Online Shopping

I will be conducting a scale study on my family and friends to see what factors influence my family and friends to shop online. I thought about conducting this study after looking at a recap of my family’s amazon order for the month. The large number of miscellaneous items made me ask a question on what factors influence us to use our computers to consumer more products.

I took a very small sample size for my study which consisted of my sister, father, mother, roommate, and a close friend of mine. The reason for the small sample size is because of the amount of data that had to be reordered from everyone. The purpose for this study is to see if the way how we use our computers influence users to consume products that they need or want.

I live with one other person who is my roommate of two years. My roommate buys almost all his products online, but I wanted to know when and what he buys online. He first starts off the month buying groceries which his phone makes a reminder and sends him a notification. This is a perfect example from “Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals” of resource aware computing. Which means an application that is constantly notified about the consumption of vital resources. In this case the vital resources would be food and every month an application on his phone will tell him that he has consumed all his vital resources and must buy more for the upcoming month. This is just one of his online purchases that is influenced by the technology. The next purchases that my roommate makes are focused around his wants which are fluctuate every month. It first starts with the Heterogeneous execution environment. He will usually be doing most of his online surfing on his computer especially for his wants. Whenever he enters the room with his computer in it and his phone as well. The websites that he has interacted with online began to have ads pop up on his phone. This is because of the heterogenous execution environment which allows for his computer to interact with other smart devices when they’re in the same room. When focusing on your wants this is one of more prevalent factors that I’ve seen when conducting the study with him. The heterogeneous execution environment makes it harder for a user to escape consumerism even if it took place on another device. I believe that these two factors along with others are influencers of consumerism online.

My older sister is the largest consumer I know especially when it comes to online shopping. She will only buy her wants online as she prefers to into the store physically to buy any resources that is considered vital like food and water. The same goes for my mother and father. My sister will consumer makeup, clothes, and sneakers when shopping online. Since these are most of the products that she interacts with when online I believe that the computational knowledge of the physical world. Which comes from “Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals” and involves the interaction of invisible computing around the users’ daily tasks. So, when my sister logs on to her computer it already knows based off her daily tasks and usage that she will be looking for products to buy. The type of products and maybe even the websites that she would prefer to visit based of all her previous transactions. This proves most developers made it easier for the ubicomp systems when trying to consider the barrier between the physical and digital world. When it comes to shopping for wants this ubicomp systems function has given my sister the biggest influence for consuming online. Along with resource aware computing which notifies my sister every time a new clothing drops from some of her selected brands. These factors make to easier as the user to want to or feel like you need to consume some of these products. Especially if at the end of every season she is reminded that there’s new clothes that are coming out she will never feel like she has enough. This is one of the reasons why I believe that they’re many factors of ubiquitous computing that influence users’ consumption online.

Regarding my parents online shopping varies more than my sister and my roommates. My parents when shopping online is more likely to shop for their wants online and needs in person. Whenever they would like to go grocery shopping, they are more likely to go in person especially when trying to evaluate whether the quality of the food is to their standards. I think that since parents lived before online shopping was huge consumerism online for them can be limited. For my mother when buying a product, she will wait the till she hears or is told about a sale. The user mental model of the Ubicomp system gives user all their wants and desires. Which for my mother is when any app sends her notifications about a sale on a vacuum that she’s been interested in. Or when she receives an ad about a snow blower sale when she is looking for a present for my father. If she doesn’t receive these notifications, I think her online shopping would be even more limited. Which why I think that the user mental model of her ubicomp system influences her to buy her wants online. Before this was implemented into all of our smart devices, she would wait for the stores to announce their sales before buying a want for herself.

The same goes for my father who will only consume products online if they’re on sale, but he only buys needs. When shopping online he is only buying automotive parts so it’s very specific based sales and with certain companies. It’s the user mental model that works the best for his ubicomp system that influences him to shop as well. He usually like to go to the physical store when buying products especially needs like car parts.

I conducted a study on my roommate, sister and both parents to see if when and what factors contribute to them consuming online. There have been a couple of ubiquitous computing implementations into all our like resource awareness computing. When it comes to online shopping for those who are close to me many ubiquitous computing implementations.

Works Cited:

Krumm, John. Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals