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Online shopping is one of the budding businesses in Nepal. With Nepalese citizens spreading out to different corners of the world, it has become the perfect solution for the people residing abroad to send their love through gift packages to their loved ones without any hassle. It has become equally popular in Nepali market, especially amongst the busy people in town who can enjoy shopping online in an instant without going to the market. With regard to the service providers, this has in fact become a great platform for the businessmen to pump up their business by putting a wide range of products on display and attract customers from the home location and worldwide.

Introduction
Online shopping is a part of e-commerce that gives customers an easy access to purchase different kinds of goods or sign up for services over the internet. Similar to the conventional shopping, consumers have the flexibility to look into products and services, their features and pricing and find something of their interest. They can then fill out an order in the shopping website and choose the style of payment and delivery. Usually, the payment is done through a credit card. Once the information about order and payment has been received, the goods are then delivered to the assigned designation within the amount of time specified. Once the delivery is successful, the customer is notified.

Working Mechanism
The general steps involved in online shopping are:
 * 1) Customer looks for products in the concerned online shopping website.
 * 2) Customer places an order.
 * 3) Customer pays with his/her credit card.
 * 4) The order is processed by the service provider.
 * 5) Notification is sent through phone call or email to the designated receiver.
 * 6) The product is delivered to the designation.
 * 7) The customer is notified about the delivery.

History
The first concept of teleshopping or online shopping as it is called today was proposed by Michael Aldrin in 1979. It was in 1990 when Tim Berners-Lee introduced the WorldWideWeb abbreviated as www, a whole new prospect was opened up. With the first browser to browse the internet, things started transforming the way business was done. Later in the year 1995, the popular online shopping websites like Amazon.com and eBay started off, making estimated turnover on a daily basis of over US $2.5 trillion with growth rate of 14% annually and sales of US $1.89 billion by 2009 respectively.

In Nepal, online shopping did not start until 2000. From the year 2000 and since, significant online shopping stores have opened up, for instance muncha.com, thamel.com,nepricanmart.com etc.

Internet status in Nepal
The growth of online shopping has direct relation with the internet status in the country. Though the Internet was already introduced into Nepal in 1993, the internet connection was 56 Kbps dial up setup at the time the first ever online store in Nepal was introduced in the market. Through 2005, less than 1 percent of Nepal’s population of twenty-three million used the Internet. Presently, with state-run Nepal Telecom providing ADSL service and Wi-Max service, Ncell providing data cards and thirty-one private ISPs offering Internet access to businesses and consumers, over 5.53 million Nepalese have subscribed to the Internet service till now.

Current status of online shopping in Nepal
Presently, there are more than 1,000 online shopping stores in the country, mostly targeted in the cities. With the popular social networking site Facebook, people have also started opening up and promoting their online stores through Facebook profile pages. Some of the popular online shopping stores in Nepal are
 * www.munchahouse.com
 * www.bhatbhatenionline.com
 * www.nepricanmart.com
 * www.estorenepal.com
 * www.yeskantipur.com

Products offered
As the prospects of online shopping is taking slow strides in the local Nepali market, the online shopping stores in Nepal are no longer just focused in the gift products. Most online shopping stores like muncha.com, yeskantipur.com etc. offer variety of products from food items, daily grocery items, clothing, shoes and accessories to electronic gadgets, mobiles, laptops, home appliances, sports equipment, motorbikes and automobile. They also offer books, music, videos and movie tickets.

Besides the regular items offered, considering the current context of Nepal, it has been observed that online shopping stores like nepricanmart.com, yeskantipur.com etc. have service packages like load shedding solutions, install and repair services, mobile recharge cards, subscription to various services, IT services, internet subscription, repair and maintenance etc. Through these services, people living abroad can ease the problem of their families in Nepal, especially the seniors and the elderly, who are not used to or unaware of dealing with technical problems at home.

The online stores are also concentrated in the gift items. Most of them have focused on making it easy for the customers to browse for gift items. They offer gift packages for certain occasions and also categories like gifts for him, gifts for her, gifts for birthday, Dashain, Tihar, Mother’s Day etc. Besides the regular gift items, e-stores are trying to come up with unique and attractive gifting ways, for instance nepricanmart.com has introduced a new way to surprise the loved ones by sending photographs in print. This has become one of the attractive features in the gift section. The customers can send their photos in email and the online shopping store will print and put it in frames and send it to the designated receiver.

Payment Facilities
For customers from abroad, payment can be done through credit cards like MasterCard and Visa cards. They are required to submit their credit card details for payment. Though many e-stores claim secure payment method and no exposure of credit card details to the merchant, it is better to be aware of the frauds that might exist and online shoppers might want to evaluate the credibility of the merchant first before agreeing to make the payment online. Some of the popular e-stores claim of secure server maintained by payment processing companies. For instance muncha.com claim of a secure server of a payment processing company named authorize.net.In the international market, PayPal is one of the popular and secure methods of online payment. Some Nepali e-stores like nepricanmart.com, giftmandu.com etc. have incorporated this payment facility. Incorporating Paypal as the payment system boosts the global business because it ensures more customers from abroad as it is popular and considered trustworthy in the international market.

However in context of local business transactions for local customers in Nepal, the payment method was a big hassle initially due to government´s ban on issuance of cards in Nepal that are accepted worldwide. In 2009, the first online payment gateway of Nepal e-Sewa was established. Presently, number of online payment gateways has been formed in the country to facilitate online transactions on domestic sites like e-sewa.com, ipay.com.np and payway.com.np. These sites provide access to the users to transfer amount from internet bank accounts to accounts created on these sites. In November 2012, Nabil bank has launched a service called eSecure, to shop at e-stores based in India.

Growth of online shopping in Nepal
Initially, online shopping was mainly targeted for the Nepali citizens residing abroad as it was more of a ‘gift sending’ medium for them to send gift packages for their families and relatives in Nepal. The products they offered were limited and the prospect was narrow. Also designing an online shopping based website was very expensive and businessman found it risky to invest in this area. With the availability of fast internet access and impressive growth leap in the IT sector in Nepal, today the scenario has improved with the many e-stores actively operating in the market offering varieties of goodies and services.

Despite all this progress, somehow, it still has not been able to attract the domestic customers as targeted. Most of the orders placed in the online stores are mainly from overseas.

Future scope
Internet has revolutionized the whole world. Everything is on the internet today for people to browse through what they want. In the developed countries, business has to have an online existence to stay ahead in the fiercely competitive market. Depending on the type of business, a lot of business transactions occur online for the facility of the customers. This transformation will also be seen in Nepal in due course of time. The pace of development of online shopping is observed to be slow yet gradual and with the new generation attracted to IT and modern technologies, the hesitation and problem of trust and reliability on online payments may gradually improve with time.