Advantages and disadvantages of buying online

Why buy online?

Currently, online shopping seems to be a fashionable format, however there is a high percentage of people who still view the use of this method of shopping with suspicion. Below we provide a detail of the advantages and disadvantages of this type of transaction.

It is unquestionable that electronic commerce has become more popular nowadays, through electronic means such as the Internet, where it is possible to carry out transactions of buying and selling products on different websites; which are dedicated to the marketing of these.

A new trend worldwide

Many pages give online support where they attend in a personalized way by email or via chat, to give answers to all the doubts.

Internet shopping today is setting trends, more and more people are buying products or services by this route, once you overcome the first fear of placing personal data on a form and open accounts on certain sites to buy and check that the purchase has indeed been made as in any other business will discover the advantages of this form of acquiring items.

The use of e-commerce in 2017 reaches 22% of the world’s population and half of the users who buy over the Internet do so through mobile devices.

The development of e-commerce in the world is uneven. Thus, the European market is in a process of maturity whose growth has slowed down compared to other countries such as India, Thailand or Indonesia. In Spain, for example, the number of e-commerce users reaches 58% of the population, only 1% more than the previous year, when 57% of Internet users said they had bought online in the last month.

The countries that most use this means of purchase are United Kingdom (76%), South Korea and Germany (72%), Japan (68%) and the United States (67%), in terms of the products in greatest demand have been: books, clothing, shoes, airplane tickets and electronic items.

Advantages

This type of purchase offers significant advantages to users of a modern way of marketing goods and services through the use of computers and telecommunications among its main advantages are.

• Availability: we can acquire a product at any time of day without depending on commercial opening hours.
• Convenience: we can acquire our products from home or from the workplace, avoiding travel. Buying on the Internet is very convenient, you buy from home and receive it a few days later at your home. In this way, you avoid using public transport, paying for parking, queuing or carrying bags all over the city.
• Speed: access to the products is made without further delay or slow and bureaucratic procedures.
• Better offers: on the Internet we can find better offers, products at a much more comfortable price. Many physical stores that now have online stores, have exclusive offers on the Internet with prices that could hardly be in a physical establishment.
• Global and competitive market: we can locate stores that are located in different parts of the world. Internet allows us to locate different stores, all over the world, that offer the same product or service, and compare prices and added services before making the purchase. Users can easily and quickly compare prices on many different websites and can also analyze features of several similar products or read comments from other users to choose the most appropriate one. Buying online is generally cheaper than buying in traditional stores. This is because online stores operate with less fixed costs (rent of premises, staff, taxes…) and therefore are more competitive in the final price of the product, even taking into account the shipping costs.
• Variety of products: it is incredible that we can find from toys to household appliances.
• Personalized attention: we can make contact with the service provider and ask for products that fit our personal measures and needs. Many pages give online support where they attend in a personalized way by email or via chat, to give answers to all your doubts.
• Product detail: when we buy an item on the Internet we can obtain a detail of the characteristics of the product/service we want to purchase, ask for consumer opinions, request demonstrations or compare it with the competition.

There are many benefits that we can obtain when acquiring products on the Internet without a doubt with the passage of time there will be more people who will make use of this method of purchase, it is a question of us being more informed on the subject, this way the barrier will be broken and the fear and distrust to carry out this type of transaction will be lost.

Disadvantages

Online shopping facilitates the acquisition of products or services, although compared to the purchase of a product in a physical store, online commerce has some disadvantages.

• Contact with the product: there are products that it is advisable to see directly to check the quality and see if it fits our needs. Cars or clothes are a clear example, although the latter is becoming one of the most sought-after in online shopping.
• Distrust: there is distrust of how the package of the item we buy will come if it arrives well, if we were not deceived, if it will arrive in good condition; doubts are inevitable. You have to make sure that the pages are totally safe. It also generates distrust to the users to provide their banking data in the Web, since they could be victims of robbery or fraud.
• Instant consumption: sometimes there are products that we need to buy and use on the spot, without having to wait 24, 48 or 72 hours. Therefore, on many occasions we will have to be aware of the product delivery times to know whether it is worth waiting for the delivery of the purchased product or not.
• Returns: The return systems in online shops have improved but users see it as a complicated procedure.
• Shipping costs: the products in an online shop are usually cheaper but there are times when added to the shipping costs the final price is too high to purchase the product. Another aspect to take into account is the cost of customs when purchasing bulky or heavy products and sending the material from countries outside the European Union. In addition, when we buy on the Internet we have to wait a certain amount of time, days, weeks and even months for our item to arrive home.