Online Shopping of Women Apparels in India

Introduction

The cutting edge for business today is E-commerce. E-commerce stands for electronic commerce. It means dealing in goods and services through the electronic media and internet. It relates to a website of the vendor, who sells products or services directly to the customers from portal using a digital shopping cart or digital shopping basket system and allows payment through credit card, debit card or EFT (Electronic fund transfer) payments. E-commerce or E-business involves carrying on a business with the help of the internet and by using the information technology like electronic data interchange (EDI).

E-commerce has almost become the dominant online activity.

Michael Aldrich is the man who imagined web based shopping in 1979. With the expanding web proficiency, the possibility of internet showcasing is expanding in India. Elective names of internet shopping are: e-web-store, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web-shop, web-store, online store, and online storefront and virtual store. An online shop evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a brick-and-mortar retailer or shopping centre. The process is called business-to-consumer (B2C) online shopping. The largest of these online retailing corporations are Flip kart, Amazon.in, and E-bay.in. Retail success is no longer all about physical stores. This is evident because of the increase in retailers now offering online store interfaces for consumers. With the growth of online shopping, come the concepts of satisfaction and loyalty for website which involved in providing services on the website and transacting online. The five dominant factors which influence consumer perceptions of online shopping are Information, Ease of use, Satisfaction, Security/Privacy, Proper utilization. Throughout the years, there has been a massive growth in the number of unique internet users globally. The advancement of internet and rapid increment in the internet access has facilitated the adoption of online shopping, where information search and purchase of products and services were conducted at virtual stores. Globally 875 million internet users have made purchases through online shopping. This statistics well-reflects the growth of e-commerce, or the sales of products and services over the internet. Further reported that among all purchases over the internet, apparel-related products which include clothing, accessories and shoes are one of top three products categories which have the highest information search and purchase intention by global online consumers. Consumer delight differs from customer satisfaction in one crucial way, its about exceeding a consumers expectations, or going above and beyond, rather than just simply providing a satisfactory experience that met expectations. The emotional reaction we experience when we see consumer delight in action makes us want to share what we've seen, a type of word-of-mouth marketing for the business at the centre of the action. In fact, many businesses use these examples of consumer delight in their marketing by implementing them into consumer testimonials and other marketing materials.

Consumer delight can be created by the product itself, by accompanied standard services and by interaction with people at the front line. The interaction is the greatest source of opportunities to create delight as it can be personalized and tailored to the specific needs and wishes of the customer. During contacts with touch points in the company, more than just customer service can be delivered. The person at the front line can surprise by showing a sincere personal interest in the consumer, offer small attention that might please or find a solution specific to particular needs. Those front-line employees are able to develop a relationship between the consumer and brand. While we often think of quality consumer service in-store, digital retailers can create outstanding consumer experiences as well. Rapid responses from your customer care team, generous return policies, timely shipping and courteous staff are few of the qualities that transcend digital interactions.

Certain things to concentrate on:

• Shopping is 10th most popular online activity in India.
• Approximately 8 million Indians shopped online in 2012.
• Currently the online retail market stands at Rs.2,000 Cr which is likely to touch Rs.7,000 Cr by 2020.
• The online retail market is growing at an annual rate of 35%
• Online retail account for less than 1% of the total retail market in India.

Online shopping is becoming increasingly popular for variety of reasons. There are certainly outside factors such as increased prices of the products, difficulty in getting to traditional stores and hassles often associated with shopping malls and other traditional stores to contribute to the increased interest in online shopping.

Consumers can get full information about the product with its reviews being passed by the existing user. If one wants to buy a product women consumer is no longer limited to asking the friends and families because there are many products reviews on the web which gives opinions of the existing user of the product.

Online shopping sites contain wide variety of goods both high quality and mid quality keeping in mind the level of consumers

• There are no national and international barriers.
• In online shopping the consumer will be in a demanding position and suppliers will not be in a commanding position.
• There are enormous employment opportunities in online shopping.

While shopping online every customer desires convenience, speed, price benefits, product comparison facility etc. it is not that these features are not available in traditional shopping methods. But due to changes in life style, the notions of these features have changed among the buyers. Now individual are finding it difficult to shop from traditional channels due to their changed lifestyle. As a result of all these issues along with the technological advancements, a new mode of shopping i.e. online shopping also called as electronic shopping has emerged. The internet in the field of shopping, has brought sea changes in the mindset of customers with reference to convenience, speed, price, product information and service associated with online shopping.

The internet has provided marketers with a completely new way to create value for customers and build relationship with them in the form of online shopping. Online shopping is the process whereby consumers directly without an intermediary service, buy goods or services from seller in real-time over the internet. One way of doing electronic commerce is online shopping. In online shopping electronically the sale or purchase of transaction takes place.

