Dec 15

Retail or E-tail?

Written By admin

Online shopping has become very popular. With the busy lifestyles a lot of people lead working 9-5 and many others longer, there is no time to go shopping as by the time you have finished work the shops will be closed unless you work in a City such as London where you can shop for longer, either way for most of us we do not have time to go shopping and the last thing you want to do at the weekend is fight with the rest of the public in a grotty town to do something you could actually do at home - Anything you can buy in a shop can now be purchased online. DVDs, music, clothes, jewellery, electronics, cars, groceries, antiques and pretty much anything imaginable. This saves time traveling into town, cost occurred with petrol and parking or public transport and no having to push your way through a bunch of kids with nothing better to do, to then come home without anything because the item you are after was not in stock, all you have done is wasted the afternoon. Buying online means you can search several websites from the comfort of your own home or at work in your lunch break. Most of the time an item you are after will be cheaper online as online retailers do not have as much running costs as you would running a shop. The best part of it all is that they will be delivered to your door if you are not at home though you may have to go and pick up the item from a local delivery depo.

UK online shoppers will spend £.6.25 billion on groceries a year by 2010, an increase of 235% over last year, this was from a study by PayPal. Research by the online payment firm suggested that us Brits will spend £39 billion online with the grocery sector dominating the market. The rise will be fueled by the increasing rise of 24.9 million internet shoppers. Carl Olav Scheible, head of merchant services at PayPal said: “Over the past few years, we’ve seen the internet gradually eating away at the high street”. DIY firms are expected to take in £1.2 billion, clothing and shoes will make £2.27 billion and the online market for electrical goods, is expected to be worth £4.6 billion with the popularity of mp3 players, mobile phones, game consoles, digital cameras and flat screen HD televisions.

Shops will never die out though as there are times when a shop beats buying something online. Most websites now give free postage but that means it will take a good few days to arrive as long as they have it in stock. If you suddenly decide you want a film on a Saturday for the evening then you will have to buy it from a local shop, regarding buying groceries online most people like to pick the best bunch of banana’s for example which you can not do online. There is no way you could buy a car online without looking at it first as you will want to take it for a test drive, if it is second hand then you will need to check out the condition and make sure it is all legit (even though people do buy cars through internet auction sites without viewing them- not to be advised!) You do have to be careful with what you are buying as a website is just a front and you do not know what is behind the scenes, only buy from trusted websites and if something is too good to be true then it probably is, as watchdog have looked into eBay and Amazon recently with sellers selling replica goods or even items that do not exist.

I am glad the way the internet shopping is going as I love searching for films available to buy on DVD and there will always be a website with some sort of special offer as it is more competitive than buying locally. Personally I probably shop 50/50.