Distributed Storefronts

In traditional shopping malls the customers are not able to find all the articles and goods of different types. They would have to visit different stores to purchase the different items. For example, a sports-oriented customer may be interested in travel to the World Series, Tiger Wood's autobiography, and a basketball for his daughter's birthday. Could the same store provide all three services? Probably not because in the physical world the logistics of dealing with multiple suppliers, competition for expensive floor space, and limited expertise of sales staff create problems.

On the Internet the links between shops can be electronic. If the on-line sports shop and camera store have hypertext links to a bookstore's Web site, then the bookstore is not selling books from just one Web site, but from three. Why stop at three? Why not sell books from thirty, three hundred or three thousand Web sites! This is the distributed storefront model.

This concept is called Affiliate Programming over the Net. A Web site (the affiliate) agrees to promote goods being sold by an on-line merchant. The representation of these goods on the affiliate's Web site has a hypertext link to the merchant. If a visitor to the site "clicks through" to the merchant and buys the product, the affiliate receives a commission. Web site owners benefit by offering additional services to visitors and generating revenue from their site. On-line merchants benefit because buyers nearly committed to making a purchase are directed to their site and the commission cost of affiliated-generated sales is less than sales generated from banner advertising. Shoppers benefit too because the goods they find at sites they visit are relevant to their needs, minimise search time and frequently come with recommendations of the site developers. In summary, this is a plus-plus-plus arrangement made possible by the hypertext connectivity of the World Wide Web.