Sunday, November 7, 2010

Online Shopping Using Price Comparison Applications

By Adriana Noton

There are new types of software for online shopping that are available as free online downloads. These can assist you in conducting price comparisons. As we all know, the internet is not conducive in this regard.

It does not matter whether you are interested in shopping on American web sites or Canadian online shopping or anywhere else. Conducting price comparisons online is a time consuming and tedious process. In truth the old style flyers that retailers dump into your mailbox on a weekly basis make price comparisons much easier than the best search engines.

There is no doubt that online is faster than real world if price is not an issue. Mass marketers have encouraged a no-comparison mindset by generally offering products cheaper online than in their stores. These merchandisers know that consumers typically compare online prices with real world prices. Now the time has come to compare the price of online products with the same online product at multiple outlets.

If you then want to compare the retailers price for the same product on another retailers site you must start the whole shopping exercise all over again. Try doing this. You will find that it can take upwards of thirty minutes to locate the price for a specific product from as few as three different online retailers.

To find out what type of price comparison applications for shopping over the Internet are out there, simply enter the words Online Price Comparison in any search engine. As with any application downloaded to your computer or any computer, security must be a concern. For this reason, you must have a decent anti-virus program running when you download. The better applications will check auction sites as well as wholesalers and retailers.

With the Christmas shopping season starting, an online price comparison application can save you a good deal of money. These price comparison applications are designed to be used prior to visiting an online store. The application is dormant until a generic consumer product, such as computer, or a specific product brand, such as Dell computer, is entered in any search engine. At that time the application is triggered and a dialog box pops up asking if you wish to use the application to compile a price comparison.

If you click Yes, the application searches within the search results. The search will include wholesalers, retailers and auction sites. It then quickly provides a list of links to the product accompanied by the price given for the product. Just that quickly, you are able to compare the price of the same product on numerous different websites.

If your Dell computer or other brand of computer is located in North America, note that these online price-comparison applications do not distinguish between Canadian online shopping and US online shopping. With many concerned shoppers interested in supporting their national economy by buying Canadian or buying American, it would be nice if the apps included an option to search by those criteria.

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