RAB Source Entry 1 — Jaqueline

Part 1 : MLA Citation 

Popper, Nathaniel. “Americans Keep Clicking to Buy, Minting New Online Shopping Winners.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 May 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/13/technology/online-shopping-buying-sales-coronavirus.html.

Preparatory work for writing the Summary: 

Main Idea: The coronavirus has affected the way people shop.

Supporting detail 1: Several surveys have shown that more than a third of Americans ordered groceries online for the first time starting from April 2020.

Supporting detail 2: The demand for online restaurants and meal delivery services increased starting March 2020.

Supporting detail 3: For Target and Walmart, many of their new sales came from people who had never shopped with them before.

 

Part 2: Summary

In “Americans Keep Clicking  to Buy, Minting New Online Shopping Winners,” Nathaniel Popper reports that online sales in the United States surged in the weeks of March 2020 after shelter-in-place measures were put in force. Immediately after the shutdowns, people changed how they spent their money. Patterns in online shopping have continued to shift as the weeks passed by, new data showed, because of panic buying and government aid. There was an increased spending after the first stimulus payment was sent out to millions of Americans beginning April 11 2020. Big and sometimes unexpected companies have helped the economy after the coronavirus. According to data received from Earnest Research, which tracks millions of credit and debit cards across the United States. Many e-commerce companies are now in a stronger place than before the pandemic. A few of the industries that have had an increase in their sales due to consumers shopping online are the food industry, video game industry, and the clothing industry.

 

Part 1A: Reflection

This article makes me understand that I relate to the information obtained from the charts. My family and I had to change the way we shopped for things once health regulations changed. Our online shopping increased when we were left with that as our only option. My mother learned to order off of Amazon and never looked back. It was easy to order products on places like Amazon, Walmart, and Target and then recieve it right on our doorstep. We started ordering our groceries online and there was no need to leave the house or interact with people. The few times we ordered food, there was quick interaction with the person delivering it and then it was over.

 

Part 1B: Rhetorical Analysis 

The author of this article, Nathaniel Popper, has reported for The Los Angeles Times and The Forward, and now covers finance and technology for the New York Times. He has published a book called “Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money.” Popper is extremely knowledgeable in his field and demonstrates that not only through the charts he chose from Earnest Research, but also in the way he explains what each chart means. Popper’s audience is all people. This article would be best suited for readers who would like to see the changes in shopping through graphs. He created this article at this particular moment because the pandemic caused a that affected all consumers worldwide.

 

 

Part 4: Notable Quotables

” There are few activities that have been upended more than grocery shopping, which had long been analog and resisted the world of online commerce. All of that changed in a few short weeks, as people were told to stay home, without their need for food diminishing.” (Nathaniel Popper)

” The crisis has also given a shot in the arm to online restaurant and meal delivery services, which were broadly experiencing slower growth earlier this year.” (Nathaniel Popper)

“The growth of online sales has not been enough to save all of e-commerce players. The start-ups that were set up to deliver people their clothing at home have almost all struggled as people have stopped needing nice clothes to go to work.” (Nathaniel Popper)