Businesses are being more and more influenced by changing forces like globalization, deregulation, convergence of industries, and it has been several years since a newcomer has appeared in almost every marketplace all around the word: e-commerce. The emergence and development of e-commerce was due to the rapid growth of the internet. This new tool has enabled companies to display and sell goods and services cheaply to consumers and businesses around the world. In this context some traditional industries like the book retail industry could feel threatened by the changes in buying behaviours of customers who have become bold and aggressive in their demands not only for superior quality but also for responsive service.

The purpose of this thesis is to find out the new challenges within the field of e-commerce for the book retail industry, in terms of market approach and Customer Relationship Management.

In this study, the authors have shown that customers who buy on-line perceive the internet as a complementary source of products and not as a substitute for their traditional stores. Different buying behaviors have been revealed in this thesis with different ways to perceive the internet. The main challenge for online companies is thus to deliver customers with the highest quality of services in order to give them the willingness to come back while for traditional bookstores the challenge is more to develop person-to-person exchanges.