It’s as if you’re getting a care package from Mom, except that it’s not a care package, and you paid for it, but the magic’s still there.

It’s two in the morning. I am perched at my desk, my arched shoulders illuminated by the muted blue glow of my computer screen, like a gargoyle, ominously watching and waiting in my boxers. Bits and bytes fly through my Ethernet port as the right password finally clears and I get into the encrypted and secure page of Amazon.com’s checkout process. You see, the problem is, I have so many accounts with different online retailers that I forget which username and password goes with which store. This means I need to remember which sign-in information goes with which site each time I want to buy something, or imagine myself buying something. But that’s just a part of the online shopping, or e-commerce, experience.

Gustavus is perfectly poised for a thriving relationship with online retailers. The campus has a broad spectrum of economic backgrounds with the greatest demographic of students belonging to middle-class families, so students generally have at least some buying power. That being said, students are always looking to spend the least amount of money possible.

“The best deals are always online, hands down,” Derek Holm, senior economics major, said. In these days of economic woes, everyone is trying to find ways to save, and shopping on-line is one of those ways. “There’s no way you can go to Best Buy and buy the same thing for the same price if you get it on Amazon,” he added. But deals are just part of the multi-faceted charm of ecommerce.

Beyond economics, there are other factors that come into play, Professor of Economics and Management Lawrence Wohl said. “The college campus is located in St. Peter. I think if we were in the metro area there would be slightly less draw [to online shopping] just because there are so many more shopping opportunities that are just right in your backyard.” But the appeal doesn’t stop at geography: “For any internet shopper, the ability to do it in your home, in your pajamas or whatever … it’s a convenience factor. You can do it at midnight, at 3 a.m.” Wohl said.

Another draw to shopping online is how quickly you can learn about what you’re looking for. Aside from detailed product descriptions, videos and photos, online vendors often have other user reviews which provide a number of consumer opinions of the product. Wohl said “before, you’d go to the store and look at something and think, ‘Gee is that any good?  Is this going to work the way I want it to work? What are the upsides, what are the downsides?’ I mean, you were kind of on your own. Now there’s just this plethora of information out there.”

Without the pressure of physically going to a store, consumers can shop at a pace that is all their own. Holm is methodical: “It usually takes me a while to actually buy something … I’ve probably been looking at it for a few weeks.” Online stores often use cookies (small text files that store site preferences and information) which save your cart contents so that when you return, your cart conveniently has everything from your previous visit. Holm said, “I’ll commonly have a few carts on a few different sites filled with stuff,” and once finances, need or want increases, he’ll go ahead and buy.

Like many online shoppers, I juggle my cart contents. In order for e-commerce to be most cost-effective, shoppers need to know how to play the game. Some vendors have offers for free shipping, discounts on specific products, discounts on specific monetary amounts and sometimes free shipping based on monetary amounts. Finding the right combination of those offers by changing what’s in your cart can save you lots of money.

I was in a race against the clock of a dying battery as I rushed through the checkout process at Express.com. The looming disaster of missing the sale because of empty battery cells motivated me to type and click with super-human speed. I flew through the checkout, somehow managing to spell and number everything correctly. My cart juggling was successful, and I maximized Express’ deals. I clicked the “confirm order” button and breathed a sigh of relief. At that point my order went into the great unknown of order processing, fulfillment and shipping, and in 5 to 14 business days (sometimes more), I will be eagerly ripping off tape and brown paper to get to the candy center of my box.

I knew I had played the game right (I’d saved over $100), but even so, some $70 were being pulled from my low-income college student bank account. I told myself that this was more than an impulse buy—it was calculated, careful, useful and, while it took maybe three minutes to place the order, it was a culmination of years of practice and careful execution of Internet shopping know-how. In just ten minutes, I had juggled my cart and bought items that would benefit me in the future for less than half of the retail price. I deemed it a success.

I recently bought a tripod and camera strap from an online retailer with educational discounts. I filled my cart and tried not to think about how my debit card was linked to real money when I hit the “confirm order” button. Despite this mental disconnect, I felt a twinge of guilt as real dollars floated out of my bank account. I had made a good purchase, but I was feeling the cost of it. The way purchases are made today, it’s sometimes hard to get that feeling, but when you do, it’s a reassurance that you are aware of what you are actually doing. Without that grounding, it’s a slippery slope down to the dungeons of distress and debt.

Glenn Strand is a credit counselor and father of a Gustavus student. He talked about how “with online purchases, it’s a mental health issue of impulse buying … It’s the thrill of buying, of spending money,” and it is those impulse purchases of unnecessary items that get students in trouble. Students graduating with credit card debt owe “normally around the $8,000 range … and you ask them what they had bought, and… it’s just been frivolous things.”

My purchase of camera gear was useful, and I was high on the thrill of it. A few minutes later, a white rectangle flickered its way into my game of “Call of Duty,” telling me I had an e-mail concerning my order. I minimized the game and found out that due to the educational nature of the discount I needed to supply proof that I am, in fact, a student. This extra layer of confirmation isn’t a bad thing; it’s just another way of protecting both parties. However, these extra layers of complexity can seem unnecessary at times, like the great winding snake of passengers at the airport security checkpoints. Yes, it’s necessary to screen and it provides peace of mind, but honestly, couldn’t these lines move faster? This curveball in my order process had me sitting in my chair, brows furled, fingers tapping, as I thought of how to provide the necessary proof; I would have to scan my ID and print out my class list. I psyched myself out and put it off for several days.

