Online shopping a boon or bane?

The 2021 Global Payments Report by Worldpay FIS (financial technology products and services provider) found out online shopping trends across 41 countries (including India). According to this report, e-commerce businesses have boomed in this current covid situation.

It also claims that India's e-commerce space will be around 85 per cent up and will reach $111 billion by 2024. This is due to the rise in demand of contactless doorstep delivery of almost all essential products & services.

The challenges faced by the e-commerce industry at large can differ from country to country. In more rigid and e-commerce-reliant nations like the US, the biggest difficulties are faced with respect to customer loyalty and cyber security. Since most orders are prepaid, packages are usually left on customer doorsteps and not handed directly over to customers. This keeps RTO (Return to Origin) numbers low, making up only 1-2 percent of all orders. E-commerce businesses in India, on the other hand, usually end up dealing with an average of 10-20 percent of orders ending in RTO. There are three major reasons for this.

The convenience of online shopping has made this possible. Customers can purchase items from the comfort of their own homes or work place. Shopping is made easier and convenient for the customer through internet. It is also easy to cancel the transactions.

Generally, in physical stores, the sales representatives try to influence the buyers to buy the product. There can be some kind of pressure, whereas the customers are not pressurized in any way in online stores. Customers do not have to stand in queues in cash counters to pay for the products that have been purchased by them. They can shop from their home or work place and do not have to spend time travelling. Companies display the whole range of products offered by them to attract customers with different tastes and needs. This enables the buyers to choose from a variety of models after comparing the finish, features and price of the products on display, Sometimes, price comparisons are also available

The mall is open on 365 x 24 x 7. So, time does not act as a barrier, wherever the vendor and buyers are. Online consumers can track the order status and delivery status tracking of shipping is also available. To attract customers to shop online, e-tailers and marketers offer discounts to the customers. Due to elimination of maintenance, real-estate costs, the retailers are able to sell the products with attractive discounts online. Sometimes, large online shopping sites offer store comparisons.

On the flop side, long duration and lack of proper inventory management result in delays in shipment. Though the duration of selecting, buying and paying for an online product may not take more than 15 minutes; the delivery of the product to customer' s doorstep takes about 1-3 weeks. This frustrates the customer and prevents them from shopping online.

Physical stores offer discounts to customers and attract them so this makes it difficult for e-tailers to compete with the offline platforms.

Lack of touch-feel-try creates concerns over the quality of the product on offer. Online shopping is not quite suitable for clothes as the customers cannot try them on. Physical stores allow price negotiations between buyers and the seller. The showroom sales attendant representatives provide personal attention to customers and help them in purchasing goods. Certain online shopping mart offers service to talk to a sales representative,

The traditional shopping exercise provides a lot of fun in the form of a show-room atmosphere, smart sales attendants, scent and sounds that cannot be experienced through a website. Indians generally enjoy shopping. Consumers look forward to it as an opportunity to go out and shop. A customer has to buy a product without actually seeing how it looks like. Customers may click and buy some product that is not really required by them. The electronic images of a product are sometimes misleading. The colour, appearance in real life may not match with the electronic images.

People like to visit physical stores and prefer to have a close examination of goods, though it consumes time. The electronic images vary from physical appearance when people buy goods based on electronic images.

Sometimes, there is the disappearance of the shopping site itself. In addition to above, the online payments are not much secured. So, it is essential for e-marketers and retailers to pay attention to this issue to boost the growth of e-commerce. However, the disadvantages of online shopping will not hinder its growth, Online shopping helped businesses to recover from the recession.