**Mark-ups so high driving consumers online**

May 27, 2011 - PRLog -- Price does play a part but real time shopping has become an ordeal, not a pleasure. Car parks are a battlefield, the aisles are full of gantries and boxes, stock missing from shelves and no one there to help you. Products placed as if the consumer has hours to spare looking for what they want or need. Where shoppers are unable to avoid bumping into each other. Times like Mother and Father's day or even xmas!

If retailers don't make themselves more accessible and give better customer service with more trained staff then the drift to shopping online will become an avalanche and all those high profile shopping centres will become ghost towns.

It has been revealed that Australian retailers on average are marking-up the prices of items such as clothes and shoes by 142 per cent and more and around 40 per cent and more for items such as DVDs and music to remain competitive.

Australian consumers do not feel they are getting a fair deal from traditional retailers when they see so many products up to 50 per cent cheaper online.

The retailers say that they can justify such huge mark-ups because of the spiraling costs like rents, wages, warehousing of stock, advertising and so on.

Given the huge disparity between people's perceptions of what is a fair mark-up and what they are being charged in bricks and mortar shops it's not surprising that they are choosing clicks over bricks.

Other reasons why customers are shopping online is because they want to compare products and prices and save time. Oh, the feeling of Australia Post delivering your parcel to your doorstep in a matter of days. If online retail is hurting Australian jobs then so be it. A number of retailers need to shape up or ship out and become more savvy and attuned to what consumers want. VALUE FOR TIME AND MONEY!

The fact is, traditional retail is a very expensive way of delivering products to customers and just as digital cameras have decimated photo development labs, so too will online retail transform the way Australians shop.

We here at Fetch Oscar Accessories believe shopping online is the way of the future and we offer our products at honest pricing values. You save on middleman costs and massive retailer mark-ups and on every purchase made online we donate $5 to Lifeline.

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Fetch Oscar Accessories are designer jewellers and specialise in cufflinks,brooches and pendants and all Australian handcrafted.