Correspondence: Soumitra Sharma, Consumer Goods and Retail Institute of Technology Banaras Hindu University D-27, First Floor, Saket New Delhi-110017, India. Tel: +91 981 0877422; Fax: +91 120 2522592; E-mail: soumitrasharma555@yahoo.co.in

¹completed his Bachelor of Technology (BTech) in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University. He published papers in several technical areas such as biofuels, wastewater treatment and nanotechnology, during his engineering course. His current areas of expertise include consumer goods, retail and e-Government. In the latter, Soumitra has worked on projects related to 'public–private partnership in e-Government' in recent months. He already has two international publications in the area of e-Government to his credit. Recently, he was among the few professionals globally, to be extended a personal invitation by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, to attend the executive programme 'Successful Cross-Boundary Transformation: The Role of Executive Sponsors', in June 2007.

Received 24 December 2007; Revised 24 December 2007; Published online 5 March 2008.

Abstract

e-Tail, or internet-based retailing, has emerged as an innovative channel for retailers to reach target consumers in the comfort of their homes. e-Tailing has exhibited an upward trend across the world in recent years, although it is more prevalent in certain regions such as Europe and North America. With varying levels of internet penetration, telecom infrastructure, the business and legal environment, e-tailing is at varying stages of maturity in countries across the globe. In order to objectively compare the actual preparedness of various countries to exploit their potential for e-tail, an analytical model was built by using principal component analysis. This model returns a numeric value, coined as the e-Tail Readiness Index. A set of countries were subsequently ranked on the basis of this index. As expected, while the more developed countries of Europe and North America occupied the top slots, the emerging economies of eastern Europe and Latin America occupied the middle slots. Surprisingly, India and China figured right at the bottom of the heap.