Does the modern technology make the small businesses’ lives easier?

Many people believe that the modern era has built a great opportunity for the small businesses. As we can see that the costs of advertisement and start opening shops have reduced to a great extent. The Internet allows people to shop in virtual shops (online stores), the cost of opening one virtual shop is extremely low and sometimes is completely free. For a small business or a new entrepreneur, it has become a lot easier to sell their products. Moreover, the social media also helps small businesses to advertise themselves. Access to social media is free, this provides small businesses with an opportunity of free advertising. Therefore, many people see that the cost of start up a business is lower and the cost of advertising could be close to zero and come out a conclusion that small businesses are easier to growth.

However, this is not the full image of the story. The modern technology also makes the big businesses stronger as well. The modern technology does not include the Internet; it also includes other innovations. Let’s talk about the use of the Internet in big businesses. The big businesses also can set up their online shops just like what many small businesses do. The advantage they have is extremely important that they do not need to worry too much about the trust issue. The brands of the big businesses reduce the customers’ concerns about their credibility which put themselves in a stronger position when customers make their choices. Moreover, the current search engines are more friendly to the big businesses that the big businesses are searched more often than the small businesses so they are always above the small businesses on the search lists. Therefore, when people search a product which is produced by a large firm as well as several small firms, due to the rank of the search list the large firm is more favored by people. This can create a loop that strengthen the big businesses, that more people search big businesses, then more people consume from the big businesses, then the big businesses maintain at the top of the search lists, so the big businesses are searched by more people. Moreover, the rich resources of big businesses allow the big businesses to advertise almost everywhere online. This cannot happen to the small businesses. In addition, small businesses traditionally have one advantage that they can establish a good relationship with the locals; however, the Internet changes the shopping habit that establishing a good relationship becomes less important, or at least it makes big businesses easier to establish good relationship with their customers by employing professional online service teams.

Besides the use of the Internet, large businesses employ other  modern innovations to boost their productivities and such rich resources  are not available to small businesses or new established businesses.