Once upon a time, Americans drove to the store and spent an hour, sometimes more, at the local grocery market, hardware store, greenhouse and other types of specialty stores looking for products on their shopping lists.

Now, Americans can have products sent to them with a few swipes and taps on their smartphones while they go about their lives.

Online businesses have become quite an influence in how people buy products.

While these businesses are wonderfully convenient, their existence and success have created an equal and opposite reaction, to put in Isaac Newton’s terms.

Supermarkets have been increasingly threatened by online businesses because of the convenience those businesses provide. Not having to get in a car and drive to the nearest store and take time out of the already busy day is enticing people enough to buy from companies such as Amazon.com.

So is the looming threat of online businesses to supermarkets a detriment to society?

Looking back into history, this battle has been repeated time and time again. The same thing happened when supermarkets forced many traditional grocery markets and other specialty stores go out of business.

This cycle of business competition, creativity and relevancy is the normal progression of business models winning over others. To make more profit, businesses must beat out competitors by enticing more customers. To entice customers, new products must be created. To create successful new products, businesses look at what society currently wants and needs.

When Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, started his company, he saw customers wanted the convenience of online shipping. Through good business practices and staying relevant to the American society, Bezos now controls one of the largest companies in the U.S., just like Walmart was at one point.

Hope is not lost for Walmart, however. If there was no hope, all traditional specialty stores would no longer exist. There are still some around, however. The reason why they still exist is because they adapted to stay relevant to society.

As their predecessors did, supermarkets must adapted what they sell and become just as or more relevant as online businesses.

So far, supermarkets have chosen to adapt by developing grocery pickup. Some stores deliver groceries to front steps of homes. Others have teamed up with online businesses, like Whole Foods partnering with Amazon to ship the healthy grocery store’s food. These adaptations build on an advantage supermarkets already have over online business: the option to get the product the day you need it. The grocery pick-up makes the time to get groceries even less, making it more enticing to buy at supermarkets. Plus, online business can’t provide products on the day customers need it like supermarkets can. So all in all, supermarkets are in no danger of becoming irrelevant.

Business is about competition, creating solutions and products to become the top competitor in their field. The battle between online business and supermarkets is another saga in the constant struggle to stay relevant and needed.