certain items, where sells similar things but cheaper, or similar but better quality. If a customer finds a shop not fitting to this pre-knowledge, they are likely to purchase online instead. Thus, I believe there has been a great power shift to the consumer.

My memory of small local businesses years ago, are that they would talk to you, learn your interests and common buying habits. Now I’ve watched these businesses close down, as online devices have intruded our browsing histories to learn what our interests are, and consequently flood our pages with personalised ads. No longer do people disclose with a local but instead, people are unwillingly disclosing all their browsing history with people they will never know. A trivial problem I had with this was when browsing for a mother’s day gift, my history was noted, and advertisements of my present purchases were all exposed to my mum whom shared my laptop, meaning the surprise was well and truly destroyed by Google. But more seriously, I find the knowledge they hold invasive and worrying.

I can regrettably admit that my social life does rely heavily on digital technology. It is an essential source to make plans, get directions and creates a sense of not being alone when you are travelling alone. Digital technology has expanded social groups, it has allowed people to stay in contact, when in the past they may have not made the effort to do so. Through social media, I am able to find out about big life events and success in the lives of classmates from school, or people from home whilst I’m away at Uni. I can learn about the culture of the friends I met at summer camp in America, who show me a new way of life in numerous different countries. I find it can strengthen relationships as people feel more knowledgeable about each other and thus more connected, which can create more talking points but alternatively could lead to nothing to cover in face-to-face interaction.

However, with this comes significant problems. As people can now hide behind a screen for conversations, it has granted people power to say things that they would never say in person or for things to be read in an incorrect way. Being constantly aware of what others are doing can be detrimental, it has created a new level of social comparison which can become unavoidable, and therefore create a sense of depression as people can be constantly reminded that others are doing better. I am very much aware of how much technology has taken over my life, it has become a struggle to enjoy great events in life without the urge to capture it for Snapchat or Facebook, to show others the wonderful things I am doing. The digital world is a mediated reality where only the positive things are posted and a pressure has arisen to build a presence online of somebody that others would want to know or be, and this has big impact on how people socialise.

I would say my greatest exposure to brands currently is through advertisements on Facebook, as the TV I do watch I stream without adverts and my active searching for brands has massively decreased since joining Uni, and the financial constraints arisen from that. However, I do not follow the adverts on Facebook, thus any affect would have to be subliminal.

I think to be engaging, content must be short and snappy. People are now reluctant to give their time to reading long text and require immediate satisfaction of their needs and interest, or it is lost. Engaging content is that which is highly talked about or rated, which explains the rise in user-generated content in advertisements and as the Pepsi max example shows, how consumers can create the ads themselves. This consequently means the public are more likely to pay attention as it isn’t perceived as a company attempting to manipulate their buying habits.