Ⅰ 电子商务的英文写法
电子商务源于英文ELECTRONIC COMMERCE，简写为EC。顾名思义，其内容包含两个方面，一是电子方式，二是商贸活动。
电子商务指的是利用简单、快捷、低成本的电子通讯方式，买卖双方不谋面地进行各种商贸活动。 电子商务可以通过多种电子通讯方式来完成。比如你通过打电话或发传真的方式来与客户进行商贸活动。现在人们所探讨的电子商务主要是以EDI（电子数据交换）和INTERNET来完成的。尤其是随着INTERNET技术的日益成熟，电子商务真正的发展将是建立在INTERNET技术上的。所以也开始有人把电子商务简称为IC（INTERNET COMMERCE）。
从贸易活动的角度分析，电子商务可以在多个环节实现，由此也可以将电子商务分为两个层次，较低层次的电子商务如电子商情、电子贸易、电子合同等；最完整的也是最高级的电子商务应该是利用INTENET网络能够进行全部的贸易活动，即在网上将信息流、商流、资金流和部分的物流完整地实现，也就是说，你可以从寻找客户开始，一直到洽谈、订货、在线付（收）款、开据电子发票以至到电子报关、电子纳税等通过INTERNET一气呵成。
要实现完整的电子商务还会涉及到很多方面，除了买家、卖家外，还要有银行或金融机构、政府机构、认证机构、配送中心等机构的加入才行。由于参与电子商务中的各方在物理上是互不谋面的，因此整个电子商务过程并不是物理世界商务活动的翻版，网上银行、在线电子支付等条件和数据加密、电子签名等技术在电子商务中发挥着重要的不可或缺的作用
Ⅱ 求人大出版社电子商务英文版肯尼思第七版中文翻译全本
可到新华书店去看看，可以网购，如果急需要，可以联系出版社邮寄，就是要加邮费
Ⅲ 跪求电子商务英文原文及中文翻译，急在线等！
本书第一版在2003年出版以来，受到师生的极度好评，被很多学校的电子商务及其他管理类专业选做教材。为了更好地满足师生的需要，紧跟电子商务实践的发展，作者对本书进行了修订。在第2版中，每篇文章仍然按照英文原文、中文译文、单词和词组、注释、练习题这样的结构来安排，非常适合学生学习使用。对原版中的一些文章进行了替换，并加入了新的阅读材料，以体现电子商务领域涌现出的新的热点话题。所选取的文章基本涵盖了电子商务的主要领域，这些文章难度适中，语言流畅，既具有很强的专业性又具有很好的可读性，在帮助学生巩固所学电子商务专业知识的同时，提高其英语水平。
The first edition of this book has been published in 2003, the highly praised by teachers and students, many schools and other e-commerce and management professionals to do the election materials. In order to better meet the needs of teachers and students, closely follow the development of e-commerce practice, the author of the book has been revised. In the second edition, each article is still in accordance with the original English text, the Chinese translation of words and phrases, notes that such a practice to structure arrangements, it is ideal for students learning to use. Some of the original article in a replacement and to add a new reading materials to reflect the area of electronic commerce emerged in the new hot topic. Selected articles covering the main areas of e-commerce, these articles moderate difficulty, language fluency, and both are highly professional and well readability with the help students consolidate the expertise of e-commerce at the same time, raise Their English proficiency.
Ⅳ 电子商务的英文翻译
电子商抄务的英文翻译有：Electronic Commerce; Electronic Business; E-commerce几种。
电子商袭务是以信息网络技术为手段，以商品交换为中心的商务活动；也可理解为在互联网（Internet）、企业内部网（Intranet）和增值网（VAN，Value Added Network）上以电子交易方式进行交易活动和相关服务的活动，是传统商业活动各环节的电子化、网络化、信息化。
Ⅳ 帮忙推荐下电子商务类的优秀书籍，也可以是英文版本
《金融市场中的电子商务与革新（英文版.第1版）》
作 者: Fan/Srinivasan/Stallaert/Whinston
出 版 社: 北京大学出版社
ISBN : 730105961
原 价: ￥38
目 录 第一章 电子商务和金融市场组织 第二章 在线革命 第三章 走向数字化市场 第四章 坚果仁中的金融市场 第五章 纽约股票交易所 第六章 纳斯达克市场 第七章 电子通讯网络 第八章 计算机自动交易系统 第九章 海外金融市场 第十章 固定收入证券市场 第十一章 非传统金融市场 第十二章 电子市场新兴技术 第十三章 创造性毁坏 教辅产品 Electronic Main Text／0—03—034686—X
电子商务-经典原版书库(英文版.第7版)
作 者： (美)Gary P.Schneider
出 版 社： 机械工业出版社
出版日期： 2006年8月 版次： 1
I S B N： 711119768 页数：
开 本： 16开 印张： 100.00
包 装： 平装 字数：
Ⅵ 求一篇关于电子商务的英文文献及翻译，急~！！！！
An additional question is how a marketer could design websites that truly personalize proct recommendations and how consumers react to these versus more neutral, “third party” web sites such as www.kbb.com for automobiles.
