First rule of online retailing: people have to be able to find your site.
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Or will the economics of online retailing relentlessly crush those of its high street counterpart?
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His ambitions for Buy.com come at a time when the promise of online retailing has dimmed considerably.
He insists that he can reignite online retailing, using Buy.com as the hub of a web-based direct-marketing force.
The online retailing giant is widely considered to have the best shot at launching a serious challenge to iTunes.
The software industry was equally slow to adopt online retailing, which wiped out sales of packaged software virtually overnight.
Why is its online retailing not roaring ahead, to maintain its previous lead?
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In February it threw in the towel on online retailing and reopened as an Internet incubator called Grove Street Ventures.
It all means that expecting online retailing in the Middle East to double, could actually be wildly low of the mark.
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At 1BIGresearch, we asked a nationwide survey of consumers what they perceived as the six most important attribute of online retailing.
Except for niche sites, online retailing seems to have more of a future as an additional sales channel for existing businesses.
Additionally, they need to do a better job of online retailing themselves.
Online retailing features desired by both income brackets are remarkably similar.
Whether the same can be said of his company and some of the other early leaders in online retailing, however, is a different question altogether.
"The High Street is going to look a very different place in a year's time, " said Adrian Quine, director of the British Online Retailing Association.
And online retailing is not limited to selling physical goods alone.
Amazon.com shares are coming under pressure Thursday morning after Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt cut his rating on the online retailing giant to Equal Weight from Overweight.
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Clearly online retailing requires a lot less retail property space compared to traditional brick-and-mortar format employed by big retail chains like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target and Costco.
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But to this observer, those proclaiming the daily deal business as dead, and encouraging Groupon to instead invest in more general online retailing, seem as short-sighted as Groupon management.
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In the past five years, Tesco has also moved into financial services, through an arrangement with Royal Bank of Scotland, and has one of Europe's most successful online retailing businesses.
So after pioneering online retailing, Amazon has moved into selling all manner of goods including clothes, into providing cloud computing services, and now hardware to give users access to all sorts of media content.
Still, online retailing has transformed many old-line businesses.
We believe Vudu has the potential to bring in a diversified revenue source for Wal-Mart and could equip the retail giant with expertise in online retailing and pave the way ahead for other online initiatives.
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In its annual roundup of the world of online retailing, Forrester Research predicted that sales growth would drop to 18% in 2007 from 25% in 2006, led by big slowdowns in books, music, videos and office supplies.
In fact, the online retailing giant sees local sales as one of three big trends it intends to pursue over the next two to three years, according to Alan Marks, its Senior Vice President of corporate communications.
In its annual roundup of the world of online retailing, Forrester Research (nasdaq: FORR - news - people ) predicted that sales growth would drop to 18% in 2007 from 25% in 2006, led by big slowdowns in books, music, videos and office supplies.
The car-dealership industry, where online-only retailing was prohibited by law, did not lose jobs.
Second, online social networks are transforming retailing by creating new marketplaces.
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Wal-Mart is a Goliath of retailing, but in online video it's a David compared with Apple's iTunes.
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