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Intro to me!

    Welcome to my first official blog post!! This will be an introduction to me and what you will be reading about here in the future.  Retail REWIRED is all about the ever changing clothing industry and how technology along with social media can influence what we buy. 

    A simple 5 second ad can be placed on your FYP ( for you page) on places like TikTok or Instagram, and some people immediately are hooked. I for one completely understand, and have too fallen victim to product scams. I consider myself to be independent, smart, and thought I could never fall for something as blatant as an off brand scam. But here we are today, $80 down the drain. Some companies put fake websites that look IDENTICAL to popular brands, and mark down all the prices. Once you buy them, they send a fake tracking number and let me tell you, you will never receive that package. 

    While scam websites are one way people lose money, social media platforms have also transformed the way we shop—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. My blog is hopefully going to save us all from that, and you can learn from my many, many mistakes. 

    TikTok just recently developed a way for their users to shop right on the app, it’s called TikTok Shop. Surprisingly, this is not a scam. It is actually really cheap, and millions of different products are right at our fingertips. All of the content creators on the app can promote products that are available in the shop, just by making a video about it and tagging the product in the description. It takes two clicks and it's in your cart. The catch? Creators can be a part of paid sponsorships to get their followers to buy the product. There's millions of videos promoting millions of products, but with TikTok being a full time job for some of these influencers, the promotions are mostly for their own benefit. I am not saying paid partnerships are bad, if a high end brand came to me asking me to promote it, I probably would too. The problem lies where the creators aren’t truthful about the quality of a product. More and more people are throwing away their money on an item that they thought may be worth it, because in their eyes, a trustworthy person told them to. 

    This doesn’t just apply to clothing—it happens with food, beauty products, and just about anything else influencers can monetize. Humans are naturally impressionable, and we all want to be part of trends. Social media platforms know this and use it to their advantage, often in ways we don’t even realize.

    The way we shop has completely changed. While social media makes it easier to access deals and smaller companies, it also leaves us vulnerable to be misled. Whether it’s creators promoting a product that just is not living up to the hype, or completely false advertising, at the end of the day it’s up to us as the consumer to research, and think before we buy.


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