Increase in discretionary time Essay

Teleshopping offers the possibility of increasing discretionary metre by eliminating travel time for traditional shopping trips, and by hotfoot routine purchases. Intelligent agents, or pieces of softwargon that search computer networks, ordain reduce our need to comparison shop to obtain the best price. use intelligent agents to automate routine shopping for groceries and staple goods may concur households to a greater extent time for other activities. (Kare-Silver, 1998)Increases in vacant activities may scram far-reaching social and environmental effects. Previously mentioned reductions in activity space, combined with increases in pedestrian and bicycle travel may make neighbourhood attractions more popular. Family ties may regain importance and discretionary time bequeath be spent at home. Either way, increases in discretionary time will likely boost the economy as spending on leisure activities increases (Markham, 1998). If families and individuals use their new free t ime to go for drives in the country, we may see a reverse congestion problem, where roads are fade during the week and crowded on the weekends. Overall, the effects of discretionary time changes are in truth difficult to predict. Such changes may not produce any(prenominal) noticeable changes in our society or environment for a very long time.A revolution in the shopping environment is around to take place. But it wont affect all consumers and electric shock all retailers immediately. And it will not replace the traditional shopping completely, because thither are still many traditional social shoppers. Such as women, to go window-shopping is one of their natural instincts. It is impossible for them to do shopping at home always. What they enjoyed most are the social atmospheres of the malls. They like to have a chat with the sales people, they like to try the clothes on and and so do some compare. This is what Teleshopping can not satisfy them.However, the shopping guessing i s changing, retailers will need to develop. Standing still carries a high assay of being disintermediated, cut out of the supply chain as Teleshopping grows. As they move into the next century retailers will have a domain of options. At one extreme they could transfer their business to become a full electronic home-delivery operation gradually moving out of their fleshly retail estate. And an alternative they could look to revitalise their physical presence and germinate the store proposition to meet some of the changing consumer demands.1 anon (1998a) UK retail sales 160 billion pounds sterling by stratum 2000. Searchbank2 Gingh G et al The Information Age IM3007 Participants Pack (1999) p9