COLEGIUL ”STEFAN ODOBLEJA”

Craiova

LUCRARE PENTRU

ATESTAT DE COMPETENTA LINGVISTICA

LIMBA ENGLEZA

Elev:Stefanescu Gabriela Patricia

Profesor indrumator:Demetrian Adina

 Craiova 2022

Contents

*Shopping with benefits and disadvantages....................4

*Early American
Shops......................................................8
*Golden Age of Shopping...............................................11

*Online shopping............................................................12

*Product delivery............................................................15

Argument
 I believe that shopping is one of the most popular and
often practiced activities by every person either for a
need, or for the pleasure of purchasing, or for relaxation.
I chose to talk about this topic because I really like to do
shopping of any kind, even when I don't need certain
things. For me, shopping is something that relaxes me,
creates a physical comfort for me and makes me happy
and I think many people find themselves in what I say,
regardless of the area where they live, that's why I chose
to talk a little bit about shopping in London, one of the
big cities of the world.
In the following I will write about shopping in London,
but also about the first stores that appeared, the golden
age of shopping in London, online shopping and much
more about shopping.
Shopping with benefits and disadvantages
Shopping is the activity that meets our needs, the activity
in which a customer is looking for available goods or
services, presented by different merchants, with the
potential intention to purchase a true selection of them.
Referring to shopping, we distinguish several
categories of customers: fun-oriented buyers, that is,
those who enjoy shopping and regard it as a leisure
activity, buyers who want to try products from as many
stores as possible, ordinary buyers who do their bare
necessities, but most of them buy products from retail
stores, supermarkets, malls because they need them.
Because 90 percent of people living in the United States
or one of the other developed nations no longer
cultivate, they also have to buy food and drinks from
commercial stores.

The shopping frenzy is the period when huge expenses

break out, especially near the holidays in the United
States, the Christmas shopping season is the season in
which the biggest expenses are made, starting from
October and continuing until after Christmas, the period
beneficial to merchants.
Shopping also has a psychological stimulus on
people:there is a pure pleasure, which also reduces
stress, to enter a store and make a purchase that offers a
release from mundane activities. and this is very
important for the well-being, the comfort of man.
In fact, consumerism is one of the largest recreational
activities in America and the most important basis of the
economy.

It is obvious from the examination of artifacts from

antiquity that acquiring material goods has always been a
major human activity, especially among the elite.
Stalls or later stores for the sale of goods seem to be
characteristic of every urban society.
In colonial America in each of the seaboard cities, master
artisans created and sold jewelry, furniture, silverware,
and other items to earn a living.
 The streets of these cities contained a constant
parade of people buying and selling from these artisan
shops or from street vendors. Shopping was a major part
of life in these cities. At times, the sheer pleasure of
buying became addictive. In correspondence, husbands
and wives complained that their mates' buying habits
were causing financial problems. People had even come
to spend large sums of money on objects that they did
not need just because they looked beautiful, they
thought that sometime it would be useful to them or
there were also customers who purchased goods just to
distinguish themselves from the neighbors, just to have
something that others do not have.

For example, Benjamin Franklin, for

example, criticized his wife, Debra, for spending too
much money on clothes and furnishings they did not.
 Early American Shops

By the early nineteenth century, each of the urban

centers had developed fashionable streets where the
elite and the upper middle class shopped. In New York
City, which became the largest and most commercial city,
a few special shops located on Broadway became centers
for shoppers and landmark institutions.
Tiffany was the jeweler for the wealthy; Brooks Brothers
was a high-fashion custom men's tailor; while Alexander
T. Stewart built the leading women's shop, selling yard
goods, material for hats, and a sundry of other sewing
supplies. Founded in 1846, Stewart's Marble Palace was
the perfect shopping place. Women ran their hands over
the material, talked to the clerks, sat down, viewed
themselves in large mirrors, and enjoyed the aesthetics
of one of the grandest public buildings in the city.
Smaller, less grand imitators appeared in other cities,
including Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
What made shopping in these businesses so attractive to
middle-class women was the welcome they received.
Prices were generally fixed and clearly noted on the
merchandise, and they did not have to haggle.
The goods were generally guaranteed for a certain period
of time, so customers did not have to fear that they had
been cheated on the purchase.
For lower-class women, shopping was generally confined
to local neighborhoods, where merchants were less
scrupulous and women frequently had to bargain over
the price.
Historically, prices have been set through a bartering or
negotiating system. The first retailer to adopt fixed prices
is considered to be one of the retailers operating in the
Palais-Royal complex in the eighteenth century. These
retailers have adopted a system of keeping prices high to
cultivate luxury images. Another common technique is
the list prices suggested by the manufacturers.
This simply involves uploading an amount suggested by
the manufacturer and usually printed on the product by
the manufacturer. In a fixed price system, consumers can
still use bargaining or haggling, a price negotiation.

Golden Age of Shopping

The shifting patterns of retailing after the Civil War

led to an era that could easily be called the golden age of
shopping in American history. Lasting from the 1870s
until after World War II, large department stores were
built in every major city in the United States and in many
smaller ones. By the time of World War I, these stores
came to dominate the skylines of the central business
districts. In fact, department stores, often built by leading
architects such as David Burnham of Chicago, largely
defined the existence of a central business district in
cities both large and small. Constructed between 1900
and 1920 and often standing ten to fourteen stories high,
these department store buildings were the creation of
some of the most famous names in retailing, such as John
Wanamaker,
Marshall Field, Oscar Straus, Bernard Gimbel, and Edward
Filene. Their philosophy, as expressed by Marshall Field
of Chicago, was to "give the lady what she wants."

Online shopping

Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce

which aloows costumers to direcly buy goods or
services from a seller over the Internet using a web
browser or a mobile app. Online shopping also
offers you a wide variety of products avaible, unlike
classic stores, which have a limited space for
displaying products. This limitation no longer exists
in the case of the Internet, so the trend towards
online shopping is constantly growing.
Online web browser or a mobile app.
 When you visit 10 stores in search of a pair of
pants, you sometimes come to realize that what you
were actually looking for was in the first store you
visited. In the case of online shopping you can go
back and review the same product as many times as
you want, without spending money on transport,
without wasting too much time. In addition, there is
the price advantage – often the merchandise sold
online costs less than the one in the store. In the
series of disadvantages would be included the
impossibility to sample or test the purchased
product; as many prefer to do this, especially in the
case of clothes or shoes, the Internet does not offer
this possibility. Another drawback would be the
additional costs with the delivery, but also the time
needed for the order to reach your door.

Online stores usually enable shoppers to use

"search" features to find specific models, brands or
items. Online customers must have access to the
Internet and a valid method of payment in order to
complete a transaction, such as a credit card, an
Interac-enabled debit card, or a service such as
PayPal.

Statistics on online retail sales

Country %Retail Sales Online

United States 9,8%
Canada 2,8%
United Kingdom 20%

Product delivery
Once a payment has been accepted, the goods or
services can be delivered in the following ways. For
physical items:Shipping: The product is shipped to a
customer-designated
address. Retail package delivery is typically done by
the public postal system or a retail courier such as
FedEx, UPS, DHL, or TNT.
Drop shipping: The order is passed to the
manufacturer or third-party distributor, who then
ships the item directly to the
consumer, bypassing the retailer's physical location
to save time, money, and space.
In-store pick-up: The customer selects a local store
using a locator software and picks up the delivered
product at the selected location. This is the method
often used in the bricks and clicks business model.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping
https://shopping.google.com
https://www.definitions.net/definition/shopping