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Traditional shopping

Traditional shopping refers to shopping activities in stores or in marketplaces.Customers go there to browse various products, select products that meet their needs, and purchase products in exchange of money or credit cards.[1][2]

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History

Shopping is not only the modern activity. It started in ancient times. In ancient Greek, Greeks call marketplaces for "agora" where they sold stalls and purchase stalls. In ancient Rome, Roman called their marketplaces for "forum" which was a rectangle space[7]. People shopped in their nearby towns. In ancient China, the biggest market place which was dated back to 707 AD was in Changan.People sold all kinds of products, for example, fruits, nuts, and fresh meats. There are marketplaces called"fair". "Fair" in English refers to a special place where all merchants come together in a marketplace to sell their products in a special day. Some fairs open once in a month. Some fairs can last for several days. Customers can browse many various products which they don't shop in regular marketplaces. In ancient Rome, Roman had fairs for holidays[1][3]. In the 19th century, shopping is the pastime for rich people. In the late 19th century, department stores emerged. In the 20th century, chain stores appeared.[7]Nowadays, online shopping is a trend. The first online shipping appeared in 1979. It was connectted with TV. In 1990, World Wide Web developed.In 1991, it was open for business use. Later on, techonlogy developed like online banking in 1994. Those are essential factors for the development of online shopping [10].

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Online shopping

As technology advances, customers now shop online. They don't go to stores to purchase products in exchange of paper money. They browse shopping webpages such as Amazon and Ebay. Many merchants post their products online for customers to browse them. Many retail stores have their online stores. Customers can purchase products from online stores in exchange of credit cards and PayPal.Online shopping is defined as electronic commerce[4][5].In the 21st century, electronic commerce is flourishing. == ""BENEFITS OF ONLINE SHOPPING"" == 1. Convenience 2. Customers can usually get better deals/prices 3. There is a bigger variety of options to choose from 4. Fewer expenses than actually having to spend money (gas, public transportation) to get to a store 5. No Crowds 6. Customer reviews are available 7. The search option on websites can get you exactly what your looking for There is a graph showing that online transaction is increasing from 2009 to 2015[6].

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From the website:https://www.internetretailer.com/trends/consumers/growth-in-number-of-us-consumers-shopping-online-2


Traditional shopping vs.Online shopping

Online shopping eliminates waiting in line forever to purchase your items. Most of the time there are discount promo codes to help you save money. One way to always save money is to shop through Ebates. Ebates is a app that patners with retailers and give you a percentage back of what you spend via check.In addition, we can buy gifts online for our friends and send gifts to the addresses that our friends live at[8]. We don't need to ship the gifts in person.Also, some online stores have e-gifts. We email the e-gifts to our friends, and then they can use the e-gifts to finish the purchase.Moreover, we can shop online any time. However, stores have limit open hours[9]. One downside to online shopping is not being able to feel the material or try on your clothing items to make sure they fit you appropriately. Yes, there is a size guide but they are not always exact. If you receive items that don't fit you have to go through the hassle of returns the items via Fedex, UPS or USPS. Higher end retailers such as Nordstroms and Saks offer free return shipping however most affordable stores do not. You will be paying out of pocket to return then item. Another downside to online shopping my be that the retailer sent you the wrong item or wrong size. You would then have to send it back and then wait another week for your correct item to arrive. This can be frustrating especially when you have an event to go to and your item isn't present. Otherwise, you may pay more for the shipment to get faster shipping.Moreover, when we are shopping online, we need to fill in the information such as living addresses and credit card info. Those information may be easily stolen by hackers. Our personal information may be used by strangers. Therefore, one of the pros for traditional shopping is that our money won't be easily stolen by hackers.



References