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Today, the application of the word impossible seems to be getting rarer and rarer. As the society we live in today becomes digital by the minute, what we previously thought of as non-existent is now a trend. What was once difficult to do, can now be accomplished in a second without exerting too much effort, just like laundry coming out clean and dry from the washing machine. Another good example we can find is the shopping phenomenon known as internet shopping.

Internet shopping, in simple terms, is the act of buying goods or availing of services from vendors who operate business over the internet. It takes on a Business-to-Consumer approach whereby customers directly purchase from a merchant, doing away with intermediaries usually found in non-online retail shops. Internet shopping, or online shopping, is a form of electronic commerce that includes transactions done over a so-called online shop, webshop, eshop, virtual shop, e-store, and other related terms.

The first online shop to formally offer its products on the internet is Pizza Hut in 1994. Intershop, a German company, a web shopping system, also opened the same year. Amazon, one of the biggest and most popular shopping sites of today, opened in 1995 and eBay, another well-known shopping website followed the next year. Today, there are thousands of general shopping sites available in the internet which includes famous retail, clothing, food, and other merchandise outlets offering their brands to the millions of netizens who surf the internet.

So how does internet shopping works and what makes it different from real shopping? Shopping via the internet is much like shopping inside a supermarket or a mall except for a few obvious differences. The online shopper visits a shopping website or the website of a particular retailer she is interested in. If she already has a specific item on her mind, she can go straight to the page where the item is displayed and click buy or purchase. However, if she is on the hunt for a general item, say a compact refrigerator or a necklace, the shopper can do a cross-search using different websites, check the range of offerings, compare, and then buy. Payment is done online using credit card or a PayPal account, but there are instances when some shops allow mobile or landline phone billing, debit card, cash on delivery, or cheques as payment schemes.

Multiple item shopping is possible through a virtual shopping cart available on the shopping site. User has to check the item she wants to buy and put it in the online shopping cart. Once the shopper is done, data on payment and delivery is then made and delivered through the shopper's email account. Almost all online shops require their customers to give an email account prior to completing a transaction with them. This will allow for easier tracking of items purchased, returned, etc. and verification of the identity of the customer.

Delivery of products can be through downloading, drop shipping, shipping, in-store pickup, and printing out in the case of tickets and scrip.