Shopping Without Frontiers

According to some estimates, on-line retail shopping around the world could reach an annual figure of $3 trillion within the next five years.

''Businesses such as travel, retail-sector banking and securities, books, and video and audio disks all lend themselves very readily to this new medium,'' says Thomas Bouvet, a director with Europstat, a Paris-based company specializing in business intelligence information technology systems. For example, the World Tourism Organization in Madrid has just launched a study examining the impact of the Internet on the global travel business.

''The movement toward Internet selling and buying will favor small, dynamic enterprises that are able to move and adapt quickly in a rapidly changing landscape,'' says Mr. Bouvet. Against this background, new ideas in wired commerce are adding extra dimensions to the shopping experience.

On-line auctions, for example, where individuals can list items for sale and site visitors can bid for them, are becoming increasingly popular. Amazon.com's recent acquisitions of Exchange.com, an on-line marketplace for rare, antiquarian and used books and recordings, and of Accept.com and Alexa Internet, two e-commerce companies, demonstrate that Amazon.com's agenda is not just to be an Internet store, but to redefine the concept of retail sales. Amazon.com most recently demonstrated its commitment to on-line selling by starting zShops, a concept allowing a wide variety of retailers to sell through the Amazon.com's Web site. Retailers will pay about $10 a month to sell on-line and will benefit from Amazon.com's extensive audience and marketing tools. In return, Amazon.com will have access to a vast resource of customer data due to the added depth the new stores offer the site.

''I believe that we are about to witness huge growth in cybershopping in the Asian market,'' says David Howell, managing director of a new on-line wine sales business called E-Wineasia, which started operating out of Singapore at the end of August. ''In the United States, shoppers went from neighborhood stores to catalogues and then much later to the Internet. People in Asia are ready to make the leap from shops to cyberspace without the intermediate phase. Moreover, Asian people tend to work long hours and take very short vacations. Time is a commodity that you have to use wisely in this environment. Once people realize that they can get their groceries, a bottle of wine and a dozen golf balls all ordered during their lunch break and delivered to their house, I believe they will do it.''

Maria Luisa Rodriguez, a founding partner in e-co consulting Ltd., an information technology consulting firm that was created in Paris earlier this year, says: ''Issues that could hold back e-commerce development in Europe include excessive government controls, lack of common standards, fraud risks and market domination by a few large players. Positive factors include the abundance of attractive free on-line services, the development of successful business models and increasing compatibility of systems.''

Michael Rowe