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In this chapter, Suresh Kotha and Sandip Basu describe the effects of recent technological changes on retailing, in particular the development of the Internet and of overnight delivery services. The Internet and online retailing have given rise to new retailing formats for selling traditional products, such as in the case of Amazon.com and books. In addition, these new technologies have generated new forms of market making. One of the best and most successful examples is eBay.com, which brings together millions of buyers and sellers in a cyber marketplace. Online shopping has also impacted on incumbent retailers, whether they see the Internet as just another marketing channel or a new approach to retailing. Some existing retailers, such as Wal-Mart, are trying largely to use an online presence to leverage their physical assets, but that could change in the future. Online retailers are still in the process of discovering what works and what does not, although it appears that the current global recession has substantially increased people’s willingness to buy and sell online. Broadband connectivity has given a major boost to online retailing. The next stage, just beginning to emerge, may be global online retailing. Finally, the easy availability of information on the Internet, especially with the development of sophisticated search engines, such as Google, has helped create more knowledgeable consumers. Even if they do not buy online, by using the Internet, many consumers now are much better informed than in the past. When potential customers who have searched on the Internet come into automobile dealerships, for instance, they may literally know as much about the car models and pricing as the salesperson.

This chapter analyzes market concentration trends in the following fields within print and publishing: newspapers, books, and magazines. There has been a great deal of fear about the demise of the newspaper industry. The trend toward local market monopoly, the ascendance of newspaper groups, the shrinking circulations of newspapers, and the emergence of the Internet as a news source have raised alarms about the future vitality of newspapers. The outlook is mixed. In the case of books, the aspect which has changed the most about book publishing has been in the field of distribution. Book retailing changed substantially with the growth of chains, superstores, and online retailing. The technological abilities to produce magazines cheaply, in either print or online form, have stimulated the growth in this sector. This growth, in turn, has led to the overall low concentration, in US government terms, that typifies this market. However, the many specialty markets show a much higher concentration.

Chapter 4 discusses the emergence of entirely new business models enabled, inevitably, by technology and which challenge long-established notions of what it means to be a retail enterprise. The business models for established retail enterprises are being reshaped by the need to make heavy investments in areas such as logistics and IT that have historically been regarded as support functions rather than as integral to the sustained competitive advantage and success of the enterprise. Moreover, established retailers are competing with aggressive and effective enterprises such as internet-enabled platform providers with entirely different business models. As well as a competition between philosophies of what it means to be a retailer, this is a competition between very different business models.

The Introduction opens with contextual factors surrounding digital monopolies and a set of research questions addressed in subsequent chapters. The key problem relates to the fact that there are few alternatives to companies providing web searching, social networking and online retailing in much of the Western world regardless of the nominally competitive character of their economies. The argument then moves to briefly introduce value form and social form approaches in comparison to other Marxian approaches such as cognitive capitalism and digital labour. Regardless of advances in computing technology the chapter closes by arguing that capitalism remains the same mode of production based on surplus value extraction.