E-tailing (less frequently: etailing) is the selling of
retail goods on the Internet. Short for "electronic retailing,"
and used in Internet discussions as early as 1995, the term seems an almost
inevitable addition to e-mail, e-business, and e-commerce. E-tailing is
synonymous with business-to-consumer (B2C) transaction.
E-tailing began to work for some major corporations and smaller entrepreneurs
as early as 1997 when Dell Computer reported multimillion dollar orders
taken at its Web site. The success of Amazon.com hastened the arrival of
Barnes and Noble's e-tail site. Concerns about secure order-taking receded.
1997 was also the year in which Auto-by-Tel reported that they had sold
their millionth car over the Web, and CommerceNet/Nielsen Media reported
that 10 million people had made purchases on the Web. Jupiter research predicted
that e-tailing would grow to $37 billion by 2002.
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