Online Appliance Strategies
Online shopping will probably blast. These days retailers are adding in-store pickup, offer free shipping and experiment with social media. It is getting hard to say who is pure internet retailer and who are bricks and mortar shops with online portals. All of them tend to be reformulating how we're going to shop online down the road: via a smartphone, tablet computer, in store kiosk, etc.
New legislation may very well be needed in order to protect the customers but this will also affect negatively online shopping. Internet retailers could have to collect sales tax. We are going to speak about legislation latter on in the article.
On the contrary, a growing number of traditional retailers are going for online selling. L.L Bean launched free shipping on all items, Macy's offers free shipping on purchases of $99 or maybe more, Walmart bought digital media platform Kosmix as a way to build their online business and Toys R Us purchased a brand new distribution center to support internet sales.
More and more retailers will implement in-store pick up. Walmart started already by offering in-store pick up for orders placed online. Sears and Kmart are testing home delivery. Farm Stores in Florida offer their shoppers to order groceries online and pick up at a drive through. Some smaller stores might even open designated pick up locations for goods ordered online (example Chronodrive).
These days folks who own a smartphone can use applications that permit them to do price comparisons or use coupons to purchase online. But we are just beginning with this sort of technology.
New applications allow customers to upload video clips modeling new cloths or using a brand new purchase. This is a brand new feature but will unquestionably pick up quickly.
What about the power of social network like Facebook and Twitter? As a consumer you are able to "like" or follow a popular retailer and get discount on deals. For example 12 million consumers "like" Victoria's Secret on Facebook at the time of March 2011.
Jim Okamura (managing partner at Okamura Consulting) says that social shopping will be getting started. He mentions that Facebook offers good return on investment. However there are still numerous retailers which have not taken this advantage yet.
Shopping online is additionally going to help a whole lot of small niche online retailers. Via international or cross border e-commerce, they are now doing 10-20% of their sales outside their very own country (example SousVideSupreme, Zara, Top Shop and StyleTrek).
You'll find these days an increasing number of sites that cut throughout the din of a lot of sites and bring consumers only the information they can be serious about: Dealnews, ConsumerSearch, Brad's Deals and product, mouse click the following article, My Shopping Genie. You can find sites you can use to search out coupon codes, and perhaps to earn money while online shopping. Additionally, there are a number of web sites you might utilize to earn "points" or "bucks". You can accrue these points and bucks and "cash them in" for goodies for example gift cards, real cash, accessories, electronics, so on and the like (Swag Bucks).
A great advantage for consumers of shopping online is that as it becomes simpler to compare prices (via My Shopping Genie for example) stores will be forced to create better experiences with better sales staff and items tough to find elsewhere.
In an article from April 2011 it was revealed that China shut down 410 sites involved with copyright violations and counterfeiting in the first 3 months of 2010. This really is a sign that governments are now trying to interfere in legitimating online sales and making it safe for online shoppers. China's online shopping has been booming (iResearch analysis). China has more than 450 million internet users, being the world's largest. China's shopping on-line transaction volume jumped 89.4 % year on year. About 148 million customers purchased goods or services online in 2010. China's online economy grew rapidly in the first quarter of 2011, mainly driven by the development of e-commerce and mobile internet. As a result of this rise in online shopping, local Chinese authorities are placing more emphasis on monitoring online shops.
Another example is Malaysia. Malaysians spent $739millions online shopping last year based on a survey released by PayPal. The PayPal's growth in Malaysia last year was the strongest within the region Asia and India at 70%. The largest number of online retail purchases are made on local web sites. However the United States will be the most popular country Malaysians bought from.
Even as we mentioned above, governments are now trying to make the on-line shopping safer for the customers.
