the contemporary shopping lifestyle

As an e-commerce company some of our most frequently asked questions surround shipping:

• “How much does shipping cost?”
• “Why does shipping cost so much?”
• “Can I get a discount on shipping?”
• “Is there a way to get free shipping?”

And multiple variations of each of those.  With the economy suffering and everyone looking for ways to save, consumers are increasingly pushing back against paying rising shipping costs.  So should you stop buying products online?  Nope.  Actually, we think you should be buying more online.

Consider the following data from the last 1,500 transactions conducted on Detailed Image and Tastefully Driven - Pure Adapt, Inc’s two e-commerce sites.   We ship domestically with FedEx Ground and FedEx Express, and internationally with USPS.

• Average Package Weight - 6.8 lbs (clearly these are not extremely light packages)
• Average Shipping Cost - $ 11.98
• Average Cost of Driving (from CommuterSolutions.org) - $ 1.19 / mile
• Break even - 10.07 miles

This means that if your travel consists of a round trip of more than 10.06 miles you’d be better off from a financial standpoint making the purchase online.  If you include the value of your time it becomes an increasingly good proposal to make more online purchases (I’d estimate you’ll save at least 30 minutes - probably more like an hour - per purchase by buying from your computer and not traveling back and forth to a local store).

Yes this is just one example with limited data.  However, I’d surmise that a larger scale study of online transactions would yield a similar result.   Next time you see a $10 shipping cost appear during your checkout I bet you will think about how much time and money you are saving by making the purchase online.  I’m also guessing that the thought probably wouldn’t have entered your mind prior to reading this article.  Now that’s a change in consumer perception.