#digitalretailing

There are several advantages as well as disadvantages to shopping online. Consumers are shopping online now more than ever due to the COVID pandemic. 

Advantages of shopping online:

-Not having to leave your home to shop

-Having product reviews at your fingertips

-Saving the consumer’s time

-Can potentially save money by not impulse items in store

-Price comparison amongst different retailers

Disadvantages of shopping online:

-Potential for unsecured transactions

-May fall victim to scams from unligitimized retailers

-Unable to physically look at the product(s)

-Potentially long shipping times

-Unable to pay with cash 

-If purchasing clothing or shoes, unable to try item on first

-Returns that are not simple

The examples listed above are just a few different areas of whether or not online shopping is advantageous. With the pandemic, it has been nice for relatives to have the convenience of sending gifts through online purchasing to their loved ones if they were unable to get together over the holidays. The pandemic has also caused some problems when it comes to shipping delays as well as supply chain issues. My siblings and myself were looking at getting my parents a Blackstone grill for Christmas and were pricing around. They were out of stock in a lot of different retailers. We ended up seeing it advertised at Walmart for one of their Black Friday Deals. We went on immediately to purchase it and it let us go through the checkout process and everything.....and then later we received an email stating that it was out of stock! She ended up purchasing it through another retailer. Two weeks later, my sister’s card was re-charged stating that it shipped! So she called their customer service and they told her the only option was to return the item. It was very odd how that whole transaction went about! 

After completing additional research on this topic, I came across another advantage of shopping online that had not occurred to me! Discreet purchases are a lot easier to purchase online than in a store such as lingerie and other adult purchases (Jain, 2020). This definitely makes sense to want to purchase this online and save some embarrassment or fear of judgement in person! 

Personally, I pay very close attention to online reviews when I shop online. This is a huge advantage as you miss out on these when shopping in store. Oftentimes when shopping for electronics or small appliances, something may look like a really good product for the price initially, but end up malfunctioning or breaking after a couple months. 

I know that I had previously mentioned impulse shopping to be a disadvantage of in-person shopping but it can also be a disadvantage of online as well. If you know exactly which item you are buying and not browsing, it can save you from making an impulse purchase whereas in a store you can see multiple items to tempt you along your route...not to mention the strategic items placed while you are waiting in line to check out! Many retailers can come back to “haunt” you after searching for something on their website, this is called retargeting (Johnston Taylor, 2016). I definitely notice this when I follow a link to a brand from Facebook! A few months ago, I saw and ad for The North Face and had my eye on a jacket. I wanted to take a closer look at it and followed the link from Facebook to their website. I ended up seeing that same jacket on my news feed all the time for the next few weeks! This is a very smart method of getting consumers to go back and purchase an item that they had previously looked into. 

One way that online retailers can help secure the transactions on their sites is by having a secured payment method available for shoppers. Examples of these include PayPal, ApplePay, and even Venmo! I personally prefer to use PayPal as I have had them help me in the past with a transaction through eBay where I never received the item. It was very simple for them to refund my money to me so I feel very secure in using them for payments. 

There are still many different advantages and disadvantages to online shopping. Online shopping has been exponentially increasing in use over the last few decades and has actually made many brick-and-mortar stores close and only utilize online sales. I am sure this trend will only continue in the years to come. 

References:

Jain, A. (4, May 2020). Top 10 Benefits and Disadvantages of Online Shopping. Retrieved from:

https://toughnickel.com/frugal-living/Online-shopping-sites-benefits

Johnston Taylor, S. (23, March 2016). 6 Potential Downsides of Online Shopping. Retrieved from: