Shopping at Ebay at the Lowest Prices
In today’s economic climate people don’t have as much discretionary income as they might have in previous times. This is due to the rising cost of living. As a result, they want to be sure that they are not paying too much for goods and services. That leads to them making decisions to save money. One such decision means that they are searching online for cheaper prices and looking for the best discounts they can possibly get their hands on.
Their online search is quite extensive and they will conduct research to find the best value for money. Value for money is not just defined by the lowest price. It is also defined by the number of features and the quality of the product that you are purchasing. People will look at goods on a number of sites. The sites they look at for the best deal around extends to Ebay as well as the major online retailers and discount chain stores.
Ebay allows shoppers access to many more products than what they could find in their local area. EBay has such a wide range of products that you can easily choose from without even leaving your house. All you need to do is go onto the website and enter a search term of the products that you want. Then you’re away and can easily find the products that you want.
Shopping through Ebay gives you access to products at prices you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. You can find products at a rate cheaper than what you would pay in store. When you buy online you have access to retailers that may not be in your particular town or city, so you’re not limited by geography or the cost of living where you are.
Often the reason why goods are cheaper online is that online retailers have lower overheads so they can charge less than what a local business would charge. The really good part about buying online is that the quality is just as good as what local brands would charge, but you do not pay local prices.
Sometimes people associated cheap with goods not being as high quality but that simply isn’t true. There have actually been reports that cheaper products are manufactured in the same factories as labelled ones and that in some cases the only difference is literally the label on the product. The product itself isn’t actually any different.
People are also busy today and don’t have the time to wait at stores. They want to get their shopping done easily. When you use online shopping websites that are done conveniently from your home and at any time you want. You don’t have to contend with crowds of people or worry about car parking. Online shopping allows you to be focused in your shop so you only target a specific product and don’t waste time.
When you shop online it is much easier to maintain focus and you won’t need to worry about getting distracted looking at products you don’t actually want or need. You will just search for the products you want. You can streamline your search so that you compare the different offerings available. Comparing prices and features is much easier online and you will not need to spend time travelling between stores That will not only save you money on the products that you’re buying. It will also save you the money you might have spent on others had you gone into a physical store.
Instead just sit back, browse products from the comfort of your own home and then wait for the discounted goods to arrive. It will be like Christmas for you all year round when you buy online.
Black Friday: The Shopping Bonanza gone global
Every year the fourth Thursday of November, this day today global consumers prep and psych themselves up to an almost frenzied state of mind as they prepare to unleash their ‘Hungry like a wolf ‘consumer hunger for material goods and go in for the kill at the stroke of midnight. The kill, in this case, is exclusively discounted goods at retail stores across the United States&now also in other parts of the world and most importantly online on the virtual highway of the world wide web where your geophysical coordinates are of no consequence provided the shipper has a tie-up with DHL or the local post to deliver it at your doorstep. These deals will be wolfed down in a frenzied deluge to be savored later, after the packages arrive at the doorstep over the coming days, all the way to Christmas.
According to US Consumer Reports, in 2013 approximately 141 million US consumers shopped during Black Friday spending a total of USD 57.4 billion of which $1.2 billion accounted for online sales.
So what is Black Friday?
The term was coined in Philadelphia, early beginning of the 1960s by the people and the media at the time to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving celebrated across the US. The term began to be used in a broader context and applied outside its origin area around mid – 1970s. For many years, retailers began trading at 6 am but by mid-2000s, it had been gradually creeping up to 5 am and 4 am. The ceiling finally broke in 2011 when several major chain retail outlets swung open their doors at midnight. In 2012, another major retail chain Walmart took it a step further by announcing they would open trading at 8 pm on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday) where permitted.
The advent and progressive growth of e-retail have transformed business models and service delivery like never before, allowing rural vendors to serve urban customers and corporate bigwigs target urban and rural consumers alike.
The two other places outside of the United States where Black Friday has increased in prominence and trade are Canada and Australia. The former’s rise can be attributed primarily to its geographical proximity to the US and the relative advantage of the strong Canadian dollar and the ease of slipping over the border for a shopping spree. This exodus of consumers to the other side prompted Canadian retailers in Lake Ontario to offer similar discounts with an aim to retain their interest and business and discourage cross-border shopping.
