Comparing online and traditional retail shopping experiences

Online vs. Traditional Shopping

The tremendous growth of the Internet over the past decade has given a significant boost to e-commerce and made online shopping a part of every-day experience of many people. However, since online shopping is still a relatively new phenomenon, and has its advantages as well as disadvantages, it has not yet realized its full potential. In this paper, I shall compare and contrast online and traditional retail shopping; look at some of the reasons that drives consumers to shop online and discuss which shopping experience is more satisfying.

The Advantages

Online shopping provides the convenience of shopping from the comfort of one's home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week -- since online stores never close. It enables a customer to avoid braving the weather, the hassles of navigating traffic or trying to find parking places -- common requirements of traditional retail shopping.

Online shopping provides an enormous variety of products to choose from. The choice for an online shopper is much greater than in traditional shopping. Besides, specialized items and hard to find products are often available online.

The greater choice of products and the avoidance of brick and mortar expense for the cyber shops enable lower prices. New ways of selling and buying such as online auctions also contribute to low prices.

The Internet provides a much greater opportunity to research and compare the products before buying. Independent reviews and ratings are also available online.

There is less pressure on online shoppers to buy, as no salesperson is present to corner customers into buying something they don't really want. (Granovsky, 2000; Gilman, 1999)

Which Shopping Experience is More Satisfying?

The answer to the question depends on what particular product one is buying. Online purchase of things such as automobiles (that one likes to test-drive), or clothes (that you would like to try on before buying) or furniture (whose design and texture cannot be truly gauged through online pictures) is best done in the traditional manner. Other items such as books, which can be much more easily located online, are appropriate for online buying. For me personally, online shopping experience can never really replace the immediacy of a retail shopping experience. However, I usually combine the two in a way, by doing online research about a product (comparing prices, reading customer and expert reviews) before buying the product in the conventional manner. In this way, I believe that I benefit from the advantages of both types of the shopping experience.