E-commerce is defined as a computer activity/exchange performed by a consumer via a computer-based interface, where the consumers computer is connected to and can interact with, a retailer's digital storefront to purchase the product or service over the internet. An e-shop allows the customer to browse entire range of products or services offered by e-vendor, view pictures of the products, along with the complete description of the product specifications, including features and prices. Online stores with the help of "search" features e-shoppers can easily search out specific models, brands or items. An online shop is also referred to as, e-shop, e-store, internet shop, web shop, web store, online store, or virtual store. In present time almost all the big retailers are now offering their online shops. These are also know as e-tailers and their online retail shops are sometimes known as e-tail.

What is Consumer Delight?

The very favorable experience of the client of a business when they have received a good or service that significantly surpasses what they had initially anticipated. Consumer delight happens when you surprise a customer (or client) by exceeding expectations. When expectations are met, you have customer satisfaction. When expectations are exceeded, you achieve delight.

Customer satisfaction and consumer delight go hand in hand. However, customer satisfaction broadly speaking is meeting the customer requirements in the best possible way. Consumer delight is that extra mile you walk to satisfy your customer even further.

Why Does Consumer Delight Matter?

Well, here's some food for thought: It costs six to seven times more to acquire new customers than to retain an existing one. Not to mention, 55% of consumers would pay more to guarantee better service. Who doesn't love amazing service? People are willing to pay it!

Background

The e-commerce industry is growing rapidly every year with many savvy Indians taking to online shopping to search products or service, compare prices for them and to shop online. An increasing number of global companies are eyeing the rapidly growing e-commerce market in India as improvements in infrastructure are made and India's economy grows.

As the world's eleventh largest economy (and fourth-largest emerging economy after BRIC peers China, Brazil and Russia), India is starting to appear on e-business organizations lists of key international markets.

The online clothing industry is still in its infant stage. 2006 was marked as the year where many retailers chose to start selling their whole range online.

In total, online spending on clothing and footwear was only around 3% of the total for the category in 2006.

Online shopping has also been helped by the number of internet users climbing to 13.7 crores in June 2012.

Despite the substantial growth of online clothes shopping, it remains a relatively modest proportion of the overall market. It is calculated that the online fashion market represented just 10.2% of the clothing retail market in April 2012.

Advantages

1. Convenience

Online stores are usually available 24 hours a day and many consumers have internet access both at work and at home. Other establishment such as internet cafes and school provide internet access as well

2. Information And Reviews

Online stores must describe products for sale with text, photos, and multimedia files, whereas in a physical retail stores, the actual product and the manufacturer's packaging will be available for direct inspection.

Some online stores provide or link to supplement product information, such as instruction, safety procedures, demonstrations, or manufacturer specification. Some provide background information, advice, or how-to-guides designed to help consumers decide which product to buy.

3. Price and Selection

One advantage of shopping online is being able quickly seek out deals for items or service provided by many different vendors (though some search engines do exist to help consumer locate products for sale in nearby stores). Search engines, online price comparison services and discovery shopping engines can be used to look up sellers of a particular product or service.

Disadvantages

1. Fraud and security concerns

Given the lack of ability to inspect merchants before purchase, consumers are at higher risk of fraud than face-to-face transactions, Merchants also risk fraudulent purchases using stolen credit cards or fraudulent repudiation of the online purchase. However, merchants face less risk from physical theft by using a warehouse instead of a retail storefront.

A number of resources offer advice on how consumers can protect themselves when using online retailer service. These include:

Sticking with known store, or attempting to find independent consumer reviews of their experiences also ensuring that there is comprehensive contact information on the website before using the service, and noting if the retailer has enrolled in industry oversight programs such as trust mark or a trust seal.

Timeline of Online Shopping

• In the year 1979 was the year of conception of online shopping being mark by invention of electronic shopping by "Michael Aldrich"
• In 1990, World Wide Web the first ever web browser was introduced by Tim Berners-Lee, with help of World Wide Web, e-commerce websites can be easily browsed.
• In 1995 was the year known for launch of Amazon.com, An online marketplace by "Jeff Bezos"
• In the same year, one more online marketplace launched was as Ebay.com which was earlier known as Auctionweb.
• In 1996, An Indian online marketplace, India Mart was launched.
• In 1999, An online marketplace for shoes and other apparels was launched by the of "Zappos"
• In the same year china launched Alibaba.com an online marketplace.
• In 2001, A business-to-business online shopping system was launched by "Costco"
• In 2002, E-bay online marketplace acquired PayPal an online payment system in $1.5 billion in stock.
• In the same year another business-to-business online marketplace, "Bossgoo" was launched.
• In 2007 another popular online marketplace of India, "Flip kart" was launched.
• In 2009 marked for acquisition of "Zappos.com" by Amazon.
• In 2013 china was declared as country with world's largest e-commerce market.

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