The issue of whether e-commerce forms a separate relevant market is not entirely new. Arguably the basis for such discussion were settled in the early 1990s when in the Otto/ Grattan case , the EC faced an uncertainty of whether catalogue mail ordering for non-food products should be considered as a separate relevant product market or, contrary, be part of the traditional market? Consequently the EC found that the catalogue mail ordering might fall into a separate relevant product market for non-food products due to the reasons in the difference of shopping experience rather than the difference in the product itself. In particular the EC outlined that: (A) consumers have the ability to order the product at home, without the presence of the seller, (B) consumers are entitled to have the good delivered to their homes at the …show more content…
Evidently, one can notice that there are similarities between catalogue mail ordering and physical product trade over the Internet as in both these business models the firms communicate with their final consumers as well as sell their physical products trough the distance. Thus, not surprisingly the EC started referring to catalogue mail ordering as distance selling and, more importantly, continued to apply this reference to the selling over the Internet in its future decisions. Consequently, one can make a logical conclusion that any reasoning made in relation to the catalogue mail ordering became applicable to the sales over the Internet in the future EC decisions. One of these decisions was the EC investigation in the Advent International/EMI/WH Smith case . Here, in defining the relevant market the EC raised a possibility that market should be further subdivided into sales through brick-and-mortar shops and sales by mail order, Internet,