It's 5 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving and lines have already formed outside of the big department stores. Throngs of holiday shoppers anxiously wait to kick off the shopping season, even if it means dealing with sleep deprivation, crowds, and buying bullies who will do anything to get to that last Sony Playstation II. Promises of huge sales have dragged them out of bed this morning, and nothing can stop them now.
While these shoppers continue to wait, other consumers remain fast asleep, confident of the reliability of the Internet to provide quality gifts for everyone on their shopping list. In the past several years, Internet shopping has been opening the eyes of those looking for bargains and interested in saving time.
By the end of this year, an estimated 39.3 million people will have made online purchases, and that number is expected to skyrocket to 85 million by 2003, according to a USA Weekend Magazine report. Additionally, the average online consumer spent $518 this year, a figure projected to soar to $920 by 2003. And what are these online shoppers buying? According to technology intelligence group IDC's Project Atlas II, almost 70 percent of US Web buyers in 1999 purchased software, over 60 percent bought books and magazines, and 40 percent bought music.
Online shopping has many perks, the most obvious being the convenience factor. Buyers can order gifts at 3 a.m. while wearing pajamas, and crowds are never an issue. Merchants also provide special services for online consumers, such as comparison shopping sites, gift ideas, and free shipping.
To find the ideal present - or just a gift for yourself - -go to a comparison shopping site and search for the item you need, as well as a target price range. The site will then search thousands of online merchants until it finds a match. Most sites also offer e-mail alerts, which send messages to consumers to let them know when their products become available at certain prices. Real techies can also access these sites from their cell phones - especially if they're about to buy something at the mall, but aren't sure if the price is right. Before making a purchase, online shoppers can always check the Web to see how the store's price compares to the online price.
To check up on a price, a shopper could use www.dealtime.com and www.mysimon.com, two comparison shopping sites of good repute. The DealTime site offers hundreds of choices, top picks, buying guides, and three different ways to search. My Simon searches thousands of products and retrieves them for you, and also provides information on return policies, payment options, and mode of delivery.
And if finals are draining you of creative gift ideas - leaving you clueless on what to give this holiday season - don't worry. Plenty of websites out there are stocked full of gift-giving suggestions. Go to www.redenvelope.com and browse the site by "recipient," "occasion," or "lifestyle." For example, you might click on "for her" for recipient, "holiday" for occasion, and "romantic" for lifestyle. Once you choose your category, the site takes over, retrieving gift suggestions appropriate to the classification you indicated.
You can also try the Yahoo! Gift Recommender at www.shopping.yahoo.com/giftcenter to find a gift for those hard-to-shop-for people. You can choose your recipient ? for example, "Pampered Princess" or "Gadget Guy"? or you can browse through popular options, such as books, music, and DVDs, to find the latest, most popular item under a specific title.
Offering not only gift ideas, www.giftideacenter.com also provides a list of questions to get you thinking about what your recipient might actually need or want. The questions range from "Is there a hobby or interest they might be interested in?" to "What do they complain about? What can you do about that?"
While online shopping may seem like the answer to all your troubles, don't be completely taken in by all these advantages. Timing is everything when it comes to shopping for the holidays, online or off. Merchants still sell out of the most popular items quickly, and you should always leave enough time to have your gifts shipped. You can check out the Consumer Reports website to read other shoppers' opinions about different companies and their reliabilities in terms of shipping time.
Security over the Internet is also an issue for many people. Handing over your credit card number to an unknown source in a world of hackers, capable of debilitating an entire online empire, can be intimidating. But, for the most part, established websites are secure for credit card use. All of the card's information is encrypted, and then secured in such a way to ensure that your transaction is safe from those unauthorized to access the information.
Whether you decide to hit the malls in the good, old-fashioned spirit of the holidays or whether you're a modernist prep for the holidays in front of a computer screen, good luck - you'll need it to find one of those damn scooters.
