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Directory Of American Online Catalogs / Stores |
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| Arts and Books | Gifts | Books, Posters
and Prints | Cards, Chocolates,
Flowers, Other Gifts | | | | | Business | Health and Beauty | Business Services,
Business Supplies | Body and Soul, Cosmetics,
Health Care, Perfumes | | | | | Casinos and Betting | Home and Garden | Casinos, Lotteries,
Sports Books | DIY, Furniture,
Garden, Home | | | | | Consumer Electronics | Loans and Finance | Electrical Retailers,
Cell Phones,
Computing | Financial Advice,
Insurance,
Loans | | | | | Entertainment | Motors | Film and TV, Music,
Ticket and Event | Cars, Car Hire,
Car Parts, Car Audio, | | | | | Fashion | Online Services | Clothing and Accessories,
Footwear, Jewelry,
Lingerie | Charities, Dating,
Price Comparison,
Training and Recruitment | | | | | Food and Drink | Sports and Fitness | Food Shopping,
Gourmet Food,
Wine and Spirits | Sports, Fitness,
Sports Equipment,
Sportswear | | | | | Games and Competitions | Travel | Competitions,
Games | Flight and Ticket, Holidays,
Travel Accessories, Insurance |
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Thank You For Visiting The Racing Ahead Store |
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I Hope you enjoy shopping at the Racing Ahead store and that you find what you are looking for. From time to time, new additions will be made to departments so please do come back and look again.
Online Catalog shopping
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Online shopping is the process consumers go through using an online catalog to purchase products or services over the Internet. An online shop, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, webshop, online store, or virtual store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.
The metaphor of an online catalog is also used, by analogy with mail order catalogs . All types of stores have retail web sites, including those that do and do not also have physical storefronts and paper catalogs .
Online shopping is a type of electronic commerce used for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions.
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Online Catalog Store Logistics |
| Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the online catalog of the retailer directly, or do a search across many different vendors using a shopping search engine.
Once a particular product has been found in the online catalog of the seller, most online retailers use shopping cart software to allow the consumer to accumulate multiple items from the online catalog and to adjust quantities, by analogy with filling a physical shopping cart or basket in a conventional store. A "checkout" process follows (continuing the physical-store analogy) in which payment and delivery information is collected, if necessary. Some stores allow consumers to sign up for a permanent online catalog account so that some or all of this information only needs to be entered once. The consumer often receives an e-mail confirmation once the online catalog transaction is complete. Less sophisticated stores may rely on consumers to phone or e-mail their orders (though credit card numbers are not accepted by e-mail, for security reasons).
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Online Catalog Payment |
| Online catalog shoppers commonly use their credit card for making payments, however some systems enable users to create an online catalog account and pay by alternative means, such as:
Debit card
Various types of electronic money
Cash on delivery (C.O.D., offered by very few online stores)
Cheque
Wire transfer/delivery on payment
Postal money order
PayPal
Google Checkout
Reverse SMS billing to mobile phones
Gift cards
Direct Debit in some countries
Some sites will not allow international credit cards and billing address and shipping address have to be in the same country in which the online catalog does its business. Other online catalogs allow customers from anywhere to send gifts anywhere. The financial part of a transaction might be processed in real time (for example, letting the online catalog consumer know their credit card was declined before they log off), or might be done later as part of the fulfillment process.
While credit cards are currently the most popular means of paying for online catalog goods and services, alternative online payments will account for 26% of online catalog e-commerce volume by 2009 according to Celent.
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Online Catalog Product delivery |
| Once a payment has been accepted the online catalog goods or services can be delivered in the following ways.
Download: This is the method often used for digital media products such as software, music, movies, or images.
Shipping: The online catalog product is shipped to the customer's address.
Drop shipping: The online catalog order is passed to the manufacturer or third-party distributor, who ships the item directly to the consumer, bypassing the retailer's physical location to save time, money, and space.
In-store pickup: The customer orders from a online catalog, finds a local store using locator software and picks the product up at the closest store. This is the method often used in the bricks and clicks business model |
Online Catalog Shopping Cart Systems |
Simple online catalog systems allow the offline administration of products and categories. The online catalog shop is then generated as HTML files and graphics that can be uploaded to a webspace. These systems do not use an online database.
A high end online catalog solution can be bought or rented as a standalone program or as an addition to an Enterprise resource planning program. It is usually installed on the company's own webserver and may integrate very well into the existing supply chain so that ordering, payment, delivery, accounting and warehousing can be automated to a large extent.
Other online catalog solutions allow the user to register and create an online catalog on a portal that hosts multiple online catalog shops at the same time.
open source shopping cart packages include osCommerce and Zen Cart. Virtuemart is a shopping extension for the extremely popular CMS Joomla.