we address the issue of the structure of one new tool (i.e., e-mail) that can help marketers be more efficient in testing direct marketing efforts.
direct marketing
Furthermore, work by Haubl and Trifts (2000) showed that a comparison matrix similar to the comparator proced higher quality consideration sets and decisions.
the possibility remains that providing information could postpone or even prevent purchase.
Agents are not new; a crude (by today’s standards) agent, Firefly, was developed in the mid-1990s for movie and music recommendations.
the amount of information available on the Web has increased dramatically as has the technological sophistication of the agents which makes continued research in this area important.
In particular, Haubl and Trifts (2000) show that recommender agents based on self-explicatedinformation about a consumer’s utility function (i.e., attribute weights and minimum acceptable attribute levels) rece search effort and improve decisions.
Agents should be adaptive, autonomous, and believable, be able to respond in a timely fashion, and be goal-oriented.
It has also been established that agents, like those studied by H¨aubl and his colleagues, that learn about consumers from choices and consumer preferences perform better in the long run than (say) collaborative filters (Ariely et al., 2004). This suggests that methods that calibrate consumer preferences in real time on-line are crucial to advancement.
polyhedral conjoint analysis (Toubia et al., 2003) satisfies these criteria. Liechty and his colleagues developed a Hierarchical Bayes procere that does so as well.
Montgomery et al. (2004) address the problem of designing a better shopbot.
They show that shopbots are inferior to visiting a favorite retailer if the shopbot visits all retailers.
Indeed, armed with some inferences from previous visits, a small set of initial screener questions can lead to an optimally personalized web interface for the consumer.
Based on a stochastic ration model and Bayesian updating , the authors adapt the testing parameters (e.g., number of e-mails sent for each e-mail design and sending rate) while the testing is in progress so as to minimize the cost of testing both in terms of wasted e-mails and time.
Only if the interactivity pays off.
In bargaining or auction situations, possible lack of trust and the inability to interpret the signalsof the other participant(s).
翻译
另外一个问题是，一个营销人员如果设计网页，嫩构真实的又有个性的推荐我们的产品，并且可以让顾客对产品的反应不是保持中立，“第三世界”的网页，就像www.kbb.com
我们对于新工具像email这种方式的看法是，它可以帮助营销人员更有效率的直接测试营销效果。
直接营销
更多的是，通过Haubl和Trifts(2000)的工作可知，类似的矩阵和计算机化相比较，生产出更高质量的产品和高质量的决策
可能性保持在提高那些可能推迟或者现在就购买的信息信息。
代理商，一个新的职业，简单的代理（现在的标准）。萤火虫(?),在20世纪90年代中期在电影和音乐推荐上有很大的发展。
由于代理商的科技的混合应用，使网页上可提供的信息量，有着惊人的增长，这使这个行业继续调长下去变得更为重要。
