Four Tricks to Avoid Being Cheated When Shopping Online
Despite the global financial crisis, online shopping has become an increasingly popular lifestyle for young people due to its characteristics of being cheap, diverse, and convenient. According to a report released by iResearch Consulting Group, the annual transaction volume of China's online shopping market reached 120 billion yuan in 2008, up 128.5% year-on-year. The most comprehensive Crown store! Net helps you find the best sellers and products on Taobao. Please remember our permanent domain http://www.taoiei.com [http://www.taoiei.com].
With the injection of leisure characteristics and fashion elements, sports brands have gained far more recognition among online shopping consumers, especially teenagers, than other categories. As the cake of online sports goods shopping becomes bigger and bigger, there are more and more fake sellers. Moreover, some teenagers' indifference to buying fakes further encourages the selling of fakes. The rampant fake goods in online shopping have seriously troubled the genuine product consumer group.
According to incomplete statistics, sales of sports specialty stores in second and third-tier cities have dropped by more than 40% compared to the same period last year, while the turnover of these sports brands' online stores has steadily increased. Among them, Taobao, which accounts for more than 80% of China's online shopping market share, is the most representative. Taobao's annual outdoor sports goods transactions reached 32.22 million items, with total sales ranking in the top five of Taobao's sales. Shoe transactions exceeded 2 billion yuan per year, with only Nike shoes generating over 1 million yuan in daily transactions. Even in the current sales off-season of June, leading single-brand stores like Li-Ning and multi-brand genuine stores like Name Shoes Warehouse achieve excellent results of selling hundreds of pairs per day, which is unimaginable for ordinary physical specialty stores.
The trend of online sports goods shopping is gaining momentum, allowing more and more unscrupulous merchants to take advantage of the lax network supervision, risking illegal activities, and going to great lengths to sell fakes, with increasingly sophisticated methods.
How can one avoid buying fakes? Tony, an experienced online shopper and a diamond-level buyer on Taobao, introduced four tricks to avoid being cheated when shopping online using sports goods as an example.
First Look: Usually, the higher a store's credit rating, the longer it has been in business, with more customers and a relatively larger scale, becoming naturally professional over time. However, since credit boosting tools have become rampant on Taobao, the credit rating system now has significant pitfalls. At this point, buyers should focus on observing whether the evaluations of the merchant are consecutively made by the same Taobao ID or frequently by strange numbers or letter combinations. Credit boosting companies often register IDs in bulk without much thought. Secondly, refer to the merchant's positive review rate and evaluation reply situation; responsible enterprises always care about customer feelings.
Second Ask: Before placing an order for online shopping, ask more questions. Fake sellers have many hard-to-explain issues; they fear being sealed by the Administration for Industry and Commerce and usually dare not leave detailed traceable contact addresses and communication methods. The address field on the shipping slip is often left blank. Upon discovering such merchants, consumers should immediately pay attention and consider directly rejecting the delivery to protect their own interests.
Third Think: Recognize the channels for genuine products. Currently, all genuine products for sale in China come from each brand's brand operators. Those labeled as OEM genuine or original order genuine, please do not believe them. This clearly tells you that what they sell is counterfeit - how could so many shoes be stolen out of the factory to be sold?
Fourth Distinguish: Brands like Nike and Adidas have their own pricing systems. If a merchant lists the latest model at a price below fifty percent off, then beware! Only out-of-season inventory items can receive such low discounts.
Tony told reporters that the fraudulent means of fake sellers are constantly innovating. Consumers must also pay attention to whether sellers are forging false genuine product codes and falsely reporting a lower retail price than the genuine product to make their discounted selling price seem reasonable. One fake online store did this very cleverly: changing a shoe with the original code 346526-161 to 080911, advertising [Original Price: 788 yuan, Discounted Price: 296 yuan, Save: 492 yuan!], seemingly reasonable but actually deceiving. In fact, this 346526-161 is a 2009 new item, with a counter price of 1290 yuan. He sells it for 296 yuan, less than three-tenths of the price. How could current season items be sold so cheaply? Even Nike Company couldn't possibly sell so cheaply.
Although online sports goods shopping carries risks, it brings affordable prices to consumers by reducing intermediate links in the commodity circulation process. Saving time, effort, and money equals saving living costs for consumers, which is also the essence of China's online shopping. As long as consumers follow the method of first looking, then asking, thinking, and distinguishing, and practice it multiple times, they will basically develop a keen eye and enjoy the fun of online shopping.