Running head: CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AND ONLINE SHOPPING 1 Consumer Behavior and Online Shopping Student’s Name Name of Institution CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AND ONLINE SHOPPING 2 Consumer Behavior and Online Shopping Question one While there are many stages in the consumer decision-making process, comparison shopping mainly affects evaluating alternatives stage(Hoyer et al., 2013). In this stage, buyers consider all their brand and product options based on various attributes that can deliver the benefit needed. The products and brands compared represent the options that the buyers are considering during the problem-solving stage. The quantity or price of the product can have a significant influence here. When comparing, a buyer can consider a product that can fulfil the needs at hand at the most affordable cost. Besides this stage, the purchase stage can have a significant influence on when doing comparison shopping (Hoyer et al., 2013). During this stage, a consumer mainly decides to purchase the most affordable product. A buyer will already have decided to buy a specific product. However, when it comes to purchasing, the buyer can determine where to purchase the product based on the price they can afford. Question two Online shopping has become a vital part of our lives today. Parents and students use the Internet to purchase and sell books at affordable costs. Virtual stores enable people to shop easily from their mobile devices at any time and place, without being influenced by people like it would have been in stores. Even though shopping online has a few negative impacts, it generally offers a more convenient platform for exchanging virtually any good or service. It enables both customers and businesses to buy and sell conveniently. For the consumer, shopping online at any time of the day makes it easy to quickly acquire essential goods(Hoyer et al., 2013). For businesses, it ensures that companies keep running, hence increased productivity and sales. CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AND ONLINE SHOPPING 3 Question three With the rise of different technologies and the Internet, it has become essential to operate online. Whether one needs to get entertainment, education, news, or just shopping, the Internet and Internet-connected devices make everything easy. Almost everyone today uses a smartphone. With such tools, shopping online is becomes much more comfortable than conventional methods of shopping. Personally, I shop online more compared to the number of times I buy things insides stores. Most businesses today have moved online. Besides, the use of mobile shopping apps and websites have made it easy for businesses to set up online stores where we can shop virtually. The most important part of shopping online is that, whenever I shop online, I can get my items delivered to where I live. This makes it more exciting and convenient as opposed to going out to shop. Question four Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great sales days because they both offer different customers goods and services at reduced costs. However, they have a few differences that set them apart. Based on consumer and buyer data, Black Friday stands out as a better sales day for customers to purchase newer, big-ticket items (Swilley & Goldsmith, 2013). This sales day is also the best when it comes to online shopping. However, due to changes in shopping behavior, Black Friday deals have been increasingly advertised online, enabling buyers to make purchases over the Internet. For Cyber Monday, it stands out as an excellent option for technology goods and smaller gifts. With this option, sellers offer deals with better discounts online. Hence, Cyber Monday can be generally considered more beneficial because most of the big deals are offered online where most customers exist today.