The Internet has been around for a solid 12 years (1996 / 1997) and eCommerce has been very popular for at least 5. If you were following the news and discussion around 2000 / 2001 about eCommerce, you'll remember that no one was quite sure how many financial transactions and purchases were going to be conducted online, though most people guessed, or assumed, it would be significant.

It has been significant. eCommerce has become a substantial pipeline for product purchasing and some Sectors had previously believed that it may be a problem for Retailing. That's not the case, eCommerce and Retailing are not arch-rivals, they are different methods used by vendors to achieve the same outcome. Each offers a different pipeline for purchase and, as such, different benefits associated with the purchasing mechanism.

The Purchasing Pipeline - Price difference is nominal when taken in full context of Purchasing Experiences
A different pipeline, a different experience, different benefits. Where eTailing ( eCommerce purchasing ) offers customers "convenience" and "speed" ( and a suitability to one personality, state of mind or mood ), Retailing offers "the window shopping experience", "touch-and-feel experience" and "personal contact" ( suitable to other personalities, thoughts and moods and complimentary to a particular desired experience ).

Price is often cited as being a key benefit of eTailing over Retailing but some closer inspection of pricing reveals that this is, now, not the case. Some time has passed since the initial appeal of buying online as a novelty or idea may have influenced purchasing for that reason.

Consider all factors affecting the cost of goods offered from eTailers and Retailers alike and you will find that while the online purchases may be cheaper, postage often brings the price much closer to a Retail price. The difference from there is nominal and is usually only attributable to the cost of Retail Property leasing. Retailing pays for property because "window shopping" and "product touch and feel" when done in a collective shopping environment has community overtones that can be significant to individuals, shopping malls have done well because most of us enjoy, at the right time, the experience. Also, security of a definite delivery, when you hand your money over person-to-person does not equate to a negative for Retail shopping.

These factors combined together mean that a Retailer may charge more for the product but we are mostly not unhappy, on the right occasion, to pay that difference because the associated experiences are not necessarily negatives.

For the Seller, many costs are the same whether online or not.
Generally speaking, it is understood that an eTailing business is not in the position to leverage great reductions in the costs of products as it grows to a point where reputation and image engender "security" and "brand" recognition. And it is significant that this is true whether you are an Online or Physical Shop Front Seller.

In other words, for an online seller to get to a point where you recognise them and trust them is beyond the point where they can offer you a significant discount on a product. Because the cost of their business overheads will increase proportionately in their effort to attain their needed recognition, they nevertheless have to achieve recognition through conventional means and those costs are universal for eTailers and Retailers alike. In this regard eTailing and Retailing are not differentiated, they have to capture the users desire and they have to channel that to a shop front whether that shop front is physical ("Bricks-and-mortar") or not. The differentiation between the two, is on the basis of the experience, service and payment and purchasing pipelines.

Summary
So, in summary, it is worth to examine all the benefits of a purchase, traditionally, many people are now using the internet to ( at least ) research a product first, but the purchasing is executed on the basis of what an individual wants at the time of the purchase aswell.

Store Specials offers you a: "look before you shop" experience and rewards you for it. You have many benefits for researching here and what you do from there is further simplified by the redirection from the product to the retailers site, or with a Map to the actual Store if that's what you want.