But those old sectors break down in the networked economy. The notion of what it means to be a retail company will change in five years when there are a billion people on the Internet. The bundling of services on the Internet into products ranging from soap to cars is what makes them competitive.
Every company becomes a retail company.
Every company will need to reach out to consumers directly and develop relationships with them, rather than selling only through retailers. No bank or credit card company is involved. Money is numbers printed on bills. Soon, money will be encrypted numbers printed on disk drives and digital wallets. Everybody becomes a bank.