Online shopping offers infinite choices, convenience, and various economic benefits while being available 24/7. Major platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Flipkart have emerged over the years, significantly shaping this market, with innovations like cash-on-delivery and user-friendly interfaces catering to customer satisfaction. Despite concerns over privacy and the inability to physically inspect products before purchase, the online retail industry in India is projected to grow rapidly, driven by increasing internet usage and consumer preferences.

1. Online Shopping

3. 1. Infinite Choice !!
2. Incredible Convenience And Comfort !!
3. Economic (Hot Sales, Discount Coupons, Cash-Back, Referral Money,
Price Comparison)
4. 24 x 7 Availability (Access Anytime !!)
5. Product Reviews.
6. Search Box (Land Directly On Desired Product)
7. Save Travelling Time And Gas !!
8. Distant Gifting (Now Don’t Make Distance An Excuse For Not Sending A
Gift)
9. Buying Old/Unused Stuff At Further Lower Price.
10.Less Manpower.

4. In 1994 the German company Intershop introduced its first online
shopping system.
Though surprising, Pizza Hut was the First Online Retailer during a 1994
test phase in Santa Cruz, California. ‘All locations’ option was put in 2007.
In 1994 Amazon launched its online shopping site.
eBay was founded on September 3, 1995
Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos started with a online book store but soon it
grew into selling everything.
And at present it is the 15th most popular site on internet.

6. Amazon was incorporated in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Washington
The company began as an online bookstore with the domain name
www.amazon.com which is today the 15th most popular site.
He wished to have the company’s name starting from ‘A’ so that it appears
early in dictionary so he ended up with the name Amazon which he
considered to be the biggest river in the world and same his company would
be.
In 1999, Time magazine named Bezos the Person of the Year, recognizing the
company's success in popularizing online shopping.
Since 2000, Amazon's logotype is an arrow leading from A to Z, representing
customer satisfaction (as it forms a smile).
A goal was to have every product in the alphabet.
It made first profit announcement in the fourth quarter of 2001, that is after
5 long years: $5 million or 1¢ per share, on revenues of more than $1 billion.

7. "Search Inside the Book" feature started with 1.2 lacs titles (or 33
million pages of text) on October 23, 2003.
There are currently about 3 lacs books in the program.
Over the last decade, Amazon has developed a base of more than
150 million users.
Amazon also allows companies to advertise their products and hence
generates more revenue.
The reason behind this huge success is that they really satisfy their
customers. For e.g., they have a policy that if the price of the goods
purchased from them is decreased within the 30 days of the
purchase then they return the difference amount to the customer.

10. Founded as AuctionWeb in San Jose, California, on September 5,
1994, by Pierre Omidyar.
First items sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83.
Growth was phenomenal. In January 1997 the site hosted 20 lac
auctions, compared with 2.5 lac during the whole of 1996.
The company officially changed the name of its service from
AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997.
Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group,
Omidyar's consulting firm.
Omidyar wanted to have echobay.com but due to unavailability he
ended up with ebay.com

11. In 1997, the company received $6.7 million in funding from the
venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.
Meg Whitman was hired as eBay President and CEO in March 1998.
eBay started IPO on September 21, 1998, with targeted price of share
$18 which went to $53.50 on first day of trading.
In February 2002, the company purchased IBazar, a similar European
auction website and then bought PayPal on October 14, 2002 for
$1.5 billion.

12. By early 2008, the company had expanded worldwide, counted
hundreds of millions of registered users, 15,000+ employees and
revenues of almost $7.7 billion.
After nearly ten years at eBay, Whitman made the decision to enter
politics.
In late 2009, eBay completed the sale of Skype for $2.75 billion.
Today eBay has approximately 29,000 employees and its revenue is
approx. US $12 billion.

14. *The Figures In The Bracket
Represent Alexa Rank In INDIA

16. Flipkart is an Indian e-commerce company headquartered in Bangalore,
Karnataka and founded in 2007 by two IIT Delhi Graduates Mr. Sachin
Bansal and Mr. Binny Bansal.
In its initial years, Flipkart focused on online sales of books but it later
expanded to electronic goods and a variety of other products.
Flipkart offers multiple payment methods like credit card, debit card, e-gift
voucher and Cash on Delivery.
The cash-on-delivery model has proven to be of great significance since the
credit card and net banking penetration is very low in India.
Initially they used word of mouth marketing to popularize their company.
The company sold its first book on flipkart.com—John Woods' Leaving
Microsoft to Change the World.
It has been credited with “India's largest online bookseller” with over 11
million titles on offer.

17. 2010: WeRead, a social book discovery tool.
2011: Mime360, a digital content platform company.
2012: Letsbuy.com is India's second largest e-retailer in electronics.
Flipkart has bought the company for an estimated US$ 25 million.
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In November 2011, Flipkart launched a new Electronic Wallet
feature.
Flipkart is currently the only authorized online reseller of iPods in
India.
Flyte, a new venture by Flipkart offers browse by language options
where users can download international as well as regional songs.

18. Flipkart's reported sales were
40 million in FY 2008–2009.
200 million in FY 2009–2010.
750 million for FY 2010–2011.
In FY 2011–2012, Flipkart is set to cross the 5 billion (US$100 million) mark
as Internet usage in the country increases and people get accustomed to
making purchases online.
On average, Flipkart sells nearly 20 products per minute.
And 30,000 products are shipped out per day.
There are approximately 4600 employees working with flipkart
And over 7 warehouses across India
It is aiming at generating a revenue of 50 billion (US$1 billion) by 2014.

20. Snapdeal.com was started by Kunal Bahl, a Wharton graduate and
Rohit Bansal, alumnus of IIT Delhi in February 2010, as a daily deal
platform, but later expanded into product retailing across various
categories.
It Started with services rather than physical products to reduce
capital investment required.
Snapdeal.com is an Indian e-commerce company, headquartered in
New Delhi, India.
Snapdeal features products across categories like Mobiles,
Electronics, Fashion accessories, Apparel and Footwear, Kids, Home
and Kitchen, Sports, Books, Restaurants, Entertainment and Spas
amongst others.
Snapdeal claims to have a subscriber base of around 15 million and
has presence across 50 cities in India.

23. In India the Online Retail Market is just 1% of the total Retail Market.
So It is expected that the Online Retail Market will grow at a compound
rate of 39% of what it is today, during FY 2013 to FY 2016.
Moreover due to urbanization the distance between places increases
and so the travelling increases waste of time and fuel. So here in such
situations Online Shopping is favorable.
Today People don’t like to stand in long queues and neither they like to
interact with idiotic mall representatives who do not have accurate
knowledge about the specific product. This further increases the scope
for Online Shopping.
So the Future for setting up an Online Shopping Portal appears bright
enough and is a booming industry to be associated with.

24. Currently in India no web portal provides an option to deliver a product
within 24 Hours of Ordering it, even by levying a little extra charge for
Fast Delivery Service. (Minimum Time taken by any company is 48 hours)
Furthermore the sites can put an ‘voice search’ option so that customers
who cannot spell correctly in English can search the products by mere
voice.
Even ‘Image Search’ is one of the futuristic innovation in the cases when
customers do have a digital image but don’t know the name of the
product exactly.
And in the near future with technological advancements these portals can
put 360° 3D body scan which will exactly show the fitting of the apparels
and the customer need not worry about the fitting of the apparel.

25. 1. Risk Of Attack On Privacy (Insecure If Unaware)
2. Delays Goods.
3. Restricts Experience Of Product Before Purchase.
4. Perishable Goods Cannot Be Purchased.