Retail is the process of selling consumer goods or services to customers through multiple channels of distribution to earn a profit. Retailers satisfy demand identified through a supply chain. The term "retailer" is typically applied where a service provider fills the small orders of many individuals, who are end-users, rather than large orders of a small number of wholesales, corporate or government clientele.
Thus, Retail is the sale of goods on a physical location where the seller and the buyer meet in person. Whereas e-tail is the sale of goods on the internet where the transaction happens in a digital environment. Various popular players of E-tailing are Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, Swiggy, MakeMyTrip etc, and for retailers are Walmart, Mcdonalds, Big Bazaar etc.
E-tailing stands for E-retailing also known as e-retail as “sales of goods and services via the internet or other electronic sources, for personal and household use by consumers”.
The term E-Retailing was first developed in the European countries. It has both passive and interactive retail system while all e-tailing is generally limited to passive, air ticketing and other entertainment booking is designed in interactive system mostly. E-tailing has various features as stated below:
· Saves time and efforts.
· Convenience of shopping at home.
· Wide variety/range of products.
· Good discounts / lower prices.
· Get detailed information about the product.
· Easy comparison of various models/brands.
There are many types of E-tailers most popular of these two are:
1. Pure Play (Virtual) e-retailers-Retailers that only do the electronic transactions and do not have any physical outlet for the customers. For example- Amazon & Flipkart
2. Brick and click (Click-and-mortar) e-retailers-Retailers who do the both online and offline transactions i.e. through internet and physical outlets. For example, Dell.
