Introverts and E-commerce: Creating a demand-pull?

Introverts and e-commerce are the two focus words of this article. E-commerce is a virtual marketplace where goods or services are bought and sold over an electronic network. An introvert is a terminology to describe people who enjoy self-company.

Now, the two are a match in heaven. E-commerce lets you shop electronically without having to interact with another individual. On the other hand, an introvert preferring no sales-person interaction lowers the cost to the company. The article is a light read to tease your mind to think beyond your sights.

Introverts and Physical Shopping

Not necessarily these apply to introverts but many people face the fright of human interaction. Human interactions definitely reduce the desire and willingness to visit a mall or a store.

Let me briskly create a visual shopping scenario. You enter a mall, let’s say the clothing section. Every brand tries to lure you towards their display wall. Now, if you are an introvert who would want to avoid human contact, the scenario would make you prefer against physical shopping.

So, it is safe to say, most introverts avoid shopping until utmost necessary. Hence, affecting the aggregate demand and the GDP growth. Let’s look at it around; introvert in a virtual mall.

Introverts and E-commerce

E-commerce is the best shopping solution for an introvert. You don’t have to interact with anybody, the customer support is either an AI (artificial intelligence) or a person over email/telephone. You buy a product, try it on and return if you don’t. So a platform, which encourages introverts to shop too, will pull the aggregate demand. Extroverts were never the problem. They preferred going out to movies, restaurants, shopping malls, etc. However, it is the introverts who wish otherwise.

Introverts and Aggregate Demand

In economics, demand pull mentions inflation. However, in simple language, it means an increase in the aggregate quantity demanded.

Without the virtual platform, only extroverts or ambiverts would contribute to the aggregate demand. However, after the emergence of the virtual market, introverts stepped in comfortably. They shopped and became a part of the consumer market equally. Thus, we see in the above graph that the AD shifted upwards. At the given price P* quantity demanded increased from Q1 to Q2. As a known fact, in the long-run aggregate demand equals GDP. Hence, introverts are finally contributing to the GDP at par with their counterparts.

Saying it all, it is important to mention, our current state is a sub-optimal one. We as an economy still have a problem to tackle. In the remote areas, where internet services are rare, or people are still skeptical about digital/plastic money, e-commerce is a complicated platform.

Future Scope

Here we have amazing future research scope. Anybody can study the aggregate demand data pre and post e-commerce to validate the research idea. Maybe Ecofunomics will soon upload an article along the same lines. Until then keep feeding your curious mind with us.