What about Shopping Online
We live in fast times. We believe in instant gratification and everything we need is a click or a tap away, including our favorite good ol’ shopping therapy; that nobody can do without.
Some love it with a passion, others look at it as dread and horror, but everybody has to do it in one form or another at one time or another. The advancements in the virtual realm mean that we no longer need to worry about extended shopping hours or 24 hour shopping malls and/ or long snaking queues at checkouts to meet the human need for incessant wants and inevitable consumption to satisfy the same.
The advent of online shopping has meant you can buy whatever you can want, regardless of the hour of the day, freeing you not only from the bonds of time, but also the social aspect of a shop visit not to mention the time/ effort input into the exercise. One of the primary reasons that online shopping has garnered immense popularity in recent years is the convenience factor associated with it. The influx of handheld mobile gadgets like- android phones, I phones, tablets and notebooks along with a rapid roll out of 3G data services by mobile service providers has enabled an increasing number of people to go online irrespective of their geophysical location and levelled the playing field.
Why online shopping?
This is a win-win proposition for all parties. The seller has a lower overhead as he does not have to maintain an outlet in a shopping centre or mall does not have to employ staff to man the outlets or provide shop floor customer service. The low cost of operation means the buyer will get the same good or service for a lower price as the seller has had a lower cost of incursion for the business, so hence the markup on the product will tend to be smaller.
The buyer gets to shop from the convenience of his bed/ couch / work desk or café wherever she happens to be at the moment. The very notion of having the means of instant gratification at your finger tip is indeed a powerful buzz for the consumers with an insatiable shopping desire.
As with everything else in the universe, there are pros and cons to online shopping too.
Except the aforementioned virtues extolled, there are some disadvantages that can make it an unmitigated disaster leaving a bitter aftertaste. But hang on, it is not as abject and hopeless, I am making it out to be either. There are some bad apples out there and you have to make sure that you read the fine print and go through user reviews to draw your own reasonable conclusions before you close the deal.
There exist a plethora of web portals partnered with affiliates that now offer discount coupons and promo codes for their partnered tie ups and special deals on the World Wide Web. Do an intensive search and try to narrow down your results from various aspects and focus on sites that specialize in the area of interest. Use search engines using different key words for the product search.
The portals offering online shopping deals and promotions usually offer a large portfolio with an extensive gateway to purchase consumer goods of all kinds as well as availing of services like flight / hotel bookings, car rentals or holiday packages. In some cases, you might get a better deal accessing the sites through the portals as compared to directly going to the website, as the portals often enjoy additional discount privileges as part of their affiliation and networking agreements.