With more money being spent online than in our high streets, the Internet has changed the way we buy our goods, from food shopping to Christmas gift shopping, we can buy everything we need online Convenience. Over the past two years there has been more money spent online than in the high street shops, proving that more and more of us prefer to take our laptops out on our laps and buy online rather than trawling through busy and crowded shops.
Some high street shops can not quite understand why people prefer to shop online, but instead of getting angry and disheartened over the matter they have simply started their own online shops in conjunction with their offline offerings. Many of the bigger shops and chains do have online ordering facilities because they realise that instead of losing out, they may as well cover both options.
Price – Prices are generally cheaper on the Internet for two reasons. The first reason is the competition on the Internet means that each store is continually battling for the cheapest prices. With price comparison sites like Kelkoo and Ciao, having the cheapest price has never been more important, with competition really forcing down prices online. The second reason prices tend to be cheaper is because many online shops do not have the same overheads as many of the shops you see in town, meaning that they can pass on savings to their customers.
Choice – Online shops have really opened up the choice of products that is now available to us, meaning that literally anything we may wish to buy can be found on the WWW. You can buy everything you really could possible imagine online, from food shopping through to disability aids, the choice is bewildering and sometimes really very scary. Choice to the consumer is one of the biggest things that most require, because the more choice consumers have in terms of ranges and sellers, normally the better the price they can find.
Location – No matter where you are in the country, you can normally have anything you order on your doorstep within a couple of days, saving you the hassle of having to travel and pick your goods up from the shops yourself. One of the biggest plus points when it comes to shopping online is the fact that wherever you live in the country you can normally benefit from quick delivery options which are normally really affordable and very efficient.
Accessibility – If you have children or are elderly, then getting to the shops can be really quite difficult, let alone carting all of your shopping home again afterwards. For many people that live in rural areas and do not drive, then you can be looking at long bus trips just to get to your nearest city, which is sometimes just not feasible for certain categories of people. Online shopping has made life so much easier for parents, the elderly, disabled people and people that reside in country locations and means that they can buy what they want and have it delivered to their door.