Buy at the Mall helps more the environment to use the Internet

This is a surprising statement from a new study of the Simon Property Group, the largest owner of shopping malls of the United States.
The argument is that buyers who go shopping often go and buy more than one item, reducing their environmental impact. Already online shoppers return products with more frequency, and the sending of goods requires more packaging.
"We want to stress that consumer choices matter," says Mona Benisi, Director of sustainability of Simon.
This, however, is an open question. Other studies have found that consumers often can reduce the environmental impact when shopping online, and experts say that the result depends on the circumstances and the individual behavior of buyer.
There is no exact answer for this question, according to Jason Mathers, an expert in supply chain of the Environmental Defense Fund, who works with businesses, including Simon, in environmental issues. "If you''re looking to buy an item and your choice is between driving a good distance to a store or buy online, it would probably be best to buy online."
The disclosure of research Simon, made at the beginning of the month, occurs at a time when the retail property owners and their tenants facing the rapid growth of e-commerce. Last year, retail sales in the u.s. grew by 1.4% compared to 2014, but online sales jumped 14.6 percent, according to data from the u.s. Government.
In Brazil, sales of products and services for digital media reached $ 19.6 billion in 2015, an expansion of 40% compared to $ 14 billion in 2013, according to new research by Euromonitor International about digital consumption.
The company''s estimate is that this value reaches $ 28 billion in 2020, an expansion of 42.60% more. About 87% of online purchases made in Brazil are still carried out by personal computers and only 8% for smartphones. It is expected that the purchases by 97% by 2020 from growing smartphone, according to Euromonitor.
Despite the expansion of recent years, the volume of online shopping in Brazil is much smaller than the 5% of the USA, which, according to the same survey, was $ 653.7 billion in 2015, a high of 34% from 2013.
In the us, retailers and commercial real estate owners are having a hard time to adjust and meet the needs of buyers that can, for example, prefer shopping online, but want to get the products in stores. The owners of the properties are also trying to offer most enriching experiences in malls, restaurants and entertainment. At the same time, companies are giving investors and consumers more information on the environmental impact of its business and efforts to reduce it.
The American Group Simon owned or had an ownership interest in approximately 200 retail properties in 37 u.s. States and in Puerto Rico at the end of 2015, including malls.
The report was prepared with the help of Deloitte Consulting LLP. He has monitored like a basket of four common products — women''s tops, women''s shoes, coffee pots and glasses of wine — was distributed and sold through the two channels, in addition to the materials and energy consumed along the way.
One of the factors analyzed by Simon was the number of people who go together to the Mall and "the idea that the buyers link your trips to the mall with other tasks. The study also examined the impact of the return of products both online and in stores.
Simon did not disclose publicly all the data collected by the analysis, some of which would be unique to Benisi and would be shopping malls in operation. Examples of unique data include the average number of products that each adult bought on a visit to a Simon Mall and the distance between the home and the Mall.
According to the report, the online shopping have a 7% greater environmental impact than malls, considering the purchase of the same amount of products in the two cases.
"By analyzing the data of purchases that represent actual customer behaviors of malls and online, [the research] Simon showed that shopping in malls represent a sustainable performance better than shopping online," says the study. "Moreover, in an era when consumers want deliveries on the same day or at a time faster, requiring more resources such as fuel, the negative impact of online shopping should make it worse," says the report.
But some academic researchers disagree.
A dissertation of the 2013 Center for transportation and logistics at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT), for example, examined various forms of consumers shopping in stores or online. "The results show that the online option is the most friendly to the environment in a wide range of scenarios," concluded the dissertation.
MIT dissertation examined how some consumers combine the two channels, sometimes searching the products both in stores and online or buying online and seeking or doing the same back in stores.
As a result, the dissertation also discovered that "with more consumers seeking physical alternatives for your online purchases, some of the environmental gains quickly if they lose".
Mathers, of the Environmental Defense Fund, believes Simon''s report "valuable" because it stresses the importance of individual consumer behaviour.
"The main question is not which is better," he says. "The question is: how each can reduce its impact." (Collaborated Eduardo Magoss)