In retail shopping, some retail stores (sites) sell items in a specific category, such as entertainment, while others provide a wide variety of products for consumers. This would provide customers an additional convenience in shopping, as it would help consumers to access to retail stores that they wanted. Doing this, shoppers would just need to simply enter what they’re shopping for, related retail stores would then appear in the screen immediately, which allow them access those stores much easier and less time-consuming. Moreover, consumers can order the product whilst seated in front of the computer, and simply enter their ‘billing and shipping’ information. Also, retail shopping has the ability to interact and provide custom information and ordering. These factors would certainly attract more consumers to shop at ‘Net’ and hence increases the popularity of retail shopping.
Retail shopping would allow retailers to have global reach to its market, which would then provide a much larger target market. This is because Internet is connected worldwide. This would allow anyone to access those stores to purchase, no matter if they were overseas or local customers; hence it would increase the popularity of retail shopping.
Retail shopping would allow lower marketing costs to businesses, which would make it more profitable than all other shopping channels and benefits businesses. This is because retailers have the advantage to lower their price (which attracts customers), without reducing the profit margin. This would in turn having its sales increased, and hence profit increases for the business. Retailers also have the advantages to cut their cost as they do not need to sell their products to the ‘middle-man’, which would increases the price of their product eventually, as the ‘middle-man’ would increases its price to gain profit for themselves. Also, retailers can cut cost as they do not need to hire as much staffs, or even more, they might not need to hire any staffs. This is because through Internet, retailers may not need any staff to do jobs such as salesman. By having the advantage to cut its cost, the business may have the ability to lower their price, which in turn attracts much more customers than in-store buying, and hence, increases its popularity.
However, there are also some drawbacks that may obstruct the popularity of retail shopping.
It was widely recognized that because of the interactive nature of the Internet, businesses could gather data about prospects and customers in unprecedented amounts -through site registration, questionnaires, and as part of taking orders. Although this would allow firm to have a much larger target market, and easier way to access their potential customers, this might lead security threat to customers, as their personal information such as ‘personal identity’ information may be misused by hackers. This also happens to customers when they order/purchase products, as they would need to provide ‘billing and shipping’ information such as addresses. This would discourage customers shop at retail stores.
Retailing shopping could not provide a clear, visual image of the product to customers. Customers may then feel insecure if they order product without having seen the actual product in real life. This is especially for products that customers would most likely to have a ‘feel / touch’ on it or test out the product before purchasing it. For instance, clothes, most customers would want to know about its quality in terms of the use of fabric. Without actually touching it with their own hands, customers may not know if it is the product that wanted. Also, without trying the product (i.e. fitting it), customers may have the risk to purchase and 'un-suitable’ product (i.e. wrong size).
One of the most perplexing problems for retail shopping is low response rate. Retail shopping is conducted through the more limited electronic forms of communication called e-mail, facsimile or fax. The response rates in email marketing are too low. Not only lower than that of all other forms of remote shopping but even too low to make sites economically viable. This is due to several factors:
The lack of broadband width is one of the factors, which causes the low response rate. The majority of retailing shopping is still done from the home where customers have the time to shop leisurely. Yet most homes today would be limited to connections at modem speeds of 56.4 kbs or less. This causes the speed of accessing different e-commerce site for retail shopping as sites usually are with graphics and lots of information, which takes time to load and appear on the screen. This could be very daunting to customers. Therefore, with narrow bandwidth, most customers they will skip over those emails from unknown sources 99 percent of the time. This in turn would result with low response rate, which may hinder the popularity of retail shopping.
In conclusion, although there might be some factors that hinder the popularity of retail shopping, with its 24-hour availability, a global reach, the ability to interact and provide custom information and ordering, and provide a much more convenience way of purchasing, retail shopping is still at a upper hand position, which attracts more customers and increases it popularity. However, businesses should also pay attention to the factors that limit the increase of popularity for retail shopping and try to eliminate such factors in order to grow larger and become more successful.
