Online Marketing Takeover
Those who used to spend hours in a mall or shopping center now spends minutes browsing for products on the internet. The trend is growing ever faster and taking over the market from physical shopping centers. The only category of stores not so much affected yet is the supermarket for foodstuffs and paper products
Marketing sites such as Amazon now sell just about everything, and if auction allures the consumer, sites such as EBay fill the bill. Why wear out your body and your shoes pounding the pavement to find that particular product you need or want when you can get to a specific article, right down to a specific model number or any other parameter you want to set, with a few keystrokes? Comparison sites such as BizRate can even tell the consumer where to find the best price
I absolutely love online marketing and can tell you about one recent experience. I found the exact vent less gas heater I wanted on one site. That particular site had a price match guarantee and free shipping. Their price was in the range of $500. Then I went to a comparison site and found the same unit in the range of $260 but with shipping costs extra. I went to the original site and went through the steps they specified for them to honour their price match guarantee and got the unit for the $260 range and free shipping. Once I accomplished that, I found a plumber from another online source, Craig’s List, to do the installation (including the materials needed) for the $250 range. The result was that the entire project including shipping, materials and installation labour cost me just about the same as the price of the unit alone at the first site I shopped. And all of this was accomplished without setting foot out of the house in 2-1/2 feet of snow!
Needless to say at this point, I am forever an advocate of online marketing.