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  pros & cons  
 

advantages

 

disadvantages

To a successful e-retailer, businesses realized that they must offer benefits that enhance the consumer's shopping experience beyond what conventional methods of shopping can give. In addition, they need to mitigate and eliminate the disadvantages of online shopping to attract prospective consumers.

advantages

1. Consumers choose online shopping mainly for its convenience. Online shopping has contributed to the ease of finding a product, the decrease in time spent on shopping, and the minimization of shopping efforts.

2. Customers can easily do comparison shopping. Websites such as pricescan.com compare prices and features over many stores, both online and retail. Consumers can make informed decisions with less effort to look for information.

3. Online shopping eliminates the middleman. There is no almost no need for retail stores since producers can distribute their products directly to the consumers. Dell uses this by building computers to customer's specifications and directly ship it to the consumer.

4. Online shopping offers a wide variety of products and eliminate uncertainty of whether or not the item is in stock. Consumers have access to products all over the country and the world via the Internet. E-tailers are not limited to the number of items they display.

disadvantages

1. Online shopping cannot replace the real shopping experience. The internet cannot provide or recreate the sites, sounds, and feels of shopping.

2. Misleading photographs or information provided on the site will cause shoppers to buy a product that they do not want. Since products such as clothes cannot be tested, the consumer buys the product with a risk.

3. Consumer also face wait time for their purchases to arrive. Along with the time uncertainty of how long it will take their purchase to arrive, consumers also have to pay additional shipping costs.

4. Consumers have to be careful about privacy and security issues. They have to be careful about what information they send over the Internet such as their credit card number.

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