Sneakpeek into Shopping in 2030!

 'Knock knock .....rat tat tat'.... The balcony railing gets rapped , & a metallic voice chants in a monotone: " Mrs Sarkar--Please--receive--your--consignment" !! 

 Mrs Sarkar comes from the kitchen to open the balcony grills, and offloads the basket containing her groceries , from the balloon that's hovering in front of her 17th floor apartment . She counts the stuff , and is about to shut the grills again, when the voice chants, "Goods--left--in--basket"! She pores over to find a small turmeric packet that she had forgotten to unload! Job accomplished, the balloon sets off to its home in the shopping plaza , a few kilometres from the residential complex , with a parting voice note, "Thanks--for--shopping--with--AirDrops--Have--A--Nice--Day!"

          That's a real life scenario in AD 2030, where retail chains have started off dropping the household shopping items , by means of GPS-guided Gas Balloons , within a perimeter of 5 Kilometers from the shopping mart! The customer simply has to tick the items of his/her choice on the Mart's website , and the mart authorities load them onto a basket ,fitted onto customised Gas Balloons, that are guided by radio frequency & GPS , to the house from  where it has been requisitioned! A customer is saved the hassles of coming down from her multistoried flat, drive to a mart, and buy the required items! 

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  'beep beep'...the alert tone on Swati's smartphone catches her offguard , and she stops short, to look at the notification only to exclaim in joy, "Yippie! The chunky necklace is mine !" 

"Did your bargain pay off finally ?", Asks Neha, her buddy, who was walking with her to college! 

"Yes",says Swati," the quoted price was Rs 750, but I wasn't prepared to dish out more than Rs 550 for it! I had entered it as my final price last night! TruBuy.in finally relented just now! Gosh! What a killer bargain!" , she adds gleefully!

        

Circa 2030 has got us to bargain on online stores also! The excitement and intricate manipulating skills involved in bargaining, that underlined a street shopping experience, but was missing on the online front, has now been added to online retailing websites too! Customers can now bargain on their product of choice, and quote a final price beyond which he/she is unwilling to pay! If the website accepts the last price, it notifies the customer , immediately , or after a period, so that he/she can proceed to buy it! Cool, huh?? 

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      "Please be seated comfortably, tilt your head a little" ...... Mr Basu finds it absolutely convenient listening to the instructions onscreen, as the webcam in his PC shoots him , and then projects his photo onto the shirt on display at DreamzKart.com , by remodelling it into his 3-dimensional physique, and finally shows him wearing his preferred shirt in blue ! Not quite satisfied with the 'virtual fittings' & the colour, on screen, he opts for a mauve one in a bigger size, and settles down with a sense of pride that he was indeed looking dapper! The augmented reality software had nicely managed to show him the shirt, tucked neatly, all around his rather protruded tummy! 

                  Year 2030 has got us giving virtual trials of clothes , from our homes, where fashion websites are shooting our photos through webcams, converting them into 3-D images through advanced software technology , and portraying ourselves, as if in front of a mirror in a trial room! The chance of  disappointment on getting a flawed garment shipped to our homes, is diminished by a radical 

percentage! 

             

P.S. : All the websites mentioned here are imaginary, and any resemblance to any existing shopping portal is purely coincidental!  :P :P 

This is a work of fiction, written as part of 'The Future of Shopping' contest organised by eBay India. Do try out their official Google Chrome extension here.