Traditional vs. Online Shopping
THE WORLD IS CHANGING
Much has been written about the death of store based retailing, as we know it, to be replaced by shopping on the Internet. However, it is the subject of Electronic Retailing, and specifically Electronic Home Shopping, in the business to consumer sector that is resulting in widely varying estimates on the likelihood and pace of this next evolution in retailing.
The traditional view suggests that this form of retailing will have little more impact than that currently achieved by existing mail and telephone retailing, which in most advanced nations achieves only a 5% share of total retailing. The traditional view also suggests that shopping from home over the Internet will reduce consumers to socially inactive "mouse potatoes" who lose all form of human contact
WHAT IS E-TAILING?
E-tailing is the selling of retail goods on the Internet. Short for "electronic retailing" and used in Internet discussions as early as 1995, the term seems an almost inevitable addition to e-mail, e-business, and e-commerce.
To fully define and understand e-commerce some more consideration must be given to traditional commerce. Traditional commerce involves more than just selling an item. The traditional sales cycle could be described in the following way. To meet the needs of the marketplace, business design and manufacture new products, market their products, distribute them and provide customer support, generating revenue along the way. Customers first identify a need for some product, service or information. Then they must find information about the product, fined retailers who sell the product and make comparisons before a sale is finalized. There are also a lot of post purchase practices which companies engage in, for example, customer support opinion and surveys
1997 was the year in which e-tailing begun to work for some major corporations and smaller entrepreneurs. Dell Computer reported multimillion-dollar orders taken at its Web site. The
Much has been written about the death of store based retailing, as we know it, to be replaced by shopping on the Internet. However, it is the subject of Electronic Retailing, and specifically Electronic Home Shopping, in the business to consumer sector that is resulting in widely varying estimates on the likelihood and pace of this next evolution in retailing.
The traditional view suggests that this form of retailing will have little more impact than that currently achieved by existing mail and telephone retailing, which in most advanced nations achieves only a 5% share of total retailing. The traditional view also suggests that shopping from home over the Internet will reduce consumers to socially inactive "mouse potatoes" who lose all form of human contact
WHAT IS E-TAILING?
E-tailing is the selling of retail goods on the Internet. Short for "electronic retailing" and used in Internet discussions as early as 1995, the term seems an almost inevitable addition to e-mail, e-business, and e-commerce.
To fully define and understand e-commerce some more consideration must be given to traditional commerce. Traditional commerce involves more than just selling an item. The traditional sales cycle could be described in the following way. To meet the needs of the marketplace, business design and manufacture new products, market their products, distribute them and provide customer support, generating revenue along the way. Customers first identify a need for some product, service or information. Then they must find information about the product, fined retailers who sell the product and make comparisons before a sale is finalized. There are also a lot of post purchase practices which companies engage in, for example, customer support opinion and surveys
1997 was the year in which e-tailing begun to work for some major corporations and smaller entrepreneurs. Dell Computer reported multimillion-dollar orders taken at its Web site. The