Reasons Why People Shop Online.

In our last article we talked about the origin of online shopping and how did customers shift from brick and mortar stores to virtual shops. There are different reasons why people are moving to eCommerce portals and today we will put light on few of the major reasons why more and more people are following the trend these days. In a survey where everyone was allowed to choose multiple choices for why they prefer shopping online. Following were the results.

• Time Saving: The top reason for people to shop online is that it is Time Saving. A whopping 73% voted online shopping to be a time saving option and why not, you don’t have to worry about going and coming back from the markets, no queues at the counter. “In today’s world where people juggling between work and family hardly get time for themselves, online shopping has come as a relief. 90% of my stuff I bought in last year, I bought it online” said Rupinder whose work hours start at 10 in the morning and there is no set time when he returns home.
• More Variety: 67% of the people said it’s easier to browse through more options when you are shopping online. One does not have to worry about going to n number of shops to get the product that they are looking for; you can browse 1000s of products if you invest a little time to browse through a couple of portals and choose the product that you feel best for your use.

• Easy to Compare Prices: A good 59% people feel the major reason why they shop online is that it is easy to compare prices when you are shopping online. Nupur, a final year Political Science student says “I always check prices on websites like pricedekho.com before buying a product so that I get stuff on lowest prices; there is no such option available in physical shopping and thus online shopping works best for me.”
• No Crowd: A very close fourth position, with 58% votes, is taken by the fact that shopping online is perfect solution to avoid crowded markets. For those who don’t like going to markets just because there is endless crowd in markets, eCommerce portals have come as a life saver.
• Lower Prices: 55% people say they shop online because they get lower prices than what they get in a physical store. The major reason for this is that eCommerce portals have global presence unlike the local shops and thus all this virtual stores regardless of their base location, serve people of all regions and thus compete with every other virtual store, thus they have a huge competition and thus reduce their prices in order get new customers and retain them.
• Spend Less on Fuel: The rising fuel prices have made 40% of the people to mention they prefer online shopping because they save on fuel prices. Online shopping has made people follow the concept of “Every penny saved is a penny earned.”
• Less Taxes: 30% people prefer shopping online because they feel the taxes they have to pay at eCommerce portals is lesser than online stores. Ashish, a CA who works in an MNC says he shops online for a simple reason: Lower Taxes.

3% users had other reasons for shopping online. For Monica “Getting notification of “Out of Stock” products whenever they become available in future” is a ground-breaker, while many mentioned that they don’t have to worry about carrying shopping bags as the reason why they prefer online shopping.

One of the major reason why I go shopping online, though it did not get much votes, is that the online stores are open according to my convenience, whether I want to shop at 1 in the night or 7 in the morning or during the lunch hour in my office. I do not have to wait for weekends or worry about the closing time of my favourite markets.

Rise of eCommerce Industry

Holiday season has arrived and everybody is in a shopping mood. Earlier we used to see markets full of people buying gifts for their loved ones but over a few years less and less people are seen in the markets. One of the major reasons for this is rise of online shopping. In the busy and hectic schedules that people have these days, e-commerce industry commonly known as “online shopping” has come as a great relief for the customers. Here we will talk about the sudden shift from the brick and mortar stores to virtual stores but before that lets put a light on when did online shopping begin?

Most of you will be surprised to know that the first company to use online shopping was Thomas Holiday in 1981 and it dates back to 1979 when it was first demonstrated by a British Entrepreneur Michael Aldrich who invented it. While Thomas Holiday used online shopping for B2B market, the first one to use it for B2C was Tesco in 1984. In 1994 came online banking which made online shopping easier to implement and then there was no looking back. In the same year Netscape devised encryptions for secure data transfer, Pizza Hut came with an online Pizza store, Intershop launched its first online shopping system. In 1995 Amazon.com online shopping site and eBay went live and the world was ready for a revolution. At the break of 21^st century online shopping had started gaining momentum and in less than a decade it became popular all around the globe. 

Infographic representation of Global eCommerce Sales
for 2010-2013

One of the main reasons of initial hesitancy was that people were not used to buying products till the time they did not see it in their hands, also customers were habitual of first holding the goods in their hands and then taking out money; but in online shopping they first had to pay and the goods would be delivered in around a week or two. Also the question of how authentic the goods being delivered at home were arose. For many years a large number of customers felt that the products being delivered by e-commerce websites might be duplicate or used; but these myths have been broken to a large extent. Reasons why online shopping is becoming popular include not only it being an easier option, but it also saves valuable time of visiting n number of shops and money on fuel.

The shift towards online shopping can be gauged by the revenue it generated in past couple of years.

• In 2010 online sales generated a total of US$ 572.5 Billion
  
  
• This figure rose to US$ 680.6 in 2011
• The figures for 2012 were US$ 820.5
• While for 2013 it was projected to reach US$ 963 and has already reached the figure.

With the holiday season starting it might cross a trillion US$. These figures only suggest the acceptance of the e-commerce industry and the future it has.

Then there is another side of the story, the number of big players in the online industry has also grown many folds in these past four years. And anyone looking to start a business in this industry has to cash on the limited time left before the existing e-shops completely conquer the market. It might be a matter of 2 years at most after which there would be so many ecommerce store that the new ones will have to have a very innovative USP to make their space.

We wish all the budding entrepreneurs who are looking to enter this industry a very good luck.