特别使，Haubl和Trifts(2000)的工作可知，推荐者代理基于对顾客自我阐述商品的信息(比如，重量和最小可接受的级别)，减少调查的精力，提高决定能力。
代理商要有很好的适应能力，自主并且有自信，能够在第一时间回应状况，并且有目标。
同时，通过Haubl和其他同事的研究，代理商的形成，与合作过滤相比较，在长期运行中更好的学习了关于顾客的决定和执行偏好。这就给我们在关于顾客网上购物时的偏好提供了标准化。
只翻译了一半，翻不下去了，你参考一下吧，有的句子可能比较奇怪就是了
Ⅶ 电子商务的英文是什么
电子商务，英文是Electronic Commerce，简称EC。电子商务通常是指是在全球各地广泛的商业贸易活动中，在因特网开放的网络环境下，基于浏览器/服务器应用方式，买卖双方不谋面地进行各种商贸活动，实现消费者的网上购物、商户之间的网上交易和在线电子支付以及各种商务活动、交易活动、金融活动和相关的综合服务活动的一种新型的商业运营模式。“中国网络营销网” Tinlu相关文章指出，电子商务涵盖的范围很广，一般可分为企业对企业(Business-to-Business)，或企业对消费者(Business-to-Customer)两种。另外还有消费者对消费者（Customer-to-Customer)这种大步增长的模式。随着国内Internet使用人数的增加，利用Internet进行网络购物并以银行卡付款的消费方式已渐流行，市场份额也在迅速增长，电子商务网站也层出不穷。电子商务最常见之安全机制有SSL及SET两种。
SSL(安全套接层协议）SET(安全电子交易协议）电子商务的定义：
首先将电子商务划分为广义和狭义的电子商务。广义的电子商务定义为，使用各种电子工具从事商务或活动。这些工具包括从初级的电报、电话、广播、电视、传真到计算机、计算机网络，到NII（国家信息基础结构－信息高速公路）、GII（全球信息基础结构）和Internet等现代系统。而商务活动是从泛商品（实物与非实物，商品与非商品化的生产要素等等）的需求活动到泛商品的合理、合法的消费除去典型的生产过程后的所有活动。狭义电子商务定义为，主要利用Internet从事商务或活动。电子商务是在技术、经济高度发达的现代社会里，掌握信息技术和商务规则的人，系统化地运用电子工具，高效率、低成本地从事以商品交换为中心的各种活动的总称。这个分析突出了电子商务的前提、中心、重点、目的和标准，指出它应达到的水平和效果，它是对电子商务更严格和体现时代要求的定义，它从系统的观点出发，强调人在系统中的中心地位，将环境与人、人与工具、人与劳动对象有机地联系起来，用系统的目标、系统的组成来定义电子商务，从而使它具有生产力的性质。
Ⅷ 求电子商务:商务、技术、社会(第7版) 肯尼思 中文版PDF的，谢谢^ω^
电子商务管理与社交网络视角(原书第7版).pdf
http://vdisk.weibo.com/s/cLASpI8abTRfd
TxT电子书免费专下载的方法属
http://jingyan..com/article/9f7e7ec08312b26f29155463.html
Ⅸ 电子商务中英文翻译
日趋完善的电子商务
一．电子商务方兴未艾
当2000年科技泡沫爆发时，备受炒作的网上公司好象随之蒸发了，众多的网上贸易也被迫流产。劫后余生网上公司无一不紧缩商务，好在与日俱增的互联网用户在激励着他们。现在，对网上公司的评价又有所提高了，并且很多.com公司的确也已开始赢利了，但工商界还是谨慎地评价互联网的潜能。尽管如此，有人已大胆的预言：世界上大量经济巨头不久都会以某种方式移师电脑空间。
据商务部不完全统计表明，去年网上零售额增加了26%，达到550亿美元。这听起来的确是一个很大的数目，但这仅相当于全球零售业总额的1.6%。大部分的成年消费者依然习惯于到“砖+混凝土”（bricks-and-mortar）的世界里消费。
其实商务部公布的数字仅涉及部分产业。例如，该数字虽然包括了网上旅游服务，这一电子商务界最成功也是增长最快的行业之一。IAC (InterActiveCorp)，expedia.com 和 hotels.com两个站的拥有者，去年仅它一家就有100亿美元的营业额，包括航空业、宾馆业、出租车公司在内的竞争对手去年网上营业总额也有大幅攀升，但这些网上营业额攀升的企业在商务部的数字中并未得到体现。
同样，商务部的数字也没有包含财经服务、票务代理、网上色情（据<成人视讯（A lt Video News）>（去年美国网上色情业营业额高达20亿美元）等行业在内。另外大量与博彩业相关的商业形为(世界范围内的网上博彩业营业额高达60亿美元)也没有提及。
二、冰山之一角
另外，商务部的数字虽然包括了拍卖网站的利润，却没有包含所拍卖成交货物的价值在内，据估算，其价值高达数百亿美元。去年仅eBay这家最大的拍卖网站出手的货物价值就高达240亿美元。按照商务部的界定，数十亿美元的成交货物总价值是没有包括其中的，况且很多B2B模式的商贸形为都是不公开的，例如Wal-Mart公司就明确地告诫其供货商，若想成为其2500亿美元的营业额的一部分，必需采用自己的运转体系。
由以上数字可以看出，电子商务已是很有规模了，并且正在发展壮大。但是网上交易额正受到离线交易的冲击，而离线交易又是电子商务的一个重要组成部分。
互联网正深深地改变着消费者的消费行为。目前，有1/5的美国人在到商店购买电子产品前，会先到网上去查询其最低价，以节省哪怕一毛钱。更让人吃惊的是，有3/4的美国人在购买新汽车时也会首先想到互联网，即使最后成交仍可能是用传统的方式---从经销商那购买，但他们会到网上去了解有关要购汽车的各种信息，并选定网上推荐的最好的经销商。有时，他们还会到相关网站上去打印自己感兴趣的汽车的图片等资料作参考。
作为资深调查顾问的Forrester先生提供的图表显示，在欧洲6亿消费者中，有半数采取在网上查询商品信息，然后离线购买的方式来消费（见图1）。当然不同国家又有不同的消费习惯，例如在意大利和西班牙，采取在网上查询然后离线购买的人数大约是网上直接购买的两倍。但在德国和英国这两个最发达的网络国家里，二者基本相当。Forrester称，人们从网上购物一般都是从一些简单的物品开始的，如DVD光盘，然后向较复杂的商品过渡。在美国，二手汽车是一个增长最快的一个领域。
如果网站的顾客导购做的成功的话，人们看来是乐意采取网上购物方式的，现在网站正在变的越来越明智，它们给顾客更多更实在的服务。在不久的将来，网上购物占人们购物总额的比例肯定会有大的提高。
