By combining marketing muscle, smaller companies have a better chance of forcing their way onto a consumers' online shopping list. But the most significant factor behind such amalgamations is the desire of online shoppers for conveni-ence. Internet surfers, particularly those with limited bandwidth, want to be able to complete their online shopping or browsing without having to trawl across numerous web pages. Of course, online companies can stock and sell a much greater selection of products than their rivals in the physical world. No longer constrained by space, the US clothing retailer Gap has been able to massively expand the range of items it offers in its online incarnation.
Customers can now, for example, choose from hundreds of different of styles of jeans.
Keith Wills, director of international equity research at Goldman Sachs in London, insists that scale will be crucial. It will always be the big, progressive, powerful retailer who wins out. In retail terms, the people who lose out are the 'me-too' people. There is no getting away from the fact that amongst existing retailers there will be many more losers than winners. The implication of this, he notes, is that a few winners will make it big.