E-commerce and retail differ in fundamental ways. E-commerce involves buying and selling products or services online through electronic means, while retail occurs through physical store locations. Additionally, e-commerce allows for global connections and transactions between buyers and sellers worldwide virtually instantly, whereas retail is limited to local geographical areas and can take longer to complete transactions. A key difference is that anyone can open a physical retail store, while e-commerce requires an existing online storefront.

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Differences between Ecommerce and
Retail
by Alexandra Arrivillaga | Dec 13, 2021 | Alexandra Arrivillaga, Business, Entrepreneurship
E-commerce and retail are two different entities. They both work under the umbrella of
business, but they are very different in their ways. E-commerce is electronic commerce
where buying and selling products or services occurs online. In contrast, retail is an old
form of trade, which happens at physical store locations.
The word eCommerce originated from combining two words, namely, electronic and
commerce. This word can describe transactions that occur over computer networks like
a
a

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the internet or World Wide Web. However, it is not just limited to that; it extends its use for
any commercial activity over telecommunications systems.
On the other hand, retail is an old form of trade, which has been around since ancient
times. The word retail is derived from the French word ‘retail,’ which means to break a
more oversized item into smaller ones to be sold individually. This term is used to sell
goods and services to consumers through fixed locations like shops, stalls, boutiques, and
markets.
The fundamental difference between eCommerce and retail is that eCommerce happens
electronically while retail happens physically.
Another critical difference between the two is that eCommerce is global while retail is local.
Ecommerce allows buyers and sellers from all over the world to connect and do business
with each other. This is because the internet knows no boundaries, and it has no
restrictions on who can use it. On the other hand, retail is limited to a specific geographical
location. It can only take place within the confines of the physical store.
E-commerce is also a much faster way of doing business than retail. Transactions within a
few minutes or a few seconds are done within eCommerce. On the other hand, retail takes
much longer as goods need to be transported from place to place to complete a
transaction, and it might take days for this process to end.
Another difference is that people cannot create stores online and make them available for
others to purchase as they can with retail. In eCommerce, sellers need to have an existing
online store. They cannot simply create a store and start selling products and services. This
is not the case with retail, where anyone can open up a physical store and start doing
business.
© Alexandra Arrivillaga 2021
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