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Shopping Guide
In our Categories page we have included lots of stores like SonyStyle, Yamaha Motor Corporation, Zales, John Deere, Guitar Center and many more. For your convenience, we have provided links to some of the most popular so called “Online Department Stores” like Amazon.com, Buy.com, newegg.com, and others. And of course we have the auction web site eBay.com.
There are differences between an online store, an online department store, and an auction web site.
For example SonyStyle.com is an online store for Sony electronics. You can find only electronics under the Sony logo here. The good thing about using an online store like SonyStyle.com is the fact that they provide some items exclusively (that means here for the first time), and also they provide great customer service; and the bad is that the price here is usually the highest.
Contrary Amazon.com is a so called Online Department Store – this is a place with numerous departments (clothing, electronics, books, DVDs, cars, etc.) – offering you lots of brand name products. You can find most Sony products here and usually for a lower price but after a certain period of time after the product was first released on the market.
eBay.com, on the other side, is an online auction site – a place where you can bid on an item and if you place the highest final bid you win it – just like at a regular auction, but it is online. Also most of eBay auctions take 7 days. You can find some products to buy right away without bidding, which makes it equivalent to an Online Department Store because eBay offers a great amount of departments.
Here is an example. Let’s say you like Sony digital cameras. Let’s say in April of 2009 you read an article (in a magazine or online) that a new model will be released in June 2009. We will give this camera the hypothetical model number DSC-J2009. So the month of June comes and you can start using our web site to find this camera and order it. You can look it up on eBay.com or Amazon.com but most likely it won’t be available there yet. You really want to be one of the first to own it! And you find that the Sony DSC-J2009 camera is now available only in the online store SonyStyle.com. The price now is $300. After 3 months this camera may be available at Amazon.com for $250 but you don’t want to wait 3 months and you don’t care for the $50 difference. In that case your best and only choice is to buy it from SonyStyle.com.
In case the item was already released on the market 6 months ago, for example in January, and now is July, you will most likely find a better price in an Online Department Store like Amazon.com. You don’t have the waiting factor bothering you, because this item is already available at numerous stores, and now you can simply choose the best place to buy it from for the cheapest price, which usually is an Online Department Store!
Another place you can buy the item you like from is eBay.com. As we mentioned already, eBay is the popular auction web site – which means that you will have to bid on the item you like. Only after placing the final and winning bid you can purchase the item. So, for example, an item might show with a price of a $100 but it may have 3 days left for bidding. By the time the auction ends the final bid may be $320. There are some items in eBay that are available for “Buy It Now” which means you don’t have to bid on it, just click on “Buy It Now” and you can purchase it right away for the price shown.
When shopping online you will also see that most web sites offer you the option to use coupons. You can search online for coupons for the web site you are about to make a purchase from, and if you find such a coupon you will be able to apply the coupon code at checkout and thus get the desired item for a cheaper price. Also if you register for a web site's e-newsletter you will receive promotions and coupons on your email whenever they are offered.
We hope this guide helps you better understand the basis of online shopping!
