Business-to-Consumer Multi-Channel Distribution Policies: from Marketplace to Market-Space Management

Abstract

The new communication technologies, Internet in particular, allow businesses to achieve forms of virtual ubiquity, thus creating new factors in the control of market and competition spaces. These new tools generate the transition from marketplace to market-space, by eliminating physical distances and allowing access to products and services on a global scale. The term ‘click-and-mortar’ denotes an integrated distribution system in which traditional distribution elements (physical stores, warehouses, stocks, information systems for distribution cycle management) are supported by tools made available by the new telecommunication technologies (online shopping, information platforms for distribution management, partnerships to run ‘virtual’ warehouses). Click-and-mortar businesses are often the combination of a traditional retail business (brick-and-mortar) and an online start-up company.