Sunday, December 21, 2008

Online shopping is the process consumers go through to purchase products or services over the Internet. An online shop, eshop, e-store, internet shop, webshop, webstore, online store, or virtual store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.

The metaphor of an online catalog is also used, by analogy with mail order catalogs. All types of stores have retail web sites, including those that do and do not also have physical storefronts and paper catalogs.

Online shopping is a type of electronic commerce used for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions.

The term "Webshop" also refers to a place of business where web development, web hosting and other types of web related activities take place (Web refers to the World Wide Web and "shop" has a colloquial meaning used to describe the place where one's occupation is carried out).


History


Since the early 1990s, 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].

Charles Stack created the first online book store, Book Stacks Unlimited (aka Books.com) in 1992, two years before Jeff Bezos began Amazon.[3] Other advances took place in 1994 such as Online Banking, After that, the next big development was the opening of an online pizza shop by Pizza Hut.[2]. During that same year, Netscape introduced SSL encryption to enable encryption over the data transferred online which has become essential for online shopping. In 1995, Amazon expanded its online shopping, and 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 Videotext, was first demonstrated by Michael Aldrich in 1979 who designed and installed systems in the UK, including the first Tesco pilot system in 1984.[4].The first B2B was Thomson Holidays in 1981. [5]


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.[6]. 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. [6].

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. [6]. 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. [6]. Sociocultural pressure has made men generally more independent in their purchase decisions, while women place greater value on personal contact and social relations. [6]. 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.


Payment

Online shoppers commonly use credit card to make payments, however some systems enable users to create accounts and pay by alternative means, such as:

Some sites will not allow international credit cards and billing address and shipping address have to be in the same country in which site does its business. Other sites allow customers from anywhere to send gifts anywhere. The financial part of a transaction might be processed in real time (for example, letting the consumer know their credit card was declined before they log off), or might be done later as part of the fulfillment process.

While credit cards are currently the most popular means of paying for online goods and services, alternative online payments will account for 26% of e-commerce volume by 2009 according to Celent.[8]

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