Buying From a High Street Store Versus Buying Online - Debate the Pros and Cons

The advantages and disadvantages of buying online versus the pros and cons of buying from your local High Street are often hotly discussed and debated. Especially as buying online is ever on the increase and the High Street is dying perhaps because of it. However if we examine the pros and cons of buying online versus buying from the High Street we can see that the death of the high street is in fact not the result of online shopping. Rather online shopping is the symptom of all that is wrong with shopping on the High Street.

Let's look at the key points and then debate them. Are you in?

Pros of buying on the High Street

• Fresh air (depending on where you live) exercise and an opportunity to socialize with real people.
• Supporting your towns people who own and work in local shops
• Can see, feel and measure items you're thinking of buying
• Can obtain what you want that same day (depending on what you're buying)
• Can impulse buy - a good or bad thing
• Can take a break and enjoy a nice cuppa or coffee and cream cake
• Easily return faulty, damaged goods
• Pop in and see friends and family enroute.

Cons of buying on the High Street

• Fresh air is actually polluted air
• Traffic Jams
• Car Parking Fees
• No car parking
• Parking tickets
• Queues at the till
• Stroppy staff
• Stroppy customers
• Other people's children
• Higher prices than you may find on the Internet...
• Risk of mugging/theft/loss of money
• Run out of cash at the till

Pros of Buying on the Internet

• Not subject to any of the above.....

Cons of buying on the Internet

• Social isolation
• Delays in delivery
• No delivery
• Con artists operating on the web
• Difficulty returning faulty items
• Can't touch, feel, smell what you're buying
• Easy to not read all the necc. info and order something which is not what you thought it was..
• Risk of identity theft

There are bound to be many other reasons for and against shopping online to shopping on the High Street. Please do feel free to add those in the comments section.

Meanwhile, if we look at the cons for shopping on the High Street we can see that in some cases it really has become an unappealing venture in an often stressful environment and one which we will seek to avoid if an alternative is offered. Shopping online offers the alternative to avoid the traffic jams, the queues, the stress of dealing with 'real' people. But at what cost?

We are becoming more socially inept and isolated with every extra second we spend at home online. Will this lead to increasingly frustrating real life encounters as we begin to use 'online' forms of communication with real people? By this I refer to the alter egos people often adopt online. They may be more aggressive and so on. Will they forget the social etiquette of face-to-face interaction and instead fall into netiquette?

Lots to debate...I can't wait to read your views.