Imagine yourself back in the year 1998. The world is abuzz with talks about how online shopping is the way of the future and how we'll all be using virtual reality to traverse online mega malls. Flash forward to 2009 and the reality couldn't be any further from those predictions.
Locally, our online stores tend to sell primarily electronics and flowers, hardly a wide variety of products. We investigate why e-commerce is not bigger in this country and why only a few niches such as computer hardware are serviced. We speak to Digital Mall, Pushplay and Wantitall - all leaders and innovators in local e-commerce.
We take a look at pricing and whether it's all just one big oligopoly of stores as well as understand the logistics behind putting a store together. We speak to a wide variety of guests including an electronics store, a movie distributor and a grocery shopping network.
Find out whether e-commerce is going to fade into the background or will become the way of the future in this week's episode of The Digital Edge.
Download the episode from
www.thedigitaledge.co.za on Tuesday, April 14, at 12pm.
