Shopping is always an interesting subject to discuss upon, especially for females (not excluding males, obviously). Shopping plays a very crucial role in anyone's life. There are different ways of shopping. The most popular ways are:
1) Online Shopping 2) Offline Shopping.
There are several factors that differentiate online shopping from offline shopping.
i. Availability Of Product
The first and key factor is the availability of a product. Many a time we have observed that physical stores have limited size and capacity to store the product. They may have product warehouses but not all can afford it to have. In such cases, they always have limited stock. This causes out of stock or customers may not have a choice of the product due to specific product availability at the time.
On the flip side, online shopping platforms, have more than one seller for the same or similar products. They can manage the quantity even in case the sells is high.
ii. Variety Of Product
A variety of products is also a large factor in differentiating both. In offline shopping, a limited variety of products is available as they cannot afford a large number of varieties of a single product in their shop. While on the online portal, one can find many options for a single product. You have a choice of size, color, pattern, material, company and much more.
iii. Product Price
The prices of a product also play a major role in differentiating both. The offline dealers cannot afford to give more offers and huge discounts while online dealers can afford it. Thus, the lesser prices attract most of the consumers towards online shopping.
iv. Return And Refund Policy
The return and refund product policy also contributes to a great extent in differentiation. In offline shopping, the consumer can return the product if he is not satisfied by the product just by approaching the shop and also gets his full money refund back as per policy. Offline shopping is more consumer-friendly. But in online shopping, it is not the case. In online shopping, the consumer does not have direct access to a seller because he is buying from an online portal and not through a retailer/dealer. Here, the customer has to do a lot of followup over the phone only with an online portal support center for the refund. Many times, such hassle redirects most of the customers towards offline shopping.
v. Quality of the product
In offline shopping, the product is purchased by the consumer after testing it properly and checking each and every corner of the product. While in online shopping, the customer is buying the product by seeing the photograph and reading the description, product ratings. Here, off the shelf product purchase takes a higher score.
vi. Time Factor
The time factor is also an important point that distinguishes both. Offline shopping is more time convenient as the consumer gets the product as soon as he pays for it. While in online shopping, it is very time consuming, as it takes time to deliver the product from the dealer to our doorstep. Thus, the online shopping method has another disadvantage.
I am not covering AI and ML which nowadays highly ingrained into e-commerce industry which I will cover into a separate article.
Offline and online shopping both have their advantages and disadvantages but offline sellers have to adapt online selling as an additional selling channel sooner or later because online shopping will be the only option in the near future.
I request if you can give your feedback/suggestion/comments to improvise my knowledge and understanding.
