Thursday, February 3, 2011

online shopping.....

Online shopping....

Online shopping is the process whereby consumers directly buy goods or services from a seller in real-time, without an intermediary service, over the Internet for example is eBay. If an intermediary service is present the process is called electronic commerce. An online shop, e-shop, e-store, internet shop, web shop, web store, online store, or virtual store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.

For me, the advantage of online shopping is price and selection. It is because quickly seek out deals for items or services with many different vendors.  Search engines, online price comparison services and discovery shopping engines can be used to look up sellers of a particular product or service.

The disadvantages also from me is privacy. The privacy of personal information is a significant issue for some consumers. Different legal jurisdictions have different laws concerning consumer privacy, and different levels of enforcement. Many consumers wish to avoid spam and telemarketing which could result from supplying contact information to an online merchant. In response, many merchants promise not to use consumer information for these purposes, or provide a mechanism to opt-out of such contacts.

Many websites keep track of consumers shopping habits in order to suggest items and other websites to view. Brick-and-mortar stores also collect consumer information. Some ask for address and phone number at checkout, though consumers may refuse to provide it. Many larger stores use the address information encoded on consumers' credit cards (often without their knowledge) to add them to a catalog mailing list. This information is obviously not accessible to the merchant when paying in cash.

In conclusion, online shopping can give advantage if you use it more carefully. But, it can become disadvantages and also can make you loss if you don’t mention about the information of the online shopping.