Using those early catalogs, distant friends and relatives were directed to specific gift items that had been selected by couples about to be married. This was the forerunner of gift registries. Today's internet retailers offer gift registries where the distant gift buyers can easily locate and drop ship to the recipients those selected gifts. These items are then crossed from the registry to avoid duplications of the selected gifts.
Like the budding days of catalog sales, today we find countless more selection available to us on the internet than can be found in a roomful of catalogs. huge shopping sites  such as Moonbeam Mega Mall  allow you to browse perhaps one million items at your leisure. The difference today is that the internet allows you the freedom to shop any and every major store at the stroke of a button. Unlike the captive audience enjoyed by the early catalog retailers who owned exclusive mailing lists,  today we have the ability to comparison shop for both quality and price. This has created a competition among retailers not before seen in even the largest  American shopping malls.  Among the most intriguing off the internet sites is catalog.com which has taken hundreds of catalogs and cross referenced them so that you may shop 50 or 100 stores at a time, often seeing the same item offered by competing stores, with some offering huge discount prices. As with traditional shopping malls, the largest and most popular are termed "anchor stores."  Catalog.com is one of the anchors of  Moonbeam Mega Mall.  With these types of Mega stores Moonbeam offers over 1,000 distinctly different stores and shop all in one site.  

The American public is beginning to understand and appreciate the safe and secure measures being employed by the online retailers. Each and every retailer within a site such as Moonbeam is a separate store, just as found in the traditional mall. Your purchase is conducted directly with a retailer you know and trust, such as Walmart, Sears, Walt Disney, Target, K-Mart, Eddie Bauer, Coldwater Creek, Sheplers, Brooks Brothers, Toys R Us, Office Depot, etc., etc., etc.  The online mega mall simply and conveniently directs customers to the retailer and is compensated by the stores for that service.  The online site managers (owners of the mall)  never even see your name unless you voluntarily sign a guest book or enter a contest promotion which is outside of the retail stores themselves. Therefore, should you opt to make an online  purchase from any of the retailers found at Moonbeam Mega Mall, the only one who will ever see your name , e-mail address or charge card information is the retailer. Shoppers who have no qualms about handing their card to the clerk at, let us say Sears, should have the same confidence when making an online purchase from that very same retailer.  These business spend huge amounts of money to provide the most safe and secure state-of-the-art encrypted software. What this means to you, the shopper, is that online shopping is actually more safe and secure than if sent through the U.S. mail.

An important fact that many are unaware of is that major retailers offer options with regard to their return policies.  Moonbeam Mega Mall carefully screens the retailers featured there. Return and adjustment policies are a  high priority. Many of the name brand retailers offer both direct returns to their retail stores as well as return ship adjustments.  This gives the shopper more convenience as well as confidence.
Clothing purchased online, in such a case, may at the customer's option, be returned to the respective retailer, even if that store does not carry the particular item.  The item can then, again at the customer's option,  be reordered online for a more suitable color or size.   Even if the local retail outlet offers the identical product, the online price often may be significantly less when purchased online.   As was previously mentioned, the competition is far greater online than has ever before experienced by retailers. With no high costs for rent, lights and store personnel, the savings can be offered online.