Commercial online catalog systems can also be tailored to ones needs so that the online catalog shop does not have to be created from scratch. By using a framework already existing, software modules for different functionalities required by an online catalog can be adapted and combined. |
Market Share of Online Catalogs |
| E-commerce product sales totaled $146.4 billion in the United States in 2006, representing about 6% of retail product sales in the country. The $18.3 billion worth of clothes sold through online catalogs represented about 10% of the domestic market.
For developing countries and low-income households in developed countries, adoption of e-commerce in place of or in addition to conventional methods is limited by a lack of affordable Internet access.
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Advantages and disadvantages of using an Online Catalog |
Convenience |
| Online catalog stores are usually available 24 hours a day, and many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home. A visit to a conventional retail store requires travel and must take place during business hours.
Searching or browsing an online catalog can be faster than browsing the aisles of a physical store. Consumers with dial-up Internet connections rather than broadband have much longer load times for image-rich online catalog web sites, and have a considerably slower online shopping experience. They are more likely to find physical retail stores more convenient.
Some consumers prefer interacting with people rather than online catalogs and computers (and vice versa), sometimes because they find computers hard to use. Not all online catalog retailers have succeeded in making their sites easy to use or reliable.
In most cases, merchandise must be shipped to the consumer, introducing a significant delay and potentially uncertainty about whether or not the online catalog item was actually in stock at the time of purchase. Bricks-and-clicks stores offer the ability to buy online but pick up in a nearby store. Many online catalog stores give the consumer the delivery company's tracking number for their package when shipped, so they can check its status online and know exactly when it will arrive. For efficiency reasons, online catalog stores generally do not ship online catalog products immediately upon receiving an order. Orders are only filled during warehouse operating hours, and there may be a delay of anywhere from a few minutes to a few days to a few weeks before in-stock items are actually packaged and shipped. Many online catalog retailers inform customers how long they can expect to wait before receiving a package, and whether or not they generally have a fulfillment backlog. A quick response time is sometimes an important factor in online catalog consumers' choice of merchant.
In the event of a problem with the online catalog item - it is not what the consumer ordered, or it is not what they expected - consumers are concerned with the ease with which they can return an item for the correct one or for a refund. Consumers may need to contact the online catalog retailer, visit the post office and pay return shipping, and then wait for a replacement or refund. Some online catalog companies have more generous return policies to compensate for the traditional advantage of physical stores. For example, the online catalog shoe retailer Zappos.com includes labels for free return shipping, and does not charge a restocking fee, even for returns which are not the result of merchant error. (Note: In the United Kingdom, Online shops are prohibited from charging a restocking fee if the online catalog consumer cancels their order in accordance with the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Act 2000.[
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Information and reviews for Online Catalogs |
| Online catalog stores must describe products for sale with text, photos, and multimedia files, whereas in a physical retail store, the actual product and the manufacturer's packaging will be available for direct inspection (which might involve a test drive, fitting, or other experimentation).
Some online catalog stores provide or link to supplemental product information, such as instructions, safety procedures, demonstrations, or manufacturer specifications. Some provide background information, advice, or how-to guides designed to help online catalog consumers decide which product to buy.
Some online catalog stores even allow customers to comment or rate their items. There are also dedicated review sites that host user reviews for different products.
In a conventional retail store, clerks are generally available to answer questions. Some online catalog stores have real-time chat features, but most rely on e-mail or phone calls to handle customer questions.
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Online Catalog Price and Selection |
| One advantage of online catalog shopping is being able to quickly seek out deals for items or services with many different online catalog vendors (though some local search engines do exist to help consumers locate products for sale in nearby stores). Search engines and online catalog price comparison services can be used to look up sellers of a particular product or service.
Shoppers find a greater selection online in certain market segments (for example, computers and consumer electronics) and in some cases lower prices. This is due to a relaxation of certain constraints, such as the size of a "brick-and-mortar" store, lower stocking costs (or none, if drop shipping is used), and lower staffing overhead.
Shipping costs (if applicable) reduce the price advantage of online catalog merchandise, though depending on the jurisdiction, a lack of sales tax may compensate for this.
Shipping a small number of items, especially from another country, is much more expensive than making the larger shipments bricks-and-mortar retailers order. Some online catalog retailers (especially those selling small, high-value items like electronics) offer free shipping on sufficiently large orders.
