Shopping at Online Stores

 

GetItOnTV.com





Wal-Mart

Gold Star Nutrition

Technological innovations and evolution has greatly increased people's access to a varying market that exists around the globe. In the years past, shopping was made by visiting a whole array of stores available. This offers a lot of difficulties as a proper price differentiation analysis cannot be done to ascertain the cheapest of goods to be purchased.
Online shopping by context itself is a means consumers uses to purchase products or services over the interconnections of computer network known as internet.
The online store which is equally known as e-store, web store, or internet shop is synonymous to physical purchasing of products or services in a shopping mall or a retail center built with bricks-and-mortar, the only difference is that it is a virtual store.
The history of business to consumer dated back as May 1984, when Gateshead SIS/Tesco recorded the first business to consumer (B2C). Research and development continued from then and in 1990 the first World Wide Web server and browser was created by Tim Berners-Lee. The development continued rapidly and in the year 1994, online banking development followed suite. As the business to consumer begins to grow, there arose the issue of security and privacy. The consumers needed to be protected when making transactions on the internet.

Within the same year 1994, a company by name Netscape developed and introduced a program called 'Secured Sockets Layers (SSL)'. This program helps to encrypt data transferred online between buyers and merchants. It has become a very important program for secure online shopping since then. Online merchants gradually started evolving with Amazon being first and eBay in 1996 with so many new online stores this day.
Online shopping has become very popular in recent years cutting across the middle class and the upper class. The basic requirements for shopping online are access to a computer on a network, a debit or credit card issued by a bank, and a bank account.

However, research has shown that exposure to technology is an influential factor to online shopping. Although, the main users of internet stores still remains the educated young people with a high level of income. The advent of search engines has equally helped propagating online shopping. Research as proven that one third of people that shop the internet use the search engines to get what they desire and equally about a fourth locates websites by word of mouth. Word of mouth is increasingly becoming important. If shoppers have a good experience on a website then there is a high probability of such customer to return and equally promotes the site to friends. The items that are majorly purchased online ranges from books, clothes, shoes, electronics etc. Cosmetics and groceries are also increasingly purchased online. The aviation industry has also benefited in online transactions as one fourth of plane tickets are bought online.

The logistics are quite easy, a consumer searches for the product and stores in shopping cart software then check out to make payment with any of the diverse payment methods and the product is then delivered. The delivery method may also vary. If it is a movie, music or software then it is downloaded. The product can also be shipped to customers address and if it is an admission ticket then it can be printed.
The major advantage of online shopping is the convenience and cost effectiveness. The advent of internet as provided us the opportunity to be in different stores around the world at the same time.