The Impact of online-Shopping

Online-shopping, which is a burgeoning commercial method, has impacted people’s daily lives significantly since it first appeared. A greatly increasing number of consumers buy what they want online instead of going to a brick-and-mortar store. Currently there are thousands of websites via that customers can obtain their desired products. Online-shopping has become the preferential choice for people because of its convenience, product availability and low price.

Online-shopping is a main form of e-commerce. It allows consumers to buy goods or services directly from a seller over the Internet. By shopping this way, going to a brick-and-mortar store has been unessential for most people. Amazon launched in 1995 as an online bookstore, yet it has become the world’s largest online integrated retailer that offers a large amount of sorts of products. In addition, another online-shopping site eBay also debuted in the same year. (Merchant, 2011) According to the data released recently by comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, American online-shopping market scale has reached $43 billion in the second quarter of 2012, an increase of 15% compared to the same period last year. (Fulgoni , 2012) In other words, online-shopping market scale is still keeping increasing rapidly during recent years.

Shopping online has a lot of advantages, of which the most important factor is perhaps its convenience. People do not have to waste a lot of their energy and precious time to go from one shop to another to choose the products they like. This is especially desirable for the old, the sick and the busy people who are inconvenient to go to the brick-and-mortar stores for shopping. All they need to do is just to sit in front of their computers and click the mouse. The commodities they order will be delivered to them promptly. “It's crazy to save $10 (on shipping costs) by standing in line for an hour,” says Sherrie Schneider, coauthor of The Rules for Marriage, an advice book that advocates shopping online to reduce stress and, ultimately, improve home life. “Maybe that hour of shopping is the hour you could be on the treadmill or getting the house organized. It cuts into the quality of life.” (Palmer, 2007) Namely, Sherrie Schneider’s saying demonstrates her insupportableness of waiting during shopping. It’s obviously that consumers do not want to spend too much time on shopping. Compared with shopping, they prefer their quality of life. Shopping online is a superior way for people to save their precious time.

In addition, online shopping can help consumers to find their desired products easier. In traditional stores, people have to search around the whole store to find what they want because different categories are usually placed in different areas, even different floors. But online-shopping allows people to search for the required goods directly on the well-organized and classified webpages. The webpages in online-shopping