Updated: Jul 19, 2021
The COVID pandemic forced many people to reassess the work - life balance. A recognition occurred that relying on a centralized government and/or employer to provide a lifeline is no guarantee, particularly as sovereign national debt levels skyrocket worldwide. As a result of the traumatic COVID pandemic, nearly 65% of Americans in the workforce are now implementing new behavior strategies in their work, shopping, entertainment, dining, financial and education habits. Employers are feeling the pinch, often unable to find workers.
The COVID economic shutdown only reconfirmed what many young adults age 15 - 38 years old had already been thinking about starting their own business. Overwhelmingly, young entrepreneurs see no need to work for a "legacy employer", instead find greater financial security using mobile technology to build and create their dream business on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, NTF platform apps and cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Not only is the financial banking system becoming more decentralized, the education system is increasingly digital after being shutdown during COVID pandemic. With student loan debt in America skyrocketing now to $1.7 Trillion, many young people are seeking alternative ways to gain valuable technology and work skills in affordable digital training platforms.
With inflation rising cost of goods pressuring employers to find ways to automate their business model in order to reduce expenses. Companies such as McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Amazon and even whole industries like airlines, automobile, hospital and banks are finding new ways to automate. We are truly in the age now of business model change, pressured by a number of economic factors and the adoption of new COVID lifestyle habits that will remain.
Today, consumers like the idea of working from home, time efficient video conferencing and the convenient drive through food ordering. In fact, over 70% of all fast food sales are earned by drive through food services. Now fast food restaurants are using touchscreen and AI voice assistance technology to take customer orders reducing staff labor expenses by 45% or more.
Increasingly, we find self-checkout lanes at Wal-Mart and touchscreen retail kiosks. The fastest growing portion of nearly every retail business is eCommerce online shopping. And companies like Amazon are offering ultra-fast delivery and convenience with low price incentives to shop online. Amazon is already testing autonomous drone package delivery.
But the question remains will the 70% of young consumers that overwhelmingly shop online still crave that traditional in-store shopping experience or could it be accomplished using a 3D virtual retail store platform which incorporates existing social network consumer habits.
We've already seen the explosive growth of NFTs (non fungible tokens) for art and other items. Despite the Bitcoin craze, NFT is often based on computer platform coding like Ethereum which providing a more decentralized banking ability worldwide to secure money, payment transactions and smart contracts that can be programmed by application users.
Here's why we like Ethereum the world’s first — and today one of many — “smart contract platforms.” Unlike bitcoin, it was designed not to be a payment system, but a “decentralized world computer or mobile network.” The idea was to take the concept of #decentralization and apply it not just to money and payments DeFi, but also to financial contracts and any form of social interaction that requires trust between two or more parties that do not know or trust each other. By defining those social interactions in code, the ethereum #network acts as the mediator — automatically enforcing the rules of said interaction — between the different parties. The idea behind this concept is that “code is law,” and any interaction that takes place between several parties should be executed exactly according to the way it was defined in #code, with no room for special interests or subjective interpretations.
So, based on our analysis of existing 3D virtual retail platforms such as Second Life or similar, we recommend virtual world platforms adopt Ethereum block chain systems, enabling NFT like transactions, as the basis to share business, retail and financial services or entertainment events. This would instantly enable virtual retail platforms access to the nearly 75 Million blockchain users.
Building on the new post-COVID lifestyle change towards convenience and work from home; there's a clear path to curate millions of new users with unique avatars to network in a high growth virtual 3D world experience buying real estate, browse shopping isles in VR retail stores, enjoy VR travel, museums, relax to music concert events with family and friends or conduct virtual business meetings with augmented video conferencing on cyber space apps.
For example here is a breakdown of virtual store vs. physical store location ...
The Costs Of A Physical Store
The main expenses of a physical store include :
Monthly Lease / Rent : Physical stores are tied to specific geographical locations. This demands a location for setting up a storefront, which could be very costly. Store owners could spend anywhere between $2,000 and $5,000 rent per month and more for a store in a major city
Staff : Staff members are necessary for physical shops. Staff need to cover the general retail hours throughout the week, and you cannot stray from the minimum wage set by the government typically $15 per hour per employee plus benefit expenses
Upfront Investment : When you set up a physical shop, you need to do a lot of prep work, including choosing a space, carrying out renovation, buying equipment, hiring staff, and more. It does not end there - you then need to invest in marketing in order to promote your store. All these expenses can easily reach an upfront investment of $50,000 or more for even the tiniest business and maintain stock inventory
The Costs Of An Ecommerce Virtual Store
An ecommerce store typically reduces costs by 50% to 75% overall and does not require a physical location, or perhaps staff, but there are costs involved. Here is a breakdown :
Web Development : The first significant investment that you will be making when starting an ecommerce store is the website. Setting up a custom professional online store will cost around between $1,500 and $5,000 depending on the size and scope. The cost will depend on the size and scope of the store, but all ecommerce websites need to have functionalities such filtering, search options, shopping cart, integration with social media, reviews from previous customers, rating features, tracking facilities, customer profiles, and more
Web Hosting : Typically, web hosting costs per month ranges from $100 to $500 depending on the size of the data you are handling and payment processing shopping carts
Advertising / Social Media Marketing : Advertising is an essential aspect of online businesses to drive traffic. You can invest a reasonable sum in pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements and improve traffic and conversions. Advertising typically costs $500 to $750 per month, but the results are worth more than that, and an effective campaign should essentially pay for itself. You could choose to carry out the marketing yourself or pay a professional individual or agency like SocialContentService.com which specializes in targeted pay-per-click (PPC) and social media data analytics to optimize your costs and drive targeted buyers to your virtual store this builds loyal customers resulting in repeat business
Overhead Management : Using a ecommerce virtual store or business model you will reduce your costs 50% to 75% with an ability to work from nearly any location. The overhead physical space is very little and you can automate much of the customer service aspects thus much less staff is required. Online business is very cost efficient.
By using a virtual store your reach millions of new customers in a variety of geographic locations, often paying higher prices thus increase your profit margins. You will not get such advantages with a physical location store.
Note there are additional costs associated with an virtual store such as order fulfillment, shipments, content writing for your website, customer and inventory management.
Our design team is available to create the following online business solutions :
eCommerce web design store, professional business or service $1,250 flat rate
2D virtual store costs about $2,500 flat rate includes payment processing
3D virtual store costs about $4,500 flat rate includes payment processing
Advertising / Social Media Marketing / Web Management about $750 per month
SocialContentService.com provides business analysis, social media marketing, data analytics, website design, content writing and business development from start-up to IPO in a variety of market sectors. Our diverse team of highly skilled agents offer over 25 years of experience. Contact Us Send Note info@smart-results.net