Online shopping Intro

There was a time, shopping implied struggling to find a parking spot, wasting time going from shop to shop trying to find that perfect dress, waiting in line at the cash, carrying all those heavy bags and even with all that, the choice was limited and you might end your shopping trip without what you were looking for.

Nowadays, a significant number of people go online and after a few clicks, have browsed more dresses than what any brick and mortar shop could ever hold and have their order delivered to their own door.

Online shopping has been growing exponentially: in the U.S., Forrester Research shows that $248.7 billion online sales are expected by 2014. A compounded growth of 10% is forecast for the next five years. Even more impressive, online sales have increased by over 25% in China in 2012. A number of technological innovations including new security measures to protect credit card’s information as well as the improvement of shipping procedures and the increase in online deals and coupon offerings are some of the main innovations that have helped online shopping.

In this blog, I will discuss the main innovations that encourage shoppers to shop online, the main trends in online shopping, how websites like Amazon, Beyond the rack or Zappos are revolutionizing the retailing sector and how more traditional companies are trying to catch up with the trend. I will also discuss the new business models that have emerged after the introduction of online shopping and the main disadvantages of this mode of shopping.

Sources: Forrester Researh, Global times China, WWWMetrics