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Online Catalog Fraud and security concerns |
| Given the lack of ability to inspect online catalog merchandise before purchase, consumers are at higher risk of fraud on the part of the merchant than in a physical store. Online catalog merchants also risk fraudulent purchases using stolen credit cards or fraudulent repudiation of the online purchase. With a warehouse instead of a retail storefront, Online catalog merchants face less risk from physical theft.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption has generally solved the problem of credit card numbers being intercepted in transit between the consumer and the online catalog merchant. Identity theft is still a concern for consumers when hackers break into a online catalog merchant's web site and steal names, addresses and credit card numbers. A number of high-profile break-ins in the 2000s has prompted some U.S. states to require disclosure to consumers when this happens. Computer security has thus become a major concern for online catalog merchants and e-commerce service providers, who deploy countermeasures such as firewalls and anti-virus software to protect their networks.
Phishing is another danger, where consumers are fooled into thinking they are dealing with a reputable online catalog retailer, when they have actually been manipulated into feeding private information to a system operated by a malicious party. On the other hand, dealing with an online catalog automated system instead of a population of store clerks reduces the risk of employees stealing consumer information, or dumpster diving of paper receipts. Denial of service attacks are a minor risk for online catalog merchants, as are server and network outages.
Quality seals can be placed on the online catalog webpage if it has undergone an independent assessment and meets all requirements of the company issuing the seal. The purpose of these seals is to increase the confidence of the online catalog shoppers; the existence of many different seals, or seals unfamiliar to consumers, may foil this effort to a certain extent.
A number of resources offer advice on how consumers can protect themselves when using online catalog retailer services. These include:
Sticking with known online catalog stores, or attempting to find independent consumer reviews of their experiences; also ensuring that there is comprehensive contact information on the online catalog website before using the service, and noting if the retailer has enrolled in industry oversight programs such as trustmark or trust seal.
Ensuring that the online catalog retailer has an acceptable privacy policy posted. For example note if the online catalog retailer does not explicitly state that it will not share private information with others without consent.
Ensuring that the vendor address is protected with SSL (see above) when entering credit card information. If it does the address on the credit card information entry screen will start with "HTTPS".
Using strong passwords, without personal information. Another option is a "pass phrase," which might be something along the lines: "I shop 4 good a buy!!" These are difficult to hack, and provides a variety of upper, lower, and special characters and could be online catalog site specific and easy to remember.
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Privacy considerations of an online catalog
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| Privacy of personal information is a significant issue for some online catalog consumers. Different legal jurisdictions have different laws concerning consumer privacy, and different levels of enforcement. Many consumers wish to avoid spam and telemarketing which could result from supplying contact information to an online catalog merchant. In response, many merchants promise not to use consumer information for these purposes, or provide a mechanism to opt-out of such contacts.
Brick-and-mortar stores also collect consumer information. Some ask for address and phone number at checkout, though consumers may refuse to provide it. Many larger stores use the address information encoded on consumers' credit cards (often without their knowledge) to add them to a catalog mailing list. This information is obviously not accessible to the merchant when paying in cash.
Many successful purely online catalog companies deal with digital products, (including information storage, retrieval, and modification), music, movies, office supplies, education, communication, software, photography, and financial transactions. Examples of this type of company include: Google, eBay and Paypal. Other successful online catalog marketers use Drop shipping or Affiliate marketing techniques to facilitate transactions of tangible goods without maintaining real inventory. Examples include numerous online catalog sellers on eBay.
Some non-digital products have been more successful than others for online catalog stores. Profitable items often have a high value-to-weight ratio, they may involve embarrassing purchases, they may typically go to people in remote locations, and they may have shut-ins as their typical online catalog purchasers. Items which can fit through a standard letterbox — such as music CDs, DVDs and books — are particularly suitable for a online catalog marketer, and indeed Amazon.com, one of the few enduring dot-com companies, has historically concentrated on this field.
Products such as spare parts, both for consumer items like washing machines and for industrial equipment like centrifugal pumps, also seem good candidates for selling in online catalogs . Retailers often need to order spare parts specially, since they typically do not stock them at consumer outlets -- in such cases, e-commerce online catalog solutions in spares do not compete with retail stores, only with other ordering systems. A factor for success in this niche can consist of providing customers with exact, reliable information about which part number their particular version of a product needs, for example by providing parts lists keyed by serial number.
Products less suitable for online catalog e-commerce include products that have a low value-to-weight ratio, products that have a smell, taste, or touch component, products that need trial fittings — most notably clothing — and products where colour integrity appears important. Nonetheless, Tesco.com has had success delivering groceries in the UK, albeit that many of its goods are of a generic quality, and clothing sold through online catalogs is big business in the U.S. Also, the recycling program Cheapcycle sells goods over the internet, but avoids the low value-to-weight ratio problem by creating different groups for various regions, so that shipping costs remain low.
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