三、网站的作用
网站建设对商业行为来说意义重大。一个不注重网站建设的公司无异于是在商战中自杀。即便公司并不从事网上交易，网站也会成为人们了解其商标、产品及服务的门户。在电脑空间，一个无价值的网站往往预示着一个无价值的公司，他只会在人们的鼠标点击下被无情舍弃。所以一个成功的公司一定要建成一个优秀的网站，以确保它能出现在每次搜索结果的前列。
对很多用户而言，一个搜索站点往往是他们进入互联网的切入点。全球知名的搜索引擎早已进入当代词典：人们会说他“Googled”了一个公司，一个产品或是一个管道工。这种搜索行为也成为了互联网上最有成效的广告途径之一。并且这也是接近青少年这一顾客群体最好的方式，因为他们花在互联网上的时间远远超过看电视的时间。所有这些都说明，网上搜索成了互联网的一下个战场，例如，Google就是依赖其优异的搜索功能来抗衡Yahoo! 和 Microsoft。
另一条忠告就是公司最好在一家已拥有相当访问量的网站上登载自己的商品及服务。Ebay、Yahoo、Amazon正在某些方面成为众多公司的展示自己商品的巨大平台，不过一个公司要参与到这个平台中来，则必需经得住激烈的价格战。网上消费者往往会拿商品网上报价与当地商店里作一比较，甚至会与别的国家的售价进行比较，即使网上销售在境外是被禁止的，也会有大量的基于网站销售方式的业主积极去运作。
芝加哥Kellogg管理学院的科技教授 Mohanbir Sawhney说，我们应清楚现今消费者购物行为的改变。例如，某人想买一部数字照相机，他会先到附近的商店里去考察实物，选好型号后，他会和售货员说：“我回去考虑一下再来”，然后他回家就会到网上去查该型号相机的最低售价，然后在网上订购。所以从这个意义上说，消费者已不再遵从传统的购物流程。
四、电子商务时代的消费者
不只是互联网上透明的价格使得消费者成为强势群体，网络也使得他们成为“薄情”一族，如果他们不喜欢某一网站则会毫不犹豫地离开。“网络是世界上最自私的场所”，Yahoo!执行总裁Daniel Rosensweig 称，“人们应用互联网可谓，随时、随地、随人所欲”。
象Yahoo!这样，致力于寻找并提供客户需要的各种信息的网站并不在少数（Yahoo!每月据称有2。6亿访问者）。消费者最关心的就是最详实的商品名录及其报价，Amazon执行总裁Jeff Bezos说：“我们经营的基础是消费者的信任”。Amazon现在已是世界闻名的图书经销商，以前它也曾在网上销售过其它产品，例如保健品、珠宝和精选的食品。Bezos先生认为除仓储超市里那些体积大价格低的物品外，他们甚至可以出售一切，这也是数以百万计的消费者选择eBay的原因。
即便如此，没有人会认为传统意义的商店可以消失，特别是那些“投机”性更强的领域。许多“砖+混凝土”的商店仍有着不凡的业绩，例如杂货市场等，但象音像和旅游市场则受到了来自互联网实实在在的冲击。作为互联网上最大的旅游代理商的Expedia旅游公司，其老板声称未来美国民众网上预订旅游服务的比例，将会从如今的20%上升到50%。Bezos先生估计未来十年网上零售业将会达到零售总额的10-15%，并将深刻地改变人们的消费观念。
面对来势汹汹的网上营销，传统的商场将如何应对呢？Dell计算机公司的创始人Michael Dell先生，一直领导个人计算机的直销市场，他认为凭借各层销售商店去出售计算机的方式只能进陈列馆作为古董了，Dell采用的直销方式已收到了良好的效果。近来，Apple 和Sony的专卖店计划展示全部可以在网上查到的该品牌商品，也是应对措施之一。从长远看，网上和离线销售方式也必将融合，传统商店也将成为多种销售手段并存的集合体：打印出的商品名录、家庭电视直销、电视订货以及电子商务网站具全。但从消费者角度来说，从网上订货还是他们最为乐意的消费方式。
网上销售最大的优势就在于其低价，这是因为网上商品没有多层中转，于是也就没有多层加价，它们一般都是直接从生产厂家直接到消费者。如果在互联网上消费者可以买到最低价格的商品并能得到最好的服务，还会有人去其它地方购物吗？
当然，消费才在网上购物时，可能会面对欺诈行为。但随着互联网的发展，它传递商品信息速度进一步加快，加上提供同一商品的多家网站必然会考虑自己的长远发展，而争相提供准确翔实的商品信息和价格，并提供优质服务，以抓住更多的用户。所以网上市场肯定会越来越完善。
A perfect market
May 13th 2004
From The Economist print edition
E-commerce is coming of age, says Paul Markillie, but not in the way predicted in the bubble years
WHEN the technology bubble burst in 2000, the crazy valuations for online companies vanished with it, and many businesses folded. The survivors plugged on as best they could, encouraged by the growing number of internet users. Now valuations are rising again and some of the dotcoms are making real profits, but the business world has become much more cautious about the internet’s potential. The funny thing is that the wild predictions made at the height of the boom—namely, that vast chunks of the world economy would move into cyberspace—are, in one way or another, coming true.
