Buying books and electronics on the Internet? Definitely. Clothes? Maybe. But would you go online to buy everyday household supplies such as shampoo, diapers, aspirin, trash bags, toothpaste and paper towels?
More people are, and more online businesses are catering to them. Amazon.com in November spent a half-billion dollars to buy the company that operates Soap.com and Diapers.com. Meanwhile, household-staples retailer Alice.com has quickly developed a following, and 11-year-old Drugstore.com continues to flourish, boosting sales 20 percent a year in recent years, according to officials at those companies.
But online sales of household basics is still a new concept.
“This category has been a real laggard coming online,” said Mark McGuire, co-founder of Alice.com. Only now have online retailers been able to lower product prices and shipping costs enough to compete with traditional stores, he said.
While buying everyday basics online and having them shipped to your doorstep is a growing trend, the question is whether it’s right for you. Here’s what you need to know:
PRODUCT PRICES: Considering shipping is cheap or free at many of these online retailers, product prices are lower than you might guess. Instead of calling prices “rock bottom,” you might call them “reasonable” or “competitive” with the regular prices at brick-and-mortar stores.
“We generally try to be competitive with others online, in line with stores like Target and CVS, and we might be a little bit above Costco or other superstores,” said David Zhang, director of marketing at Soap.com.
Alice.com, named for the maid on the “Brady Bunch” TV show, generally shines in product prices, in part because it’s an umbrella storefront for many manufacturers to sell directly to consumers. That cuts out the middleman’s mark-up. Alice.com has a price-comparison tab for each product, displaying prices of competitors, even when theirs is lower. Amazon.com, which has not completed its acquisition of…