Can everything we need really be delivered in a box?

Why bother going to a store when just about anything can be delivered right to your doorstep?

The meteoric rise of e-commerce has demonstrated just how much consumers value convenience.

We can now compare products across producers, compare prices across a broad swath of the market, fish for deals in an abundant sea of promo codes, and schedule doorstep delivery with almost no wait.

There’s no doubt that e-commerce will continue to play a bigger role in the everyday shopping experience. A new report by Global Industry Analysts Inc. predicts that e-commerce will grow at a rate of 14.6% per year for the next five years. This comes atop the surge in e-commerce during the pandemic; from 2019 to 2020, the share of e-commerce sales in the U.S. more than tripled. In the coming years, consumers will be able to do even more of their shopping online. Companies will compete not only on price and quality, but on delivery time.

By prioritizing convenience above all else, will consumer behavior lead to an overall decrease in quality of life? Put another way, what is lost when everything we need is just left in a pile of brown boxes on our front step?

Already, delivery trucks are causing congestion and pollution on neighborhood streets. Delivery workers are complaining about impossible-to-meet quotas. Small and medium-sized businesses, especially those without online stores, are struggling to survive. While the net environmental impact of online shopping is difficult to calculate, improving the ease of consumption also increases overall consumption and the impact on the environment. The human impact, while less quantifiable, is very real. With fewer reasons to leave the house, people lose opportunities to interact with their communities and for chance encounters. Communities thrive when they have a reason to come together.

Maybe retail is not the best reason to leave the house but, historically, it has been one of the main reasons that people have stayed connected to their neighborhood networks.

It’s especially hard to argue that shopping at a big box store offers the same level of connection as popping into a local bakery or coffee shop. This raises the question: what forms of retail strengthen a community?

With Zing, we’re hoping not only to deliver useful retail and service experiences within walking distance of suburban homes, but to provide another way for neighbors to connect with each other.

While the Zing model will never replace online shopping or brick-and-mortar neighborhood shops, we hope that it offers a path towards convenience and connection.