Shop Candy Cartel

All sorts of people shop online for all kinds of reasons.

First, there is the convenience of being able to shop 24 hours a day for any type of product imaginable. The ability to shop from home allows many people who have trouble getting to real world shops such as elderly or disabled people or others with transport or mobility issues to still purchase the products and services they need. Many people also have trouble attending shops during their opening hours, such as those that work the same hours as shop opening times, mothers with young children and no one to mind them.

There are several advantages to shopping online, the first one being the ability to shop at a time that is convenient to you, not just when the shops are open. The second advantage of shopping online is that goods are often cheaper as the seller does not have the costs of running a shop and having to pay wages to salespeople, insurance and all of the other running costs of a real world business. Online shopping can also be a lot more comfortable than real world shopping, you do not have to deal with the weather – you won’t get rained on for instance shopping online.

A huge advantage of shopping online is that you have the opportunity to compare as many products and prices as you want without having to spend the time and money to travel between several different shops. You will also be able to read reviews that have been written by other people who have purchased the item you are considering; you will be able to find out about the item from a genuine user not just the salesperson. Finally you will be able to find and buy products all over the world not just in your local area – this makes purchasing hard to find items a lot easier.

The main disadvantage of shopping online is that you have to pay shipping costs and have to wait for the items you purchased to be shipped and delivered. (This could take several weeks if you have purchased a product from overseas, and the costs of shipping may outweigh any savings you made on the purchase price.) You will not be able to purchase an item you need to use immediately online.

Another disadvantage is that you have to buy the item relying purely on a photograph and description, you cannot feel or see the item you want to buy. It can sometimes be quite hard to judge the size or quality of some items purely from a photograph. The final disadvantage of shopping online is that it is much harder and takes longer to return faulty goods; you will have to repack it and pay to ship it back to the seller. It can literally take weeks to exchange a faulty product purchased online.

In summary, the main advantages of shopping online are convenience and cost savings, while the main disadvantage is that the item is not immediately available, and you cannot inspect it personally before you make your purchase.

By: Vincent Norman

About the Author:

Caffeinated Content

ComScore has just announced that US shoppers have broken the record for online shopping. The Monday after the US Thanksgiving holiday has come to be known as “Cyber Monday”, as online shoppers cash in on holiday specials. This year UK shoppers spent over $733 million in 24 hours. It was appropriately named report, “Holiday Season e-Commerce” has announced that since the 1st of November, 2007, over 10.7 billion dollars have been spent online.

The day was named “Cyber Monday” as it previously been recorded as the day when most US residents start doing their Christmas shopping. With the benefits of buying online, citizens have turned to the Internet to order their gifts online rather than going to the mall. ComScore, an online tracker company, estimates that the shopping craze will continue for the next few weeks, up until Christmas. There are expectations that expenditure will reach 800 million dollars on some days.

Cyber Monday’s online spending went up by 21% this year, beating last year’s record. The day is the most significant spike in all holiday spending. The number of online buyers grew by a total of 38% from the previous record. However the average amount a person spent online dropped by 12%.

It has been reported that the decrease in spending could be attributed to companies offering discounts and becoming more “internet savvy” with their advertisements and sales. A fair amount of the large companies in the US had Cyber Monday sales online for the new trend of online shopping.

The report showed that 6% of US internet users made online purchases on the Monday, with 60% of them coming from work computers. A few retail websites went down on the day, as the traffic surge caused technical problems with their sites. Error messages popped up on users’ screens instead of completed transaction notices. Yahoo reported that the traffic on their Yahoo! Merchant Solutions caused smaller retail companies’ websites to black out for several hours.

However, larger retail sites, such as Wal-Mart, Dell, Best Buy, Circuit City and Overstock.com jumped up their traffic scale by 100%. There was a 261% increase reported on the MSN Shopping site operated by Microsoft. However, it is not only websites that are finding the boom in traffic stressful; credit and house markets are also being buffeted by the extra strain.

The Friday after Thanks Giving is known as Black Friday. The National Retail Federation showed that, according to their survey, more than 147 million shoppers went online on Black Friday. This is up from last year, by 4.8%. Overall there’s been more than a 4% rise in holiday spending this year.

Black Friday was originally named due to the amount of high traffic on the day. Although it is not an official holiday, most UK citizens take the day off for a long weekend. Because it is also the start of Christmas shopping season, there is a large amount of traffic on the roads. As online shopping becomes popular, traffic on the roads is moving over to traffic on websites for the shopping.

With delivery times taken into consideration, online sales should relax and calm down as the festive season declines. However, sales at shops and malls should slowly pick up with Christmas now only a mere month away.

By: Celeste Yates

About the Author:

Caffeinated Content