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There's No 'Drop' In Comparison Shopping Online
Author: Kevin Price
My mum would love the whole idea of comparison online
shopping. She had shopping till you drop down to a fine art. I grew up in
the country and shopping where there was more than one shop was a pretty
rare experience. On those rare times she shopped, we dropped. I dreaded
it.
A shopping expedition to the city happened maybe two or three times a
year. The day began with a three-hour journey timed to hit the shops
before opening time so that a full day could be had doing what had to be
done. There were different categories of shopping that had to be
accomplished in the day.
At one level there was the grocery shopping; usually a mad rush at the end
of the day filling the boot of the car with long-life bulk stuff for the
storeroom. Much of the goods had to share the back seat with us three
kids. But the other categories were the killers. To my mum, shopping meant
going into one shop and looking at stuff, trying on the clothes for fit
and look, checking out the brands, picking it up and touching it, but not
buying there just in case the shop down the street had better stuff at a
better price. So we'd all have to dutifully march to that next shop. She
didn't buy there either because she still had another shop to look in,
just to compare their stuff. Ironically, it seems that any purchases that
were finally made were at the first shop, so we all traipsed back to the
first shop after we've been to the others. She is the ultimate comparison
shopper.
It didn't necessarily stop there either. Sometimes the item she looked at
in the first shop was gone by the time she got back, so we were then
forced to follow the trail again and be happy with the lesser selection.
This was the practice with clothes shopping, home wares shopping or
entertainment shopping. The other category was personal services such as
hairdressing. Usually this was a waiting game, where we waited on a street
corner for what seemed like hours on end for my mum to show up with new
hair some time considerably later than what was originally promised.
None of this is my idea of shopping. My idea of
shopping is to decide what you
want go to one place, suck the sales guy's brains out and then beat him
down with a very large stick until you got the best price. And if you
choose to ignore all marketing messages around that particular product
category for, say two weeks or so after, then buyer's remorse doesn't even
get a look in.
Of course comparison shopping
online takes all of the pain away for any shopper like my mum. Just
about everything you can ever imagine that's on sale anywhere can be
looked at, compared and priced with a single mouse click or two. Okay, so
you can't try the clothes on. But you can at least see where your fashion
taste might lie before you start trekking from one end of Collins Street
to the other and back again. You can see who's going to offer you the kind
of service you might like. And because any good online shopping mall rates
independent shopper's feedback on the products and vendors they feature,
you can get a good sense of who's not up to par. And no one drops from
exertion.
And for shoppers like me, you don't even have to get physical. In fact you
don't even need to set eyes on the sales guy, you can be anonymous and
still get the business done. It's
beautiful. I can see the TV ads already...let your mouse do the clicking.
About the author:
Kevin Price for Australian
comparison online shopping service.
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