Time to define

"   Online retailers can come from all the normally accepted retail categories used by the Office for National Statistics.


Pure play retailers – are those that only trade online.  Examples are Amazon, Ocado and Play.com. They are classified under mail order by the ONS. ASOS and Net-A-Porter for us fashionistas!


Multi-channel retailers are those that trade both online and through stores and/or catalogues as well.
But the classification of multi-channel retailers is more complicated:

• Catalogue retailers that take orders online continue to be classified under mail order. An example is AVON, primarily a door to door catalogue retailer that has moved to online sales recently.
• Store based retailers that generate less than half of their sales online (and for most the proportion is under 5%) are classified in their usual sector along with all their online sales. So all Tesco’s sales, whether online or through stores, are classified under food retailers.

Offshore retailers. Online retailers who are based outside the UK, but who sell to customers in the UK, are not monitored by the ONS. Our analysis has to add these back. They include major businesses, such as Amazon eBay and play.com   "


Source: Mintel, 2010 - E-Commerce - UK - February 2010
http://academic.mintel.com/sinatra/oxygen_academic/search_results/show&/display/id=479843/display/id=529566/display/id=479843&anchor=atom1/display/id=508747#hit1