AIM

The aim of this book is to demonstrate the success factors of e-retailing efficiency and effectiveness. It should be useful to readers, e-retailers and researchers seeking an understanding of, or studying, e-retail and related marketing at various levels, and should enhance their selling of a product or service to consumers (rather than businesses) via the Internet or other electronic channels. A key feature of the book is that it taps into the latest research studies and in some cases introduces new research findings. This aspect helps to ensure that the book is the most up-to-date possible and has the sharpest edge in guiding best practice e-retailing.

RATIONALE Rarely has the retail and consumer services sector been faced with a strategic challenge of such significant complexity and uncertainty which has grown in terms of that significance so rapidly.
(Reynolds, 2000)

Reynolds reviewed e-commerce at the time of a fall in Internet stock values from previous unrealistically high expectations (the ‘dot.com crash’). However, e-retail has not crept away, but rather, since that time, has progressed in acceptability to consumers and in market share. UK shoppers in particular love e-shopping, with 12 million e-shoppers, including many spending £3,000 plus per year online on products ranging from digital cameras to underwear (see Chapter 1 for more details). Reynolds also wrote that ‘rarely has the academic world . . . lagged so significantly behind the world of practice’. Research has started to catch up, but we contend that a modernization of teaching and training in retail and marketing is overdue.

This is not just an academic issue. When the Sunday Times (UK) asked readers for their experiences of shopping online, they received an ‘avalanche of complaint’ about poorly designed sites, delivery, payment and many other problems (Sunday Times (UK) Doors, 9 February 2003). This book attempts to address some of the problems by providing research material and resources on the essential issues and success factors in e-retailing for researchers, lecturers, trainers, students and practitioners.