The Shopping Dilemma

                            

With the changing trends in the general life, trends in shopping are also changing. The internet is a huge media these days and thus online shopping has seen a huge boom in the recent past. In a country like India where the fad for internet is increasing at a rapid pace, online shopping has a huge potential to mushroom! If you go back a decade in the memory lane, internet was a rare thing and there were hardly any online shopping sites. The ever changing fashion trends and the new trends in technology have contributed to the growth of online shopping. Also, the busy schedules and the rat-race type of lives in the metro cities are a huge reason for online shopping becoming a huge hit in India. Like all things, even online shopping has a few pros and cons. Let’s try to analyze a few of them.

Advantages:

1.     Online shopping helps to avoid multiple layers between the manufacturer and the end customer. Thus, there are chances of getting products at a lower rate in comparison to offline shopping.

2.     Wide range of products are at the disposal of the customer. Hence, customer can view the products, read reviews about them and decide taking all the time of the world.

3.     You get to know the latest trends and launches in the worlds of fashion. Online shopping helps you check the latest fashion trends and stay abreast with them. Also, you get to know about the latest launches.

4.     Gives you a chance to buy and experience products made by manufacturers from distant places. Yes, that’s another huge benefit of online shopping where a customer from Delhi can buy a product manufactured by a local manufacturer from Mumbai. Thus, online shopping helps avoid distance barriers in shopping.

5.     Online shopping helps save time. That’s apparently one of the biggest advantage of online shopping. It just takes a few minutes to order a product from the internet and the product is delivered right at your door! In this rat-race where time is money, online shopping helps save both time and money.

Disadvantages:

1.     You don’t actually get to see, feel or touch the product. So, the product displayed on your screen may vary from the actual product. Specially in case of clothes, online shopping doesn’t really give you the exact idea about the colour or the quality of the cloth.

2.     It becomes pretty difficult to guess the correct size, when you buy clothes or shoes or any other product of these sort online. Although, most of the shopping websites give the option to try and return if the product doesn’t fit in but that takes extra time and effort. If you have to put extra time and effort, then the purpose of buying the product online is not served!

3.     The concept of online shopping reduces manual intervention and thus the real rapture of shopping is lost!

4.     Also, online shopping reduces your social activities. You go to the market to buy some stuff, you browse a few shops and you interact with a few people. All these things are eliminated if you buy the stuff online.

5.     The concept of online shopping abates personality development. When you go out in the market and interact with a few people, you learn something new. The more you travel and interact with people of different sort, the more you learn. The youth in particular is missing things like going out in the market, bargaining, gaining knowledge about different stuffs, dealing with witty and smart shopkeepers and salesmen. Thus, online shopping is somewhat stopping the youth from gaining some priceless experience! 

Rohan