If you do a survey to create a list of the most popular hobbies of people in the United States of America, then shopping would definitely be somewhere at the top of the list. It is surprising to learn that people see shopping as a hobby more than something which is done out of necessity.
However, it is not just in USA that people are passionate about shopping. Shopping is a hobby which transcends country barriers. As long as there are human beings with enough money in a country and as long as there are places to shop around in that country, you would find people spending money on shopping. This very fact led to the rise of big shopping malls all over the world. The number of shopping malls is way too high in USA. As a matter of fact, if you are thinking of owning a shopping mall in USA, it is definitely not a bad business idea and is well worth the investment.
Shopping is not popular just in the real world. It is a huge success even in the virtual world called the internet. A bunch of shrewd businessmen, who saw internet as a highly profitable medium, didn’t take long to set up shops online so that shopping enthusiasts can keep doing their shopping from the comforts of their home. With the internet, shoppers found a simpler way to nurse their passion and the owners of those online shops started making great money.
Internet shopping is not just restricted to big guns like Amazon and eBay even though these two are simply ruling this industry online. There are hundreds of other shopping websites who are doing great business with their shopping sites in their own way. E-commerce is really catching up and it has become easier than ever to create a shopping website today.
Big shopping websites like Amazon feature products from many different categories and sub-categories. Large shopping sites like Amazon and eBay have nearly 20 main categories and hundreds of sub-categories inside them. These sites handle home delivery of products to different countries.
There are niche-specific shopping websites which feature products from a particular category. Such medium-sized or small shopping sites don’t ship products to different countries. They only handle shipping to 1 or 2 countries of their choice.
New kind of shopping sites called penny auction shopping sites have come up and are becoming very popular with the online shopping community. With penny auctions, you have to place bids on products of your choice. When the auction period comes to a close and if your bid is the highest for a product, you get to buy the product. With penny auction sites, you bid only in small increments and the final price is usually much lower than the regular price that you have to pay for that product from a retail shopping site.