Besides the aforementioned countries, it is also a big event in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland in the European market; Mexico and Brazil in North America and even India with the major retailer like Apple extending their offer to the local market. This easy concept penetration and proliferation have been the result of e-retail convenience and social media dominance across the globe. In a way, it can be compared to the Boxing Day sales that are popular across many of the Commonwealth nations. But for now, prepare to indulge.
Just make sure that the shipper delivers to your address and that should be your only guideline in this one-click shopping experience in today’s tech-savvy world.
Generation ‘Y’ and Shopping
If your time is taken up with Facebook, WhatsApp, Amazon, the latest hit diet, Game of Thrones, your ambition and family then the chances are you belong to Generation Y.
Generation Y was born between the early 80s and the early 90s. Every generation is different and when you were born affects the types of things you will be interested in. When you’re born also influences your shopping behaviour in terms of what you will buy and how you will make that purchasing decision.
Gen Y is different than other generations in almost every facet of their lives. Those that belong to the generation were educated differently, they have had a different upbringing and experience different culture and customs to that of others. People who are part of Gen Y want to experience different things and they are more confident than previous generations. They want to leave the nest as soon as they can to experience the world.
The decade that you are born in, as mentioned, influences your purchasing behaviour because of the set of values and expectations you were raised with. It is worth noting that there are individual differences and not everyone is the same. Although people do make some purchasing decisions based on arbitrary factors like age and gender, others are made based on intellect, choices and personal character. The reality is that it’s wrong to stereotype.
It isn’t appropriate to assume that every member of Generation Y is the same. Just like everyone has different hair and different political views, everyone’s attitudes are different as well, and Generation Y members have different habits. They can’t all be lumped under the same umbrella.
Although the term, Generation Y originated in America, it has been adopted by many countries and traits have been observed in Australia, Asia and Europe as well.
Although we can determine some traits on time of birth it can be more valuable to consider the motivations and tendencies of each generation. When we do so, we can better understand how and what motivates people to make the purchasing decisions they do. Their motivations determine how they choose their fashion, how to shop and their career etc.
It has been said that Generation Y is the largest consumer group in the US, however, if we look further afield to Japan and Europe Generation Y makes up a smaller portion of their market. The important thing to note here is that people are used to being sold to rather than given the chance to make choices on their own.
In the United States, a quarter of the population lives in a single parent family, whereas 75% has a working mother and a third do not consider themselves to be Caucasian. The reason this is relevant is that how someone is raised, both the environment and their family, determine what their shopping behaviour will be. That includes how they make decisions, where they will shop, what they will buy and how much they will spend. This is only scratching at the surface and. Further research is needed.
Every generation has been shaped by the world events that occurred when they were growing up and some of the events that may have shaped Generation Y are the following:
- Gulf War 1991.
- The Attacks of September 11th, 2011
- Indian Ocean Tsunami on Boxing Day 2003
- Hurricane Katrina.
- The Bali bombings
- Watching The Simpsons.
- Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.
- Pokemon.
- PlayStation and Nintendo becoming more popular. Even earlier than that would be the Sega Master System followed by the Sega Mega System.
- Listening to Hip-hop, house and RnB (the modern version!) on your MP3 or iPod.
- Using the internet as a social device and embracing social media.
- Creating and reading blogs, and more recently vlogs on YouTube.
- YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, online shopping, MSN Messenger.
Gen Y is ambitious, narcissistic and has a very short attention span. They don’t care much for the convention so companies need to be innovative to keep up with them. Generation Y likes to do things their own way and they like to determine their futures.
They love sharing on the internet and are conscious of the value of consumer goods. They enjoy snapping up a bargain and using coupons and discount codes to save money. It is essential that online retailers cater their products and services to match their consumer audience. Before they purchase they are more likely to share the item on Facebook or Instagram and seek the views of their friends. They don’t want to make decisions on their own like previous generations did.
Despite being confident and despite having strong views based on world knowledge, Generation Y is still like other generations. They will care what others think and want to be liked.
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.