We are all soon will leave 2009 into 2010. End of the year is holiday season, when people celebrate Christmas and New Year with their family and relatives. This holiday season is also synonymous with the shopping season. People are so busy people to buy their needs for the holidays, including for Christmas and New Year event.Along with the development of our technology, there is a change in consumer behavior. Today consumers are now more comfortable to shop online. So this phenomenon triggered the growth of cyber shopping around the world.
The rise of Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Cyber shopping season, this time starting from the end of last November, when people celebrate Black Friday, which is the Americans are celebrating Thanksgiving tradition. On Thanksgiving, they usually gather with family and having dinner together, and so on.
According to a report from the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs Group, sales at stores who open at least a year, they having 3.1% sales increase in week that ended on November 28, compared with a year ago.
ICSC also noted that on average 42 percent of consumers do the shopping for Black Friday this year, slightly decreased compared with the proportion of 48% last year. But the total expenditures increased from $ 41 billion last year, to $ 41.2 billion this year.
After Thanksgiving, then people will started to make preparations to celebrate Christmas and New Year holidays. Christmas and New Year gifts are identical with the great feast. So we recognized as Cyber Monday as the first day in December where people start working while browsing online to determine what items they want to buy.
Online retailers do not want to miss this opportunity, they left a massive discount for net consumers. They distribute discount coupons to all customers via Internet.
The result, according to research firm Coremetrics, on Cyber Monday sales increasing by 14 percent compared to last year, and increasing to 24.1 percent compared with the Black Friday sales.
Consumers on Cyber Monday were reported to spend approximately $ 180.03 per order, increased significantly compared with 2008 levels last year, which average consumer spending only about $ 130.24, and higher than average spending on Black Friday about $ 170.19.
E-Commerce, A Trend Shifts
Ten years ago, maybe e-commerce is still limited to a few names, such as Amazon. But now, online commerce has become a common thing. Largest retailer did not want to miss hype of e-commerce and participate in the business, including Wal-Mart and Sears.
So what is the benefit of e-commerce?
Compared to offline retail, e-commerce offers convenience and flexibility. With a few clicks, shopping can be done from home or office, in a matter of days, shopping goods will be sent to our home. Consumers do their self-service, the most convenient service for customer.
Other advantage by running e-commerce is the possibility to reach the global market. Through the Internet, you can connect with the whole world. Potential market segments will grow with e-commerce.
Through e-commerce, communications are running quickly. If the newsletter usually comes to customer's home within a few days, through the Internet, within seconds the information can be send to the consumer. In addition, online retailers do not recognize words such as “the stores are closed”, but online retailers can open for 24 hours. If customers do order, the order will be processed by the system.
The only weaknesses on e-commerce are trust. Often, the deals are done only based on trust alone. In some cases, after the seller got the money from customers, then they fled away. Therefore, consumers must be clever in choosing seller. Pick seller who had trusted and good reputations such as large retail. If you want to order from individual sellers, you should see testimonials from people who had transactions with them before.
Another weakness is because we can not see the physical product, often we disappointed because of the product we received is not like in the picture, or as we expected. Therefore, consider it first before ordering the product.
So now how about you, are you ready to go cyber shopping or ready to gain more sales?
Pic by : theJKH
