Brick & Click Essay

A brick means a retail store, and a click means an e-commerce website. The main choice when a new company is starting out is whether to have a brick or a click to get their company going. There are several advantages and disadvantages to choosing either a brick or a click. One advantage of having a brick store to begin with is that when a new company starts people may be wary about completing a transaction online with the company as they do not know if it is trustworthy or not when giving out card details and PayPal account details and similar things. Therefore, by beginning with a brick store people can deal with others face to face and complete the transaction straight away. There is less chance of losing money or having card details stolen if you are using them yourself, rather than relying on someone or something else. If you have a problem, it is very easy and simple to deal with it in a brick store where it may be difficult to get in contact with those on a click e-commerce website as you would need to either write a letter, use the telephone, send an e-mail or file a complaint online on the actual website and you may not get a response. In a brick store you can simply go into the shop and deal with it there and do it face to face with an employee of the company. Another advantage of a brick store is that if there is a problem with the product you can also simply return it to the store and get a change of item or your money back, online this may be a problem as it will cost for postage and packing, it will also take much longer as well. One of the main advantages of starting with a brick store is the possibility of hackers that could put off consumers from purchasing items online. This therefore means that some people prefer to do their shopping in person in a retail store where they can see what is happening. Another advantage is that you can put your hands on a product and test it, to  see if the customer likes the product. On a click store all you can do is look at an image with other details such as size and colour. You can for example try on clothes in store however you have to rely on a size being the same as similar clothing items that you own. However, there are also a variety of advantages to beginning with a click store. A main one is how much cheaper it is to simply open a website in comparison to a retails store. The company will not need to employ anywhere as near as the amount of people that would be employed in a retail store, as well as paying bills for the building and lighting and whatever else. All that is needed online is to make the website, maintain it and update it if necessary and then people working in a warehouse to send out the products to the customers. Another advantage is the convenience of a click store. This means that people can use it anytime of the day and the company don’t need anyone on the website to complete a transaction or anything like that. This means that products can be purchased and ordered at any time that you want to browse the internet. There is no opening and closing times to a click store. From an e-commerce store you can check to see if a product is in stock on one website and then if not just simply browse round all the other similar websites without leaving your home and find a website that has the product in stock and purchase it. You can go to other brick stores if the product you wanted was not in one store, but it would take much longer and there is also much more companies online than there will be in the same town or city. It is much easier to find a product online and you can simply use a search bar to enter keywords for what you are looking for and then browse all the results that it brings up. This will bring up hopefully what you were looking for as well as similar items which you may then prefer that you would not have known about if you had just walked into a shop and bought the product. You can also pay all bills and whatever is owed from your own home online which is much easier and simpler.