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VOICE ONE:
This is Mary Tillotson.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English programEXPLORATIONS. It is the holiday gift-giving season in the UnitedStates. More and more people are using their computers and theInternet to buy their holiday gifts. Today we tell how the computerand the Internet are changing the way people buy products.
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VOICE ONE:
In nineteen-ninety-five, a small company began selling books fromits headquarters in the western city of Seattle, Washington. It wasan unusual company. It did not have a store you could visit. Theonly way you could buy a book from the company was to use a computerlinked with the Internet.
The name of the company is Amazon-dot-com. It was one of thefirst businesses to offer products for sale using the Internet. Thecompany made it easy to buy almost any book you wanted. You usedyour computer to link with the company so you could read about manydifferent books. When you found the book you wanted, you placed anorder and typed the number of your credit card to pay for it. Aworker at the Amazon Company placed the book in a box and usuallymailed it to you the next day. It was really very simple.
VOICE TWO:
Buying products using a computer and the Internet seemed veryunusual in nineteen-ninety-five. At first, many people did not thinkis was safe to type their credit card information on the Internet.However, buying a book from Amazon.com was very easy. For manypeople, buying a book from Amazon.com was their first attempt atbuying anything on the Internet.
Today, Amazon.com sells books to millions of people in more thantwo-hundred-twenty countries. It is one of the most successfulcompanies linked to the Internet. And, Amazon no longer sells justbooks. It sells toys, music, games, electronic equipment, and evencomputers.
Because of Amazon.com’s success, many other companies beganselling products with the aid of a computer linked to the Internet.Some of the first were other book companies, like Barnes and Noble.Today, thousands of large and small companies offer their productson the Internet. Buyers use their computers to order and pay forproducts. The company sends the products to the buyers. A fewcompanies offer many more things on their Web sites than in theirstores. For example, Barnes and Noble offers more than one-millionbooks, far more than in any one store.
VOICE ONE:
Business experts say buying products using the Internet isbecoming increasingly popular. They say buying on the Internet hasincreased as much as thirty-six percent over last year. Experts saypeople spent almost ten-thousand-million dollars buying products onthe Internet during the first nine months of this year.
Buyers are expected to spend almost fourteen-thousand-milliondollars more during the last three months of this year. This largeincrease in buying is because of the holiday gift-giving season. Theholiday buying season in the United States usually begins the dayafter Thanksgiving, the fourth Thursday in November. It continuesuntil Christmas Day, December twenty-fifth.
VOICE TWO:
Many stores in the United States depend on the holiday season foras much as fifty percent of their yearly profits. A poor holidayseason for a store can cause serious financial problems. Manybusinesses quickly learned they could increase their holiday salesby offering their products on the Internet.
Buying products with the aid of a computer is a quickly expandingsales idea. However, the idea of buying a product without evervisiting the store is not new. Only the method of buying haschanged. This method of business has a very old name. It is called”mail order.”
VOICE ONE:
In eighteen-eighty-six, a young man named Richard Sears boughtseveral watches. Mister Sears worked for the Minneapolis and SaintLouis Railroad Company. He sold the watches to other railroadworkers. He soon hired a young watchmaker named Alvah Roebuck tomake more watches. The Sears and Roebuck Watch Company soon settledin Chicago, Illinois.
Mister Sears and Mister Roebuck knew that the majority ofAmericans lived on farms. They did not live close to stores wherethey could buy the products they needed.
The Sears and Roebuck Watch Company soon began offering manyother products that could be bought from their Chicago store. TheSears and Roebuck company could offer products for much less moneythan local stores.
VOICE TWO:
In eighteen-ninety-five, the Sears and Roebuck Company beganprinting a book that listed the products the company sold. The bookhad five-hundred-thirty-two pages.
This kind of book is called a catalog. The Sears and RoebuckCatalog offered for sale almost every kind of equipment a farmermight need. It also offered clothing and shoes for men, women andchildren. It offered stoves, tables, chairs, glassware and bicycles.People could buy firearms, rings, watches, toys and many, many otherproducts. The huge catalog had pictures of the products and told howto order and pay for the products. The Sears, Roebuck and CompanyCatalog was really the sales computer of its day.
VOICE ONE:
Perhaps the most unusual product ever sold by the Sears andRoebuck Company was a house. From nineteen-oh-eight untilnineteen-forty, the Sears and Roebuck Company offered severaldifferent sized houses that could be ordered through the catalog.Each house arrived at the nearest railroad station. It came witheverything needed to build the house — more than thirty-thousandparts.
This included wood, paint, nails electric wire, pipes for waterand a seventy-five page book. The book told how to build the house.Sears, Roebuck and Company sold more than seventy-five-thousand ofthese built-it-yourself homes.
Other companies also sold this kind of house. Perhaps the mostfamous of these houses is the one in California where formerPresident Richard Nixon was born. That house is now part of thePresident Richard Nixon Library at Yorba Linda, California.
VOICE TWO:
The Sears company still prints several different catalogs. Peoplecan read about a product in the catalog and buy it by calling Searson the telephone. They can also link with the company on theInternet and buy the product. Shoppers can pay extra money to havethe product sent to their home, or they can pick it up at one of themany Sears stores.
The story of the Sears Company is not different from many othercompanies. Large companies like Sears and even very small companiesnow use the Internet as a business tool.
VOICE ONE:
Experts who study the business use of the Internet say people buymore items for their home than any other product. This includestables, chairs, lights, paintings, and rugs. The experts say theInternet sales of these things have increased one-hundred-forty-sixpercent over last year.
People ordered sixty-six percent more clothing than last year,thirty-one percent more books and twenty-five percent moreelectronic devices.
A huge winter storm affected much of the Eastern United States atthe beginning of this month. One business report said the stormmight have caused even more people to buy holiday gifts using theircomputers. The report said it was easier for people to buy productsfrom their nice warm homes than to travel to a store in the middleof a snow or ice storm.
VOICE TWO:
In nineteen-ninety-five when Amazon.com began selling books, fewitems were for sale on the Internet. That has changed greatly. Nowyou can buy almost anything you want. There are even companies thathelp private individuals sell items on the Internet. Recently a manin Santa Rosa, California, offered a Russian-built jet fighterwarplane for sale.
The plane had once belonged to the Air Force of Poland. The mansaid he wanted at least twenty-five-thousand dollars for theaircraft. But he said the plane needed to be repaired before itcould fly. And he said it no longer had its machine guns!
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VOICE ONE:
This Special English program was written and produced by PaulThompson. This is Mary Tillotson.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for anotherEXPLORATIONS program on the Voice of America.