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IJRDM and retailing 1990-2010: Reflections on key developments and challenges for the future
Edited by John Fernie
1 Introduction
It is now widely recognised that the internet's power, scope and interactivity provide retailers with the potential to transform their customers' shopping experience ([44] Evanschitzky et al. , 2004; [127] Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2003), and in so doing, strengthen their own competitive positions ([33] Doherty and Ellis-Chadwick, 2009; [78] Levenburg, 2005). The internet's capacity to provide information, facilitate two-way communication with customers, collect market research data, promote goods and services and ultimately to support the online ordering of merchandise, provides retailers with an extremely rich and flexible new channel ([11] Basu and Muylle, 2003). In so doing, the internet gives retailers a mechanism for: broadening target markets, improving customer communications, extending product lines, improving cost efficiency, enhancing customer relationships and delivering customised offers ([111] Srinivasan et al. , 2002). By and large, consumers have responded enthusiastically to these innovations ([134] Eng and Kim, 2006; [110] Soopramanien and Robertson, 2007), and online retail sales have grown significantly over the past 15 years and are predicted to continue rising into the future ([39] Ellis-Chadwick et al. , 2002; [59] Ho et al. , 2007).
Serious attempts to trade online started to emerge in the mid-1990s when innovative, technically savvy companies responded to the opportunities and challenges posed by the internet, to develop sophisticated web sites to serve customers, in their homes ([98] Rayport and Sviokla, 1994). However, looking back, nearly two decades, to when this fast-paced electronic business environment was just starting to evolve, its ultimate success must have looked far less certain. There were plenty of predictions, many of them highly optimistic, about the scale, scope and impact of this virtual business world, but there was also a growing recognition that its destiny could only be clearly discerned, when answers were provided to the following questions:
- To what extent will the virtual world change the principles of retailing? Will it displace existing retail formats or serve as a natural complement to current marketing practices ([18] Burke, 1997)?
- What types of people, in terms of their demographics and attitudes, are most likely to become regular internet shoppers ([67] Jones and Vijayasarathy, 1998)?
- How will retailers...