E-commerce: the website takes over the job of the shop

1. Selling online moves all four elements of the mix, and it moves place furthest of all.
   1. Place: the market becomes national rather than local, and there is no rent on a high street unit, so a business can trade from cheap warehouse space and still take orders from Cornwall to Aberdeen.
   2. Price: a shopper compares the same item across a dozen sellers in seconds, which drags prices towards the cheapest and squeezes the profit made on each sale.
   3. Product: the range on offer can be far wider than a shop could hold, because stock sits on racking in a warehouse rather than on shelves a customer walks past.
   4. Promotion: the sale can be closed at the moment the advert is seen, because a link takes the customer straight to the checkout instead of asking them to travel into town.
2. That price squeeze is survivable because a website costs less to run than a shop with rent, staff and lighting, so the business can accept a lower price and still cover its costs.

Digital communication: promotion is where the change lands hardest

1. Digital communication reaches every element as well, and here it is promotion that changes furthest.
   1. Promotion: one post or email reaches thousands of people for a fraction of the cost of a newspaper advert, and it can be aimed at the people most likely to buy rather than at everyone.
   2. Product: reviews and comments arrive within days and in volume, so a fault or a missing feature can be put right in the next batch instead of after a year of falling sales.
   3. Price: a discount code can be sent to a chosen group at a chosen time, such as a midweek offer to bring in customers on the quietest days, without cutting the price for everybody.
   4. Place: click and collect and delivery tracking tie the online and physical sides together, so a customer orders on a phone and picks the order up in person.
2. Digital promotion is also measurable, since the business can see which post produced sales that day and move the money to whatever is working.

What technology costs the business in return

1. Technology moves the mix, but it does not move it for free, and five things come back the other way.
   1. Set-up and running costs: the website has to be built, hosted and kept secure, and every order carries picking, packing, postage and the cost of taking returns back.
   2. Wider competition: once the market is national the business no longer competes with two local shops but with every seller a search engine lists, including Amazon and eBay.
   3. Complaints in public: a poor review sits under the product for every future buyer to read and spreads within hours, where an unhappy shopper in a shop once told only a few friends.
   4. Keeping up to date: a site that loads slowly or an app that crashes loses the sale to a rival, so the spending on technology never finishes.
   5. Not every product suits it: a customer buying boots or a sofa still wants to try them, so for those firms the website supports the shop rather than replacing it.