Shopping for Luxury Goods Online

Posted by Thomas Shaw on February 3rd, 2019

After upon a time getting the right match for your shopping preferences would take no less than a day's hunt. The arrival of e-commerce has changed a lot in the past handful of years. Shopping has come to be much more about mental involvement & less about physical exhaustion. But have the consumers really shifted completely from retail shopping to e-buying? If so, is it really the best option? Get more details about designer and luxury lightin

1) Capturing the market space:

The process of purchasing can be broadly classified into two kinds:

a) Necessity purchasing - Necessity shopping includes products we cannot live without like sugar, salt, grocery, etc. Availability of the required necessity products has hardly been a major problem for the retail shoppers.

b) Luxury shopping - Luxury purchasing (like a watch, watch case, electronic, electronics accessory, etc.) has time and again forced us to go out of our ways to ensure we don't regret our purchase. Interestingly, e-tailers have captured the market well in both categories. The e-commerce mainly competes in terms of 'price' for necessity goods and 'variety' for luxury goods.

2) Shift in Consumer shopping preference:

Online buying may have made purchasing easy, but it is hardly as satisfying as retail purchasing, where the process is quite simple and straight-forward. Many people consider online buying risky. But is it true in all cases? An online survey, carried out in 2014, reveals that over 80% of the online shoppers entered the community to buy luxury goods. Interestingly, only 13% of the community shifted to obtaining even the necessity products online. Clearly, online purchasing has received a hearty welcome for luxury shopping. However, when it comes to shopping for necessity goods the consumers have not been so welcoming.

3) Shopping for luxury goods online: Pros and Cons

The number of consumers obtaining luxury goods online has increased. But is it really the best way to go about it?

Pros:

1) Breaking out of the one-brand perception: In online shopping you get to explore several different brands as well as types at when. Example - if you wish to purchase a watch case by one brand, you get to compare it with a watch case offered by another brand. Retail stores can hardly offer this level of unrestricted browsing.

2) Return policy: At a retail store, you can try on a T-shirt and see if it fits you. But after purchase, you won't get your money back even if you wish to return it. Online purchasing offers what the retailers have hardly been able to provide - Freedom to return the product (within a certain deadline). Risky as it might seem to buy a product without getting to check it for real, almost all online shops provide a return option.

3) Convenient buying: Imagine getting a product like a watch case at a retail shop. Should you go to a watch shop or a gift shop? Which shop is the best? How far is it? When can you go? It would be a pretty tedious task. But online shopping has changed the whole experience. You can go online at midnight. You can browse through hundreds of watch cases within a span of a handful of minutes and your watch case will arrive at your doorstep.