E-Commerce vs. Traditional Stores
Back in the day, small towns had general stores where wide arrays of merchandise could be purchased to deal with every personal need you might have. Nowadays, such general stores are more often referred to as "Wal-Mart".
The big problem that general stores had was the fact that if you were interested in certain products, the selection of it was very limited because the stores couldn't afford to use up a lot of shelf space for a wide variety of a single product. To them, it therefore made more sense to fill up limited shelf space with products that sold the most, even if they weren't necessarily the greatest ones out there.
Limited shelf space does not exist when it comes to online e-commerce stores. Online shelf space only happens to be restricted by the web server's overall storage space, so e-commerce stores can have tons of different models for a certain item and the hard drive storage space would still be negligible. Plus, along with same-day shipping that most suppliers now provide, such stores won't even need to carry every item's stock, so warehouse shelf space wouldn't be necessary, either.
Now, because online shelf space is plentiful and cheap, e-commerce businesses that cater to certain niches is now possible, as well. Let's take a look at the online e-commerce niche store Intercoms Online, which sells nothing but wireless intercoms, intercom systems, wireless systems for baby monitors and video intercoms.
Opening traditional stores just to sell products of intercom systems, no matter how big the city is, is sure to fail miserably. Although it would definitely make several baby monitor and intercom sales, it would not be enough to cover every overhead expense that comes with a traditional store.
This is why online stores are different. Websites are very cheap to build when compared to real buildings. Plus, websites can be accessed from all over the world.
Such e-commerce stores create markets of endless choices where customers can find what they need. Old models of demand and supply are slowly vanishing to become more available to practically everybody. Now that shelf space no longer costs a thing, every person can be catered to.
Also, the world is now much less dominated by traditional media. Back in the day, people only watched several television shows and listened to several radio stations because one television and broadcast radio delivered a single show to the world. Now, the World Wide Web has the ability to distribute tons of shows to a single person, diverting attention away from classic media to online websites.
Therefore, big companies no longer dominate every existing advertising channel like they did before and even smaller niche e-commerce websites can now compete with them to win customers over.






























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