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2. Aggregators
In contrast to the consolidators, the aggregators oversee
the entire commercial process, from finding suppliers
to the after-sales service, including banking and delivery,
in certain cases.
They are normally found in markets where the products
are much more standardised and of lower value than the
consolidators. They offer a wide choice of products, this
scope being one of the key points in their added value
strategy. Thanks to a high turnover, they benefit from
a strong purchasing power, and can influence prices in
the same way as the major distribution chains.
In theory, they can sell direct to the final customer,
if the latter connects to their website. In practice,
direct sales only represent part of their turnover, as
they often end up signing agreements with access providers.
Thus, the majority of portals have signed exclusive agreements
with primary service providers : Yahoo-Amazon, Hotbot-Barnes
& Noble, Nomade/FNAC, Excite-Amazon in the domain
of booksellers. It is logical also to set up affiliation
programmes (the best known in France is Alapage-http://www.alapage.com
which distributes books, music CDs and video cassettes).
An affiliation programme is a remuneration system whereby
an online store pays a commission to a particular site
each time the latter sends a customer to the store. Planète
Commerce-http://www.planete-commerce.fr, which benefits
from a significant number of targeted visitors, belongs
to several affiliation programmes, which generate income
: two programmes concerned with books (Alapage, Amazon),
a domain name registration site (Nameshield-http://www.nameshield.com)
and finally a website creation site (Tabnet/Verio-http://www.tabnet.com).
For each sale generated by Planète Commerce, these
different sites pay us a commission.
A few aggregators
Books
Alapage-http://www.alapage.com
Alibabook-http://www.alibabook.com
BOL-http://www.bol.fr
Barnes and Nobles-http://www.barnesandnoble.com
Borders-http://www.borders.com,
Chapitre.com-http://www.chapitre.com
Music
CDNOW-http://www.cdnow.com
Musicboulvard-http://www.musicblvd.com
CD Universe http://www.cduniverse.com
CD Mail-http://www.cdmail.fr
Computer technology
Wstore-http://www.wstore.com
Internet Shopping Network-http://www.isn.com
Cybrerian Outpost-http://www.cybrerian.com
Beyond.com-http://www.beyond.com
Buycomp-http://www.buycomp.com
Download.com-http://www.download.com
Videos
Bigstar-http://www.bigstar.com
Spree-http://www.spree.com
General interest (books, CDs, videos, video games)
FNAC-http://www.fnac.fr,
Blockbuster-http://www.blockbuster.com,
Alapage-http://www.alapage.com,
Amazon-http://www.amazon.com
Leisure
Fogdog Sports-http://www.fogdog.com
Mountain Zone-http://www.gearzone.com/gearzone/
The aggregators frequently create a service based around
a particular market : books, music or computer technology.
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