Richness versus reach.

In its simplest terms richness versus reach means do you give good high quality information (richness) about your product or services to a small and select customer base (reach). Or do you give more general information to a much larger customer base.
 

Example.

Richness in the dress shop would be very high because the customer can try on the clothes, feel the material and get personal attention from the owner / sales person. Reach will be limited to a local area; the one to one attention also limits reach.

A fashion catalogue.

The fashion catalogues reach on the other hand will be much larger due to direct marketing, but richness is lost because only flat photographs and a brief description is given.

In their book Blown to Bits (Evans and Wurster 2000: 25) give a more detailed description of richness and reach.
 

The significance of richness versus reach to online shopping is that some products are more suitable than others. The trade of between richness and reach (as one goes up the other comes down) is not as significant as in the example above. Reach is vast due to the proliferation of computers in the home; some richness due to computer languages like HTML and Java is added.

In his book E-shock Michael De Kare-silver uses the following criteria to see if a product is suitable for on-line sales.

Product characteristics; (does it need to be felt).
Familiarity and confidence; (is it well known for the right reasons).
Consumer attributes; (convenience shoppers etc.).
 

References.

• Evans P. Wurster T. S. (2000) Blown to bits, how the new economics of information transforms strategy. Boston USA, Harvard Business School Press.

• De Kare-silver M. (2000) E-shock. Basingstoke England, Palgrave Macmillan.