A survey has revealed that the internet has brought a dramatic change in in the way people shopped. More and more people are using the internet to do their shopping online and this is because of the convenience of doing the online shopping. While five years ago, people are rather sceptics and felt insecure of using their credit cards to do online shopping, nowadays their perceptions are different. With the security of doing online shopping is getting better and the technology is advancing, people are feeling that online shopping today is much secure than say, five or six years ago. The survey also agree that consumer confidence in online shopping has greatly improved.

Whilst online shopping gives us convenience of shopping at home, the advantages to retailers may not be so obvious. Marketing costs for online sales are generally higher than for store or catalog sales. This is because the retailers need to spend higher on promoting their products to attract more customers to do online shopping. There will be a lot of discounts and bargain prices to be offered to customers so that they are willing to shop online.