E-RETAILING IN GREEK MARKET

E-Retailing in Greek Market

E-Retailing in Greek Market

Literature Review

To start up, a clear definition of e-tailing is given. Defining a retailer is the intermediary that acts between the manufacturer and the end consumer. Retailing in the offline physical environment is conducted in stores that customers should reach in order to acquire the desired products. Retailers are basic part of distribution process for both companies with huge number of products (e.g. Procter & Gamble) and those with fewer (e.g. Kodak).In the modern society, after Internet advent and prevalence, the movement of retailing online was inevitable. Online retail selling is defined as e-tailing or electronic retailing. Those who are doing business online are called e-tailers (Turban and King, 2003).E-tailing can constitute feasible the selling straightly from manufacturer to consumer without the need of an intermediary.

The term e-tailing refers to every customer in personal. The shift to Business to Consumer or Business to Business e-tailing is not clarified. Sometimes both can be combined.Amazon.com, for example, is selling primarily to individuals but also to corporations.Walmart.com and Dell also combine both business to business and business to consumer e-tailing.

E -retailing has achieved a great development world widely that stems from a combination of the Internet with the new contemporary business practices that aid online selling(Liao and Shi 2009).eBay, a prime e-tailer, is continuously ranked as the most visited web site(Zhang,2006).Online sales in year 2000 was measured to be even more than twice of the sales in 1999(Wolfinbarger and Gilly,2001).When businesses invested online their revenues revealed a growth, $8 billion in 1998, $18.6 billion in 1999 and were estimated to $80 billion by 2003(E-Land,2000).

A considerable rise of online retail sales did continue to happen from 1.5 percent of total retail sales in 2000 to 7.8 percent in 2005(Dykema,2000).This constant rise has been noticed in online shopping and almost half of Internet users(44 percent) engage in it(Cyber Atlas,2000a).E-retailing is providing a wide range of products and services .In 2000 higher sales were attributed to leisure travel category covering 27.2 percent of online sales. Books, videos, music and software are coming next and estimated to cover 14.9 percent, computers and electronics followed with 13.6 and clothing only 11.3 percent. However by 2005 data changed ,consumable goods(food, beverage supply, health and beauty aids) were being the leading online selling products having a percentage of 18%,apparel was next with 16 percent, computers and electronics accumulated a 12.4 percent of total sales, leisure travel a smaller percentage of 12.1 and books, music, videos and software category came last this time with 9.6 percent(Dykema,2000).Moreover entertaining items such as event tickets and other service industries as electronic banking ,insurance ,real estate and stock trading are online provided and their demand is constantly increasing even more twice each year(Turban and King 2003).

These findings can be attributed to the fact that consumers can easily have nowadays an Internet access as even more companies exist that provide access in a convenient and low-priced way. Almost half of American population is Internet familiar(45 percent),according to ...