【正文】 have a high valuetoweight ratio, they may involve embarrassing purchases, they may typically go to people in remote locations, and they may have shutins as their typical purchasers. Items which can fit through a standard letterbox — such as music CDs, DVDs and books — are particularly suitable for a virtual marketer, and indeed , one of the few enduring dot panies, has historically concentrated on this field. Products such as spare parts, both for consumer items like washing machines and for industrial equipment like centrifugal pumps, also seem good candidates for selling online. Retailers often need to order spare parts specially, since they typically do not stock them at consumer outlets in such cases, emerce solutions in spares do not pete with retail stores, only with other ordering systems. A factor for success in this niche can consist of providing customers with exact, reliable information about which part number their particular version of a product needs, for example by providing parts lists keyed by serial number. Purchases of pornography and of other sexrelated products and services fulfill the requirements of both virtuality (or if nonvirtual, generally highvalue) and potential embarrassment。 among its latest ventures are health products, 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 bricksandmortar 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 inter 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 1015% 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 personalputer 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 products, in the full expectation that many people will buy online. To some extent, the online and offline worlds may merge. Multichannel selling could involve a bination of traditional shops, a printed catalogue, a homeshopping channel on TV, a phonein order service and an emerceenabled website. But often it is likely to be the website where customers will be encouraged to place their orders. One of the biggest mercial advantages of the inter 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 inter and people like the service they get, why would they buy anywhere else? One reason may be convenience。 for example, WalMart tells its suppliers that they must use its own system if they want to be part of its annual turnover of $250 billion. So emerce 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 inter is exerting over purchases carried out in the offline world. That influence is being an integral part of emerce. To start with, the inter 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 e to the showroom armed with information about the car and the best available deals. Sometimes they even have puter printouts identifying the particular vehicle from the dealer’s stock that they want to buy. Half of the 60m consumers in Europe who have an inter connection bought products 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 inter. But in Britain and Germany, the two most developed inter markets, the numbers are evenly split. Forrester says that people begin to shop online for simple, predictable products, such as DVDs, and then graduate to more plex items. Usedcar sales are now one of the biggest online growth areas in America. People seem to enjoy shopping on the inter, if high customersatisfaction scores are any guide. Websites are doing