Eclm 213

Name: Mary Tate

Course Name: ELCM 211

Assignment Name: Assignment 2 (essay)

Topic: How has e-commerce affected traditional retailing? What opportunities and challenges have arisen? Discuss, with examples.

Word Count: 1469 words excluding references

Date: 2 January 2007

How has e-commerce affected traditional retailing? What opportunities and challenges have arisen? Discuss, with examples.

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Since the growth of e-commerce in the 1990’s, retailing is no longer all about understanding and serving customers, it is now about understanding and managing technology as well. Traditional retailing involved face-to-face selling or trading, from a physical location, often a shop (“bricks and mortar”). E-commerce is defined as “the process of buying, selling, or exchanging products, services, and information via computer networks” (Tate, 2007).

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Traditional retailers have needed to adjust in order to survive. E-commerce has sparked new business models and changing customer behaviour. Retailers have needed to learn to effectively manage multiple sales channels and technologies, and to harness the large volume of digital data these provide. A further challenge has been competition from new retailers that sell exclusively over the Internet.

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In this essay, I will briefly review the opportunities and challenges that have arisen for traditional retailers as a result of e-commerce. Since many of the changes create both opportunities and challenges, I will review the key changes in the competitive environment, business models, sales channels, customer buying behaviour and management of digital data, and explore the opportunities and challenges associated with each. This is followed by a conclusion.

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New, Internet-only businesses (e-tailers) have proved...