I later tentatively sent off my email with attached Word document of classes and student ID, promptly receiving an e-mail response, and, as if I’d removed a clog from a set of gears, the process whirred into motion once again. Once the package was processed for shipment, I got a tracking number that provides up-to-date information on the whereabouts and progress of my parcel. Within the first day, I’ll check my tracking number maybe five times. The shipping process always starts out slowly with billing, getting to the distribution center, waiting there, thinking about leaving, thinking about preparing to leave, preparing to leave and finally actually disembarking from the distribution center.

Holm tries not to track. “I like to know when it’s shipped and what the order status is, just to know that it actually is coming, but I don’t go online every day and look at where my package is …. I’d rather forget about it and then when it comes, be happy and surprised.” I also try not to track. I absolutely love that feeling of surprise when I have forgotten about a package, but it’s just so hard to not look when you have the option to do so.

It’s cold and the wind buffets my face as I march across the. cattle-tracks of the West Mall toward Southwest Hall. It has now been several hours since I last checked my tracking number. Like connecting the dots to draw a dinosaur, I imagine my package making its way toward me across the country.  I forget about the cold that is numbing my cheeks and ears, warmed with anticipation.

There is always one huge step in the shipment process that is described on the tracking website as “In Transit.” During that step I try to forget about it and let myself be surprised when it arrives. Prior to this step I could watch the package’s nearly every move, watching it take its first steps in the different departments of the distribution center, but now I have to let it be out in the world, waiting until the scheduled arrival date. Its grand adventure starts somewhere on the other side of the country, and I know little until it has matured to the dirty, scuffed and dented box being held overnight in the metro area distribution center.

Before sunrise, some poor soul dons his or her brown shirt, hat and pants, grabs a brown clipboard, and climbs into a brown box of a van. he or she drives south through the morning before finally arriving at Gustavus and depositing my package into the Post Office in C. Charles Jackson Campus Center. Naomi Quiram, director of postal services at Gustavus, described how the College processes packages. The parcel is dollied in and as it is entered into the Gustavus system an e-mail goes out to the recipient. The whole process is tracked “from the time it comes to campus through the signature at the front window.”

If everything goes according to plan, I have stopped paying attention to the shipping status, and the date it arrives is either on or before the scheduled delivery date. Holm is very fond of the receiving notification: “Gustavus sends you that e-mail, which is really exciting, because it tells you what it is and where it came from. So, sometimes if I actually did forget about it, then it’s like Christmas. You just get to go down there and ask for your package, which is really fun.” It’s as if you’re getting a care package from Mom, except that it’s not a care package, and you paid for it, but the magic’s still there.

Quiram has noticed an increase in shipping in the last few years. She says that around half of the packages arriving in the post office are books. “We’re seeing higher and higher volume of books being purchased online … This year we had one day where we scanned out 420 packages. … So if you divide that by how many hours we’re open, I mean we’re just constantly scanning out packages,” she said, “Amazon is nonstop. Every day. It’s Amazon, Amazon, Amazon.”

The semester began last Monday and the Post Office dealt with the highest package volume it had ever experienced. “We’re estimating [we distributed] about 900 in one day, which is twice what we’ve ever done before,” Quiram said. With the increased parcel volume, there have also been more people not getting receiving notifications. Sometimes, “one [receiving notification] was in the inbox, and all the other ones were in the spam box,” she said. Karen Zins, manager of The Bookmark, says that online book vendors are The Bookmark’s biggest competitor. She said that students “buying [books] online … has been increasing over the last 10 to 15 years. A lot more in recent years.”

Brad Abell, senior physics major, has been buying his textbooks online ever since his first semester. His reasoning is “because it’s cheaper. … My first semester, I bought everything at Gustavus … it was like $700 for my first semester alone.” Since then he’s been buying and selling books online. “I’ve saved up to $400 in one semester… I support [The Bookmark] when I can, but when I can save 400 bucks, I can’t justify that.”

Zins said, “Every year it seems like there are more books left and yet there are classes where we have to rush reorder because we’ve run out….It’s a no-win situation. It’s impossible because I don’t know the particular students in that class, and whether or not they’re the type who would go online to buy their books or not.”

To Wohl, the economic impact of e-commerce is huge. “We talk about the cost of acquiring information, that’s not a free good (or at least it didn’t used to be), and now with the Internet it’s becoming so easy for us to acquire information about products and about prices in particular that it really puts tremendous pressure on the bricks and mortar kind of store. … If the stores only become display areas and never actually sell anything, then [they] are going to be in a big world of hurt.” He continues, “I don’t think it’s going to get to that point.”

Despite the threat of increasing e-commerce, bricks-and-mortar retailers will always remain.  Consumers will always want to be able to feel, look at, hold, try things on, and have them instantly. There are of course pros and cons with both buying online and buying at a retail store and it is the prerogative of the consumer to balance those out in a way that works for him or her. Holm feels that “sometimes it’s nice to just go to the store and pick up whatever it is I want and just have it… especially when …you find out something is price controlled … so it’d be the same online or in the store. Then I kind of kick myself, and I’m like great, I’m waiting for this thing to come, and it really would have made no difference if I had just gotten it right away.”