How Dumb and Dumber lost a sale ...

ALTHOUGH the Internet has proven hugely influential in improving the lives of many people, not everyone has benefited from it.

One prominent group which can rightly claim to have suffered from the expanding World Wide Web and the increasingly interconnected world we live in are retailers in brick-and-mortar businesses, as a result of the burgeoning popularity of online shopping.

Take bookstores, for example. Because of the ease with which books can be bought from Internet sites such as Amazon, the Borders chain has gone bust, and Books Kinokuniya has moved into smaller premises in Ngee Ann City mall.