Problem Of Online Shopping

## **Problems of Online Shopping During Spring Festival**

During **Chinese Spring Festival**,
known as the “Chinese New Year” (Pinyin: *Chūn Jié*, Chinese: 春节), people celebrate the turn
of each turn of lunar calendar. They in China like to purchase goods for their
families, it is a tradition to bring special local products from places where
they work and live. Those special local products can be souvenirs and local
food. Nowadays, Chinese have progressively starting buy gifts (Pinyin: nián huò,
Chinese:年货), which are special local
products and presents for families through the Internet, because markets are
too crowed to find what people wants. Also, there will be not safe enough with
crowded people. Online shopping can provide opportunities for people selecting products
on the Internet. According to the statistical data shown by Chinese commercial
information network, 9715.8 trillion RMB (Renminbi) has been traded through Chinese
online shopping in the first quarter of 2016, rase 27.9 percentage from a year
earlier. In addition, increasingly merchants on online store implement discount
event for attracting more attention than others. There are several famous
online shopping websites to choose, for instance Tianmao (belongs to Alibaba), Jingdong,
Suning, and Jumei are increasing their market value significantly. Customers can
order products in anytime and anywhere. Nonetheless, there still remain some problems
of online shopping should be addressed.

### Package Problem

Missing, damaging, and unfitting packages
usually happen every day. It can be “surprised” to customers while they received
their packages. Some of package problems cannot be solved by express delivery
companies, such as the damage of products in package are not duties of express
companies, and also products missing and broken of packaging are not their
duties while receivers have signed after receiving. Especially during Spring Festival,
with growing orders, merchants are difficult to be sure each package belongs to
each order. Therefore, there are more problems occur than other times.

### Credit Problem

Fake information can also cause problems
and hurt buyers. Fake goods and wrong store information are usually published
by online store owners to attract people’s attention with lower price and/or
inaccurate introductions. In China monitor of online stores are not strict
enough, laws and regulations cannot provide much constraining forces and there
probably exist escaped criminals, so merchants can easily run an online store
without caring about too much rules and regulations. In addition, some
consumers would like to buy fake good while they even know it is imitation,
because they cannot offer expensive products with lower payment. Fake makeups
and skin care products are common in some stores, they cannot be told apart by
customers, because some products made with regular packaging but fake inside. According
to the research that there are over 40% of Chinese online sales either
counterfeit or bad quality in 2014. The complaint reports reached to 77800 and
rose 356.6% from last year. People entertained it quite like “Taobao” (means
search salable product in Chinese) to purchase goods online . Quality of products cannot be guaranteed: Generally, goods’ information
is shown with pictures epically cloth. Those pictures usually show nice look on
models and marvelous design of cloths, and attract people for buying. The products
are totally different with what shown on pictures, while the time customers received.
There are some videos show how to identify bad quantity clothes.

### Problem of Express Delivery

Products usually take longer to arrive
than specified. Most customers still report wrong product being delivered and
sometimes the product may not be delivered at all. This is a huge problem
especially when it comes to holiday time or big sales season such as Chinese
New Year when people try to bring those products back home. Delayed packages
are also bringing lots of problems, for instance post office or somewhere for
deposit cannot offer such a long period of time during Spring Festival. Those
delayed packages may be sent back to merchant or missing during Spring
Festival. Besides, in China consumer pay for a product, the payment cannot be received
by sellers until consumers confirm or systematically confirm after a long time.
Therefore, few of dishonest sellers will delay to send goods until the time for
confirming orders. It is really existing, but seldom encounter those merchant
online. While most of these products are labeled express delivery, research
shows that many online retailers lack personalized user experiences hence the
delivery problems. In addition, China merchants seldom send confirm email to
customers, but record on Alipay (like Paypal) of each consumer’ account. Therefore,
it can avoid some of problems, such as payment confirmation missing

### Contradiction between Customers and Merchants

It is very difficult for online retailers
to differentiate between merchants and customers. Normally, there is a merchant
agreement contract or terms and conditions that apply to merchants. However,
many merchants simply make a buy decision and start processing immediately
without approval from the retailer. While online retailers assume customers do
not read agreements, anyone without agreement is considered to be a direct customer
and this leads to conflict. While many merchants fail to sign the contract, the
only option they have to get their money back is to claim for a refund which
may result to loss of sales and dissatisfaction from merchants.

### Impact to Physical Stores

The year 2013 saw online sales outpace
physical store revenue gains. However, despite this incredible growth,
brick-and-mortar locations still accounted for more than three quarters of the
retail transactions. The little engagement between the seller and the buyer
continues to hurt online shoppers and the businesses that rely on it. There are
still many shoppers who believe shopping needs to be an experience and not just
a point of sale. Therefore, brick-and-mortar retailers spend their time
building a connection with consumers, something online retailers can’t. When a
customer is looking for a pure transaction, it is more efficient to do it online,
but most retail customers want more than just a pure transaction.

## Works Cited

1. ↑ [http://www.askci.com/news/hlw/20160613/16104528430.shtml “Statistic and analyze the data in Chinese market
transactions. Chinese commercial information website.”](2016), Retrieved 21 Apr. 2017.
2. ↑ [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-counterfeits-idUSKCN0SS02820151103. “Over 40 percent of China’s online sales counterfeit,
shoddy: Xinhua.”] (2 Nov. 2015), Reuters, retrieved 21 Apr. 2017.
3. ↑ Yufei, QI. “Over 40 percent of Chinese online sales are
fake, including statistical data.” Epoch Times, 4 Nov. 2015,
Accessed 21 Apr.  2017.
4. ↑ Krystina, Gustafson. “Five problems retailers must fix in
2014.” CNBC News. 2014,
Accessed 16 Apr.  2017.
5. ↑ Kaisa, Kiviluoto. “Five typical problems consumers have when
shopping online.” Paytrail by nets. 2016,
Accessed 16 Apr. 2017.
6. ↑ Mark, Hayes. “4 serious mistakes business owners make with
their credit card processor.” Shopify blogs. 2011,
Accessed 16 Apr. 2017.