The traditional retail business model involves selling to consumers via one or more physical shops, often known as “bricks and mortar” retailing. However recent years have seen an increasing number of retailers move to a multi-channel retail model, offering customers a range of ways to buy products. Although some traditional retailers have offered alternative channels such as catalog sales for decades, it is really the advent of the internet that has driven the emergence of multi-channel retailing. Channels used in a multi-channel strategy can include purchases from a store, purchases from a website, telephone ordering, mail orders, interactive television, catalog ordering and comparison shopping sites. Retailers using multi-channel strategies aim to offer their customers greater convenience and wider choice. A multi-channel strategy also offers retailers the ability to expand their business without the significant investment in expanding the physical store network.

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