Online or offline shopping?
With the current Covid-19 crisis, we have noticed a sharp increase in online shopping (see figure below). Indeed, individuals seeking to avoid going to crowded places have shifted their shopping to the Internet. The International Journal of Future Generation Communication and Networking estimates that 52% of consumers preferred to avoid crowded areas to shop and 36% avoided these same areas until they had their first dose of vaccine.
Evolution of the volume of online transactions in the world*
In parallel, we also noticed a trend to go green again, to eat healthy food, to be environmentally responsible and of self care in general. During lockdowns, we saw the development of Instagram lives, YouTube videos on all these matters multiplied (gardening live, fitness live, yoga and how to reconnect with nature…). Also, food choice motives changed significantly during lockdowns compared to before. A 2020 study from the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health testifies that the ethical concern and natural content were more important in their food choices during the lockdown compared to before, for 21% and 18% of the participants, respectively.
However, while the fastest growing e-commerce website on the internet during lockdowns was Amazon — of which the environmental cost is very high according to Amazon Employees for Climate Justice — we may think that these two trends are totally incompatible. Can we consume mostly on the internet and be a responsible consumer with a low ecological impact?
As a matter of fact, for several years now, e-commerce websites have been trying to answer the needs of their customers more and more each day: shorter delivery times, an ever-increasing choice of products at a very attractive price or even at zero cost (e.g. Amazon, AliExpress, Taobao). The objective? To be the most attractive in a very competitive market. But how should we behave when we know that this premium customer experience has an environmental cost? Should we rather buy in physical shops than online ones in order to limit our environmental impact?
A Bain study How to Cut Carbon Emissions as E-Commerce Soars [pdf] attempts to identify when a given retail channel is more carbon efficient.
As we can see in the figure above, it is interesting to go to brick-and-mortar shops when we travel to several stores for example. However, when we need to do a dedicated trip to one shop, and we want to buy between 1 and 3 items, the option of buying online can result in lower carbon emissions. Therefore, shopping in physical shops is not always the most ecological answer. And we must be careful of our mode of purchase.
In order to be the most responsible online consumer as possible, Bain recommend the following practices:
● Favoring Click & Collect. Indeed, this is an approach that combines online and physical shopping, which allows you to take advantage of both practices while limiting your energy consumption. (e.g. Walmart offers free same-day pickup on thousands of products: bagged and ready to go)
● Favoring pick-up points instead of direct delivery to your home. As a matter of fact, using these delivery points allows a delivery person to drop off several parcels instead of going to each customer’s home, which limits the transport of merchandise and therefore carbon emissions. (e.g. Amazon established pickup points near customers and partners with its lockers.)
● Favoring ordering products from the country where we live in order to avoid having products delivered with a very high transport cost.
In addition to the method of delivery, it is important to know where the products we consume come from. Therefore, in order to consume online while being responsible, it can be interesting to think about second-hand platforms. Indeed, there are now many websites such as Backmarket, Le Bon coin, Vinted or Depop that offer products at attractive prices and are shipped within a very short time. Consuming second-hand products extends the lives of products and therefore spreads their environmental cost.
Moreover, sometimes marketplaces offer products with eco-responsible labels. It may therefore be interesting to find out about these labels and to favor products with the lowest ecological impact, being made of upcycled materials for instance.
The Covid-19 crisis and lockdowns were related to modifications of behaviors, notably with the increase of online shopping. Marketplaces saw their orders increase dramatically. We also noticed the emergence of environmental awareness when it comes to consumption. But ordering online has an environmental cost.
As consumers, we should not only point marketplaces and websites out because we also have a role to play in the environmental footprint of our purchases. Indeed, when it comes to reducing the environmental impact of shopping, the cost of transport to the shop is often questioned. It is therefore important to encourage combined shopping trips. Moreover, as consumers, we can pay attention to the origin of the products we consume by shopping on platforms dedicated to ecologically responsible products, or by paying attention to the product labels.
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
