Shopping is the word which brings smile on the faces of women and as far as men are concerned this word brings strain both on their faces as well as their pocket. Shopping has been done by people from past 100 of years but the way of doing has changed in past few years quite drastically. Nowadays one does not need to go outside to do shopping one can do it with just one click from home over internet and this act of purchasing by consumer is called online shopping. In order to understand this better let’s look at some of the differences between online and physical or traditional shopping –
- Online shopping as the name suggest is done over internet and therefore you do not have stand in line or go anywhere from your home to purchase the stuff you like whereas in physical shopping if you want to buy you have to go nearby mall or shop and then purchase the item you like from there.
- In online shopping one can look many products and that too multiple times without buying them and therefore it offers lot of flexibility whereas in case of physical or traditional shopping one does not have too much of choices as one has to buy the product which is available at shop and if that product is not available then either you buy the product which is your second choice or wait for that product to come and then buy.
- In Online shopping if one is buying products like shoes or clothes then one cannot try the product before placing the order and therefore the chances of actual product being different from perceived product is high whereas in case of traditional shopping there is no such risk because consumer try it first and then buy and therefore there is no scope of difference between actual and perceived product.
- Online shopping is transparent in the sense that one can compare the price of product over different websites to ensure that he or she buys the product at cheapest price, however in case of physical shopping one does not have this luxury because the buyer has to purchase the product at a price which is quoted by seller as there is no way of finding whether the price quoted by seller is fair or not.
- In case of online shopping thousands of different products are available at one place or website whereas in case of physical shopping this is not possible and hence if you want to buy mobile and trousers then you have to go to 2 different shops as these product are different and hence it leads to time wastage. Hence one can say that when it comes to time saving online shopping definitely scores over physical shopping.
- Online shopping scope is used by people who are tech savvy and therefore it is mostly used by young people, however in recent times middle age and older age people too are getting used to it whereas physical shopping is done by old people or by those who are not that familiar with technology advancement in e commerce and its benefits and they consider online shopping risky because of fear of fraud and unknown.
As one can see from the above that there are many differences between online and physical shopping, however one thing remain the same and that is one has to spend money whether he or she buy the product online or physically.