Retail has been in the throes of a huge transformation process for several years. The growth of online retail has caused whole market structures to change. While there used to be an obvious split between B2B and B2C, these categories are now less clear-cut and have been joined by B2B2C, D2C and others. This means that manufacturers and wholesalers are increasingly selling directly to end customers as well. The relationship between individual channels is also changing.
There used to be traditional retail, plus companies who concentrated solely on e-commerce. Then came the multichannel approach – using several independently managed channels. And now these are converging ever closer. ‘No line' is the new buzzword instead of multichannel.