Sales via as many channels as possible are often the main criteria for successful product marketing.

These days, sales via 'brick 'n mortar' commerce, via a catalogue or over the phone are not the only keys to success.

Fact is that more and more customers are buying via the Internet. This growing sales channel offers companies from trade and industry an effective and efficient possibility of increasing sales and tapping into new customer groups.

According to Forrester Research, online trade in Europe will exceed 167 billion Euro by the year 2009.

Alone in the third quarter of 2003, goods amounting to over 1,25 billion Dollars were traded in Germany on eBay, the world's largest online marketplace (source: eBay). eBay Germany is the second largest online market after eBay America.

For the sectors of trade and industry, online commerce opens new possibilities for optimising added value and sales as well as gaining and securing new customers.

Online marketplaces are gaining 40 per cent per annum on average with regard to turnover and usage. In Germany alone eBay already reaches 35 per cent of all German Internet users.