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History of Online Shopping

Since about 1990, online shopping has emerged into every corner of life, linking people to the culture of capitalism in frequent and daily ways. [1]. It lets us buy what we want, when we want at our convenience , and helps us to imagine ourselves buying, owning, and having positive outcomes by the goods available out there on the web.[1]. Shopping has been a way of identifying oneself in today's culture by what we purchase and how we use our purchases. Online shopping has always been a middle to high class commodity since its first arrival on the internet in society.[2]. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee created The World Wide Web Browser.[2]. A few years later in 1994 other advances took place such as Online Banking, After that, the next big development was the opening of an online pizza shop by Pizza Hut.[2]. In that same year Netscape introduced SSL encryption to enable encryption over the data transfered online which has become essential for online shopping. In 1995, Amazon started up with online shopping, then in 1996, eBay opened up for online shopping as well.[2]. The idea of online shopping pre-dates the World Wide Web for there were earlier experiments involving real-time transaction processing from a domestic television. The technology, based on Videotex, was first demonstrated by Michael Aldrich in 1979 who designed and installed systems in the UK, including the first Tesco pilot system in the 1980s.[3].

Customers
In general, shopping has always catered to middle class and upper class women. Shopping is fragmented and pyramid-shaped. At the pinnacle are elegant boutiques for the affluent, a huge belt of inelegant but ruthlessly efficient “discounters” flog plenty at the pyramid’s precarious middle. According to the anaylsis of Susan D. Davis, at its base are the world’s workers and poor, on whose cheapened labor the rest of the pyramid depends for its incredible abundance.[1]. Shopping has evolved from single stores to large malls with different services such as offering delivery, attentive service and store credit and accepting return. [1]. These new additions to shopping have encouraged and targeted middle class women. In recent years, online shopping has become popular; however, it still caters to the middle and upper class. In order to shop online, one must be able to have access to a computer, a bank account and a debit card. Shopping has evolved with the growth of technology. According to research found in the Journal of Electronic Commerce, if we focus on the demographic characteristics of the in-home shopper, in general, the higher the level of education, income, and occupation of the head of the household, the more favourable the perception of non-store shopping.[4]. It should be remembered that an influential factor in consumer attitude towards non-store shopping is exposure to technology, since it has been demonstrated that increased exposure to technology increases the probability of developing favourable attitudes towards new shopping channels. [4]. Online shopping widened the target audience to men and women of the middle class. At first, main users of online shopping were young men with a high level of income and a university education. [4]. This profile is changing. For example, in USA in the early years of Internet there were very few women users, but by 2001 women were 52.8% of the online population. [4]. Sociocultural pressure has made men generally more independent in their purchase decisions, while women place greater value on personal contact and social relations. [4]. In addition, male shoppers are more independent when deciding on purchasing products because unlike women, they don’t necessarily need to see or try on the product.

Trends
One third of people that shop online use a search engine to find what they are looking for and about one fourth of people find websites by word of mouth. [5]. Word of mouth has increased as a leading way that people find websites to shop from. When an online shopper has a good first experience with a certain website sixty percent of the time they will return to that website to buy more.[5].
Books are one of the things bought most online, however clothes, shoes and accessories are all very popular things to buy online. Cosmetics, nutrition products and groceries are increasingly being purchased online.[5]. About one fourth of travelers are buying their plane tickets online because it is a quick and easy way to compare airline travel and make a purchase. Online shopping provides more freedom and control than shopping in a store.[1] [5]. According to sociological perspective online shopping is arguably the most predictable way to shop.[1]. One knows exactly what website to go to, how much the product will cost, and how long it will take for the product to reach them. Online shopping has become extremely routine and predictable, which is one of it’s great appeals to the

Convenience
Online stores are usually available 24 hours a day, and many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home. A visit to a conventional retail store requires travel and must take place during business hours. Searching or browsing an online catalog can be faster than browsing the aisles of a physical store. Consumers with dial-up Internet connections rather than broadband have much longer load times for content-rich web sites and have a considerably slower online shopping experience. Some consumers prefer interacting with people rather than computers (and vice versa), sometimes because they find computers hard to use. Not all online retailers have succeeded in making their sites easy to use or reliable. In most cases, merchandise must be shipped to the consumer, introducing a significant delay and potentially uncertainty about whether or not the item was actually in stock at the time of purchase. Bricks-and-clicks stores offer the ability to buy online but pick up in a nearby store. Many stores give the consumer the delivery company's tracking number for their package when shipped, so they can check its status online and know exactly when it will arrive. For efficiency reasons, online stores generally do not ship products immediately upon receiving an order. Orders are only filled during warehouse operating hours, and there may be a delay of anywhere from a few minutes to a few days to a few weeks before in-stock items are actually packaged and shipped. Many retailers inform customers how long they can expect to wait before receiving a package, and whether or not they generally have a fulfillment backlog. A quick response time is sometimes an important factor in consumers' choice of merchant. A weakness of online shopping is that, even if a purchase can be made 24 hours a day, the customer must often be at home during normal business hours to accept the delivery. For many professionals this can be difficult, and absence at the time of delivery can result in delays, or in some cases, return of the item to the retailer. Automated delivery booths, such as DHL's Packstation, have tried to address this problem.In the event of a problem with the item - it is not what the consumer ordered, or it is not what they expected - consumers are concerned with the ease with which they can return an item for the correct one or for a refund. Consumers may need to contact the retailer, visit the post office and pay return shipping, and then wait for a replacement or refund. Some online companies have more generous return policies to compensate for the traditional advantage of physical stores. For example, the online shoe retailer Zappos.com includes labels for free return shipping, and does not charge a restocking fee, even for returns which are not the result of merchant error.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

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