The raw numbers tell only part of the story. According to America’s Department of Commerce, online retail sales in the world’s biggest market last year rose by 26%, to $55 billion. That sounds a lot of money, but it amounts to only 1.6% of total retail sales. The vast majority of people still buy most things in the good old “bricks-and-mortar” world.
But the commerce department’s figures deal with only part of the retail instry. For instance, they exclude online travel services, one of the most successful and fastest-growing sectors of e-commerce. InterActiveCorp (IAC), the owner of expedia.com and hotels.com, alone sold $10 billion-worth of travel last year—and it has plenty of competition, not least from airlines, hotels and car-rental companies, all of which increasingly sell online.
Nor do the figures take in things like financial services, ticket-sales agencies, pornography (a $2 billion business in America last year, according to Alt Video News, a trade magazine), online dating and a host of other activities, from tracing ancestors to gambling (worth perhaps $6 billion worldwide). They also leave out purchases in grey markets, such as the online pharmacies that are thought to be responsible for a good proportion of the $700m that Americans spent last year on buying cut-price prescription drugs from across the border in Canada.
Tip of the iceberg
And there is more. The commerce department’s figures include the fees earned by internet auction sites, but not the value of goods that are sold: an astonishing $24 billion-worth of trade was done last year on eBay, the biggest online auctioneer. Nor, by definition, do they include the billions of dollars-worth of goods bought and sold by businesses connecting to each other over the internet. Some of these B2B services are proprietary; for example, Wal-Mart tells its suppliers that they must use its own system if they want to be part of its annual turnover of $250 billion.
So e-commerce is already very big, and it is going to get much bigger. But the actual value of transactions currently concluded online is dwarfed by the extraordinary influence the internet is exerting over purchases carried out in the offline world. That influence is becoming an integral part of e-commerce.
To start with, the internet is profoundly changing consumer behaviour. One in five customers walking into a Sears department store in America to buy an electrical appliance will have researched their purchase online—and most will know down to a dime what they intend to pay. More surprisingly, three out of four Americans start shopping for new cars online, even though most end up buying them from traditional dealers. The difference is that these customers come to the showroom armed with information about the car and the best available deals. Sometimes they even have computer print-outs identifying the particular vehicle from the dealer’s stock that they want to buy.
