Internet Shopping

Internet Shopping is soooo 90's - Hands on Shopping Takes Us Back to Basics 

According to the latest Universe study by Stanford Business Statistic, internet shopping accounted for only 5 to 10  percent of the total yearly purchases for the average customer in the year 2007. (Those purchase were mainly electronics, books, porn, and hard to find items. ) Projected internet buy is even lower for 2008. 

Shopping is changing once again. The main source for the internet is social (email, instant massager, my space, face book), purchasing embarrassing items that you would not be caught dead shopping for locally, or to search for the latest styles before shopping at the local department stores.  The average customer will travel to there local department store for a hands on shopping experience. The second area which internet shopping is used is to find hard-to- find items. For example, if a customer purchases a side table at the local furniture store, and maybe the customer needs a matching coffee table, but the store does not have one, the customer may search for the brand over the internet. Maybe the customer has just purchased a comforter set on closeout and needs matching drapes.

Department stores have finally caught on to internet shopping and are matching internet pricing.  Customers are tired of the "pay for click web sites" and pay for service internet sites that show up page after page. Buyers are now using three channels for ideas.  Most often ideas come from searching magazines, store displays, and television design channels for product ideas. About a third of lifestyle and traditional furniture store buyers turn to the Internet for ideas, while one fifth of home accent store buyers look online. Some search engines  have basically made the searching experience a total train wreck. It is sometimes impossible to find a "diamond in the rough" such as mom and pop internet retail store. Search engines require that you have links, massive content, sophisticated tags, and the list goes on to even show up on the first ten pages. To maintain a savvy web site, most retail web sites have to pay an enormous amounts of money to web designers to be found on the first page of a searched word, or pay for click according to your rank.  Now if that isn't bad enough, internet fraud has just about destroyed what is left of this internet shopping experience.  Day after day, internet theft, is growing.  Web sites are constantly being abused. I myself have order books on line and never received my purchase. Thank goodness my credit card company reversed the charges - no questions ask!  It is almost impossible to get in touch with the company after you have keyed your information in the shopping cart.  A good rule is to always call the company and make sure the telephone number works on the web site before you make your internet purchase. Look up the address of the business to make sure they have a building and are not just some cyber site.  

You would think that the younger generation would be internet shoppers. With the up coming credit card regulations, credit cards are going to be a harder to obtain. For the younger generation, hands on shopping is a social experience, a place to see and be seen. Most will not have credit cards, and cash will be in hand!  Most of the younger generations general mind set is that the internet shopping is for the 90's generation. Even my own Georgia Tech college senior will tell me that internet shopping is "So 90's".  When purchasing his latest lap top, he went to the local Apple store. When shopping for a high quality suit, he made tracks to his local high end Atlanta department store with his local banking debit card.

Buyers at home accent stores and traditional furniture stores are older than lifestyle store buyers. Baby boomers, currently between the ages of 43 and 61, comprise 54% of buyers at traditional furniture stores, 51% at home accent gift speciality stores and 43% at lifestyle stores.  The younger generations of X and Y, with members currently between the ages of 18 and 43, account for 31% of traditional furniture store buyers, 36% of home accent /gift speciality store buyers and exactly half of lifestyle store buyers. So what does this tell the researchers? The same thing that our baby boomer customers tell us when they come visit our stores. Baby boomers are the customers with money and this is what they say-  "I don't shop the internet, my eyes are getting bad", or "I had rather feel the quality that I'm purchasing".

So what is a web site to do? Get back in the real world. Have a web site, but make your main focus on your instore customer. The instore customer will be loyal  and will always come back to shop with you.  The experts tell us not to totally do away with  your web site, but use it only for a tool to sell your discontinued merchandise. Customers will search the first five pages anyhow. The retail Austin consulting firm says, don't pay those enormous "pay for click", fees just to show up on the 1st page of a search. It is ludicrous and almost just plain dump for a internet sites to do just that. Most of the time, they never receive a profit in return. 

So if you are one of the few, that still shops on line here are the rules for safe shopping: Call the business to make sure there will be a person you can talk if there is a problem with your purchase and look up the business address to make sure there is a store front. For extremely safe on line shopping only shop on a site that has a store front.  Ebay can be good, but do a little research on the seller before making a bid.

If your near the Alabama Gulf Coast, stop in and have on hand shopping experience at the Linen Locker. We also want you to shop our secure web site - www.linenlocker.com  The Linen Locker has been in business for 15 years, and we have selling linens on line for over 11 years. We except all major credit cards. We take phone orders or shopping cart orders.