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Internet Sales of IT and Consumer Electronic Products throughout Latin America Will Seriously Impact Traditional Resellers

To compete in today's e-commerce world, Latin American and Caribbean IT resellers will require an e-commerce website, a reliable supply chain partner, and thousands of products from multiple vendors.

In only a few years, the internet has made a sizeable impact on sales, changing the way consumers buy. Traditional resellers face difficult questions; Do their customers already buy online? How will they compete with online resellers? How much business are they losing because customers are looking for products they don't stock? How much more could they sell if they could display thousands of products to consumers? How can they quickly (and continuously) stock what's in demand? How fast can they react to trends?

What changed? Until recently, a reseller had to either stock products or special order them for a client. In today's e-commerce world, the consumer is in control. Consumers can find and purchase any product at any time because the internet is available on a 24 x 7 x 365 basis. Consumers regularly purchase on the Internet from e-tailers that offer a much larger selection and an assured delivery, resulting in an increasing loss of sales. Aditionally, the manufacturer websites and search engines provide all the necessary product information to allow informed purchasing decisions. These changes further reduce the importance of the traditional reseller and traditional sales models.

Currently, companies such as DELL, HP and Toshiba already sell online to many countries Soon, the major US e-tailers like CDW, Buy.Com and PCNation will also sell into the region through comparison engines like PriceGrabber, NextTag, and BizRate, following Terra-Lycos and YahooShopper. This will increase competition and further affect traditional resellers.

With an e-commerce solution and a dependable supply chain partner, a reseller can offer a large product selection to their customers, effectively leveling the playing field. With an e-store, the supplier's inventory, the entire supply chain, becomes the reseller's inventory, completely visible and available for sale to consumers. Expanding the product selection improves customer satisfaction, reduces or eliminates lost sales and reduces the cost and size of the reseller's inventory. Additionally, there is no risk of buying a product that may not sell because the consumer has selected and prepaid their purchase.