E-tailing or e-retailing refers to the selling of retail goods electronically over the Internet. The term is a short form for "electronic retailing" was discovered in the 1990s for being frequently used over the Internet. The term is an inevitable addition to other similar terms such as e-e-tailing offers the consumers huge amounts of information in the form of web sites with useful links to similar sites that allows consumers to compare products by looking at individual items. The convenience of online shopping is unmatched indeed. Business, e-mail, and e-The shipping and handling costs may turn the customers away. E-tailing requires technology savvy customers and this puts a limit on its potential reach. We can see that E-tailing is emerging as an interesting phenomenon in the retail industry that is on a rise despite the disadvantages associe-tailing began to be used by major corporations and smaller entrepreneurs as early as 1997 when Dell Computers managed multimillion-dollar orders through its online Web site. The success of online retailing businesses such as Amazon.com hastened the arrival of Barnes and Noble's e-tail site. With improvements in technology, the concerns about secure order taking slowly started receding. In the same year, Auto-by-Tel announced selling over one million cars over the Internet and CommerceNet/Nielsen Media announced that total number of online buyers had reached the ten million mark. Jupiter research predicted that e-tailing would grow to $318 billion by the year 2010. ated with it.commerce. E-tailing offers unique advantages to the consumer that no other form of retailing can Minimal investment - e-tailing does not require a retailer to invest in warehouses, showrooms or other commercial properties at prime locations.match. Comfortable and easy to use - The Internet offers easy and comfortable access to all the required information by a customer. Over the Internet, product information is just a few clicks away, easily accessible from the comfort of a home. Customer interaction - The greatest benefit of online commerce is its ability to interact with the customers. Such an interaction allows the retailers to reach the individual customers and react appropriately to their responses. Mass Media - A supermarket is limited in its area of operation. User friendly - Customers can execute transactions via the same medium the information is provided, so there is no disconnect between the desire to purchase and theCustomer retention poses a significant challenge to the e-tailers. The primary aim of every e-tailer is to attract a prospective customer to his e-tail site. This requires significant resources in terms of the ad spend. Naturally, there has been a surge in online advertising in countries such as the United States. Online ad spends have grown so large that as much as two-thirds of the capital raised by online companies go towards advertising. Ad spends by online companies have grown do large that all the savings achieved in the areas of real estate and inventory are more than offset by a manifold increase in the marketing and promotional ad spend. ability to purchase. In the US, it has been observed that the traditional retailers, despite the strength of their brand equity and their existing relationships with suppliers and customers, find it extremely hard to compete online. This phenomenon is attributed to the vast difference between the conventional retailing and the e-tailing segments.
The online media offers a host of advantages that may tilt the economics in its favor. The online medium could transform much of the traditional economics of conventional retailing. While a physical store caters only to a particular locality, the Internet reaches out to the world. The obvious