Half of the 60m consumers in Europe who have an internet connection bought procts offline after having investigated prices and details online, according to a study by Forrester, a research consultancy (see chart 1). Different countries have different habits. In Italy and Spain, for instance, people are twice as likely to buy offline as online after researching on the internet. But in Britain and Germany, the two most developed internet markets, the numbers are evenly split. Forrester says that people begin to shop online for simple, predictable procts, such as DVDs, and then graate to more complex items. Used-car sales are now one of the biggest online growth areas in America.
People seem to enjoy shopping on the internet, if high customer-satisfaction scores are any guide. Websites are doing ever more and cleverer things to serve and entertain their customers, and seem set to take a much bigger share of people’s overall spending in the future.
Why websites matter
This has enormous implications for business. A company that neglects its website may be committing commercial suicide. A website is increasingly becoming the gateway to a company’s brand, procts and services—even if the firm does not sell online. A useless website suggests a useless company, and a rival is only a mouse-click away. But even the coolest website will be lost in cyberspace if people cannot find it, so companies have to ensure that they appear high up in internet search results.
For many users, a search site is now their point of entry to the internet. The best-known search engine has already entered the lexicon: people say they have “Googled” a company, a proct or their plumber. The search business has also developed one of the most effective forms of advertising on the internet. And it is already the best way to reach some consumers: teenagers and young men spend more time online than watching television. All this means that search is turning into the internet’s next big battleground as Google defends itself against challenges from Yahoo! and Microsoft.
The other way to get noticed online is to offer goods and services through one of the big sites that already get a lot of traffic. Ebay, Yahoo! and Amazon are becoming huge trading platforms for other companies. But to take part, a company’s procts have to stand up to intense price competition. People check online prices, compare them with those in their local high street and may well take a peek at what customers in other countries are paying. Even if websites are prevented from shipping their goods abroad, there are plenty of web-based entrepreneurs ready to oblige.
What is going on here is arbitrage between different sales channels, says Mohanbir Sawhney, professor of technology at the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago. For instance, someone might use the internet to research digital cameras, but visit a photographic shop for a hands-on demonstration. “I’ll think about it,” they will tell the sales assistant. Back home, they will use a search engine to find the lowest price and buy online. In this way, consumers are “deconstructing the purchasing process”, says Professor Sawhney. They are unbundling proct information from the transaction itself.
All about me
It is not only price transparency that makes internet consumers so powerful; it is also the way the net makes it easy for them to be fickle. If they do not like a website, they swiftly move on. “The web is the most selfish environment in the world,” says Daniel Rosensweig, chief operating officer of Yahoo! “People want to use the internet whenever they want, how they want and for whatever they want.”
Yahoo! is not alone in defining its strategy as working out what its customers (260m unique users every month) are looking for, and then trying to give it to them. The first thing they want is to become better informed about procts and prices. “We operate our business on that belief,” says Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive. Amazon became famous for books, but long ago branched out into selling lots of other things too; among its latest ventures are health procts, jewellery and gourmet food. Apart from cheap and bulky items such as garden rakes, Mr Bezos thinks he can sell most things. And so do the millions of people who use eBay.
And yet nobody thinks real shops are finished, especially those operating in niche markets. Many bricks-and-mortar bookshops still make a good living, as do flea markets. But many record shops and travel agents could be in for a tougher time. Erik Blachford, the head of IAC’s travel side and boss of Expedia, the biggest internet travel agent, thinks online travel bookings in America could quickly move from 20% of the market to more than half. Mr Bezos reckons online retailers might capture 10-15% of retail sales over the next decade. That would represent a massive shift in spending.
How will traditional shops respond? Michael Dell, the founder of Dell, which leads the personal-computer market by selling direct to the customer, has long thought many shops will turn into showrooms. There are already signs of change on the high street. The latest Apple and Sony stores are designed to display procts, in the full expectation that many people will buy online. To some extent, the online and offline worlds may merge. Multi-channel selling could involve a combination of traditional shops, a printed catalogue, a home-shopping channel on TV, a phone-in order service and an e-commerce-enabled website. But often it is likely to be the website where customers will be encouraged to place their orders.
One of the biggest commercial advantages of the internet is a lowering of transaction costs, which usually translates directly into lower prices for the consumer. So, if the lowest prices can be found on the internet and people like the service they get, why would they buy anywhere else?
One reason may be convenience; another, concern about fraud, which poses the biggest threat to online trade. But as long as the internet continues to deliver price and proct information quickly, cheaply and securely, e-commerce will continue to grow. Increasingly, companies will have to assume that customers will know exactly where to look for the best buy. This market has the potential to become as perfect as it gets.