Abstract
In the early 1990s, entrepreneur Jeff Bezos saw an opportunity rather than a business problem. He decided that books were the most logical product for selling online. In July 1995, Bezos started Amazon.com ( amazon.com ) and began selling books online. Over the years, the company has continually improved, expanded, changed its business model, and expanded its product selection, improving customer experience, and adding new products and services and business alliances. The company also recognized the importance of order fulfillment and warehousing early on. It has invested billions of dollars building physical warehouses and distribution centers designed for shipping packages to millions of customers. In 2012, the company started same day delivery from its new distribution centers. After 2000, the company added information technology products and services, notably the Kindle e-reader family as well as Web Services (cloud technologies). Amazon.com’s challenge was, and still is, to profitably sell many consumer products and services online.
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Glossary
- Brick-and-mortar retailer
-
A retailer that conducts business exclusively in the physical world.
- Business model
-
A description of how an organization intends to generate revenue through its business operations.
- Channel conflict
-
Refers to the case in which online sales damage the wellbeing of existing channel partner.
- Click-and-mortar retailer
-
A combination of both the traditional retailer and an online store.
- Direct marketing
-
Describes marketing that takes place without physical stores. Selling takes place directly from manufacturer to customer.
- Disintermediation
-
The removal of an intermediary that is responsible for certain activities (usually in a supply chain) between trading partners.
- E-grocer
-
A grocer that takes orders online and provides deliveries on a daily or other regular schedule or within a very short period of time, sometimes within an hour.
- E-tailers
-
Sellers who conduct retail business online.
- Electronic (online) banking or e-banking
-
Conducting banking activities online.
- Electronic retailing (e-tailing)
-
Retailing conducted over the Internet.
- Event shopping
-
A B2C model in which sales are designed to meet the needs of special events (e.g., a wedding, black Friday).
- Internet TV
-
The delivery of TV content via the Internet by video streaming technologies.
- Internet Radio
-
Audio content transmitted live via the Internet.
- Location-based commerce (l-commerce)
-
A wireless-based technology used by vendors to send advertisements relevant to the location where customers are at a given time by using GPS.
- Multichannel business model
-
The model or strategy of selling both online and offline.
- On-demand delivery service
-
An express delivery option.
- Private shopping club
-
Enables members to shop at discount, frequently for short periods of time (just few days).
- Referral economy
-
Describes the practice of receiving recommendations from buyers (e.g., in social networks or blogs).
- Reintermediation
-
The new intermediation that provides valuable help services.
- Shopping portals
-
Gateways to webstores and e-malls.
- Shopping robots (shopping agents or shopbots)
-
Search engines that look for the lowest prices or for other search criteria.
- Social TV
-
An emerging social media technology that enables several TV viewers who are in different locations to interactively share experiences such as discussions, reviews, and recommendations while watching the same show simultaneously.
- Virtual (pure-play) e-tailers
-
Companies with direct online sales that do not need physical stores.
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Turban, E., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, TP., Turban, D.C. (2015). Retailing in Electronic Commerce: Products and Services. In: Electronic Commerce. Springer Texts in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10091-3_3
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