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The cost of e-commerce protectionism

Why are brick and mortar businesses attemptong to block the growth of internet technology? A new report explains!

By Randy Scasny - 13th February 2001 - Back to News

The emergence of e-commerce's "clicks and mortar" organizations, where producers sell directly to consumers, is threatening the livelihood of "bricks and mortar" retailers, distributors, brokers and other middlemen, states a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

The report by the non-profit institute concludes that brick-and-mortar middleman industries are causing consumers to pay more than $15 billion annually for goods and services by blocking development of cost-saving web businesses.

In the report, entitled "The Revenge of the Disintermediated: How the Middleman is Fighting E-Commerce and Hurting Consumers," Robert Atkinson, director of the Technology and New Economy Project at the PPI, has called for policymakers at all levels of government to not give in to the demands and pleadings of e-commerce resisters and to ensure that unfair and discriminatory rules, regulations, and laws do not limit consumers choices as to where and how to buy goods and services.

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Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: office@messenger.com.au

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