ONLINE SHOPPING

ONLINE SHOPPING

1. DISADVANTAGES

   • Delay in delivery
     • Long duration and lack of proper inventory management result in delays in shipment.
       • This frustrates the customer and prevents them from shopping online.
     • Though the duration of selecting, buying and paying for an online product may not take more than 15 minutes; the delivery of the product to customer’ s doorstep takes about 1-3 weeks.
   • Lack of significant discounts in online shops
     • Physical stores offer discounts to customers and attract them so this makes it difficult for e-tailers to compete with the offline platforms.
   • Lack of touch and feel of merchandise in online shopping
     • Lack of touch-feel-try creates concerns over the quality of the product on offer.
     • Online shopping is not quite suitable for clothes as the customers cannot try them on.
   • Lack of interactivity in online shopping
     • Physical stores allow price negotiations between buyers and the seller. The show room sales attendant representatives provide personal attention to customers and help them in purchasing goods.
     • Certain online shopping mart offers service to talk to a sales representative.
   • Lack of shopping experience
     • The traditional shopping exercise provides lot of fun in the form of show-room atmosphere, smart sales attendants, scent and sounds that cannot be experienced through a website.
     • Consumers look forward to it as an opportunity to go out and shop.
   • Lack of close examination in online shopping
     • A customer has to buy a product without seeing actually how it looks like. Customers may click and buy some product that is not really required by them. The electronic images of a product are sometimes misleading. The colour, appearance in real may not match with the electronic images.
       • People like to visit physical stores and prefer to have close examination of good, though it consumes time. The electronic images vary from physical appearance when people buy goods based on electronic images.
   • Frauds in online shopping
     • Sometimes, there is disappearance of shopping site itself. In addition to above, the online payments are not much secured. So, it is essential for e-marketers and retailers to pay attention to this issue to boost the growth of e-commerce.
     • The rate of cyber crimes has been increasing and customers’ credit card details and bank details have been misused which raise privacy issues.
     • Customers have to be careful in revealing their personal information. Some of the e-tailers are unreliable.

2. ADVANTAGES

   • Convenience of online shopping
     • Customers can purchase items from the comfort of their own homes or work place.
     • Shopping is made easier and convenient for the customer through internet. It is also easy to cancel the transactions.
   • No pressure shopping
     • Generally, in physical stores, the sales representatives try to influence the buyers to buy the product.
   • Online shopping saves time
     • Customers do not have to stand in queues in cash counters to pay for the products that have been purchased by them.
     • The customers can also look for the products that are required by them by entering the key words or using search engines.
   • Comparisons
     • Sometimes, price comparisons are also available online.
   • Availability of online shop
   • Online tracking
     • Online consumers can track the order status and delivery status tracking of shipping is also available.
   • Online shopping saves money
     • To attract customers to shop online, e-tailers and marketers offer discounts to the customers.
     • Due to elimination of maintenance, real-estate cost, the retailers are able to sell the products with attractive discounts through online.