Like many people I shop a lot online and have done for almost fifteen years (even before I had a home PC).. I think I stared with Amazon buying books, gradually over the years most of the bricks and mortar book shops started getting out of specialist computer books, leaving only things like Word for Dummies. Amazon meanwhile gave you access to almost any book your could want and because they were a big name, it engendered a certain amount of trust that they would deliver to a small country in the southern hemisphere.
For a couple of years at least I didn't really branch beyond buying books, the New Zealand online retailers seemed to come a bit later although the online auction house Trade Me started as early as 1999. In the computer parts online area, it is almost impossible now to think where you would go to buy a part other than through an online shop. Over time the range of things I'd consider buying has expanded, as has the range of thing I'd only buy on line. Once upon a time for example you'd never buy football boots online because you couldn't try them on first, this now seems an unimportant consideration when the boot online are around half the price of the same ones in a shop.
For the time being you also don't have to pay a tax on the overseas purchases, something that is attracting complaints from retail stores. It should be easy to compete with these stores though on service, they can deliver a product but you can't quite get the personal touch when stores are on the other side of the world. But with the exception small record shop who cant compete on price, you rarely seem to see a store pitching to the service and help they can provide, many stores are not even as good as their online competitors.
