E-commerce has slowly but consistently taken up a larger proportion of consumer time and spending. According to the research by Macquarie Bank, e-commerce is being driven by primarily three things: • Price—In a largely price-transparent world, consumers are able to use the Internet to quickly and easily compare prices online. Websites such as Static Ice and Shopbot aggregate pricing from various retailers and display them sorted by price. • Convenience of the shopping experience—Consumers cite convenience as being one of the reasons of their shift to buying online. Consider that you can do all your research, order and have your goods delivered to your doorstep without even setting foot outside of your own home. • The range of products available online—Physical constraints can inhibit retailers from displaying or carrying a full range of items, in contrast to online- only retailers who can display any and every product they sell, and only pay for warehousing and postage costs. Amazon, for example, has an operating cost to sales ratio half that of its in-store peer average. Furthermore, certain products are simply unavailable offline, for example, media and entertainment content available from US and UK that do not have local distribution licenses. 1. Fill out the form according to the structure of the paragraph. 2. What service do websites such as Static Ice and Shopbot provide? __________________________________________________________________________ 3. What kinds of products are available online? __________________________________________________________________________