It was supposed to be the future of business, but selling goods over the internet - e-tail, e-commerce, whatever you choose to call it - hasn't yet captured the imagination of the public. Has the potential impact of the internet been exaggerated?
Maya Even introduces a report by Nils Blythe on the future of internet shopping. Many British people still find the internet too daunting a place to shop, and it seems that the idea is only really catching on in the United States.
Nils talks to Jeff Bezos, whose online book-selling company, Amazon.com, shipped books to 45 different countries in its first 30 days. Amazon now stocks over a million different titles, and Mr Bezos believes that selling books on the internet will become a very large business.
In the UK, Daryl Mattocks founded the The Internet Bookshop at the same time as Amazon, but business has been much slower than its US counterpart - partially due to the price differential between books in the US and the UK. Mr Mattocks admits that the future of online retailing may belong to the Americans.
Clip taken from The Money Programme, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 23 November, 1997.
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