Shops. We go there, you browse, you buy.
But in the final couple of years, our increasingly mobile and digital the public has been perplexing to accomplish this successful money-product swap without ample need for bricks and walls.
One of the initial solutions has been relocating the catalogues online - initial onto your desktop P.C. and, lately, on your smartphone's tiny, glossy screen.
Nowadays, roughly every leading tradesman has a website; those that nonetheless don't, are of course relocating in that direction.
But for some, the normal regulation of simply surroundings up a web page and watchful for customers to click "buy" only does not work.
Pixel Electronics, a home appliances firm in Belarus, initial began selling its products - coffee makers, digital cameras, TVs, sound systems, fridges - at the principal store in the funds Minsk.
But it longed for to spread and attain the many remote corners of the ex-Soviet country.
There were two options, says CEO Andrei Simonovich: possibly to beginning dotting the chart with new shops, or to go online.
But in both cases, there were problems.
Not many Belarusians who live in farming areas and tiny towns have internet access - or bring around 3G smartphones.
So it seemed wily to rest on e-commerce alone.
Opening new shops was not a ample improved alternative, says Mr Simonovich.
"In many tiny towns and villages it is simply not essential to set up a store.
"We'd never have sufficient periodic sales to produce distinction and casing expenditure such as lease fee, salaries, and so on - so you forsaken the idea."
Faced with a deceased end, the firm proposed to look for out new selling initiatives.
And in the suggestion of merging online and offline, it motionless to set up electronic terminals - common computers with the store's online catalog - in other stores all over the country.
The idea is identical to, but a step deliver from the French Minitel - a closed network of e-terminals in the pre-internet period of the 1980s.
People used Minitel to finding the write directory, talk around a special letter network and even make purchases online - only similar to you do right away on the web.
Pixel Electronics' idea is only not similar in the way that its terminals are internet-connected - but only to the store's website.
"Since these tiny shops in remote places have really paltry building space, they can only put a tiny fragment of our products on their earthy shelves - or nothing at all," says Mr Simonovich.
"But with the e-terminals, when shoppers advance in to the store, they can select not only from what they see on the shelves, but moreover from our whole catalog on the internet.
"It's similar to gap a store in a tiny locale for only $500 - since that's what it costs us on median to deposit in to a terminal, and after that you only pay is to internet connection, together with assignment from sales to the shop."
Mr Simonovich explains that with this solution, it is a win-win for everybody involved.
Pixel Electronics gets their sales' profits, the informal customer - the emporium - gets its assignment from sales of products that do not even take up any earthy space in the shop, and particular buyers living in a few tiny encampment are able to bring home a 3D radio that they instead could have only dreamt of.
"If you make your demand online before the finish of the day, our smoothness outpost will leave the Minsk bottom the next sunrise at 6am - and the buyer will take the buy that same day.
"And the cost is the same everywhere, no matter if you buy your TV in our Minsk store or online."
And the sales are not paltry to the e-terminals in stores - people who do have a P.C. and internet access can moreover place an demand from home, and it then gets delivered possibly to their doorway or to the locale shop.
"For us, e-commerce brings in extra allowance of a few 7-10% of complete income - a significant sum," says Mr Simonovich.
And the firm has not long ago proposed to welcome mobile shopping, too - it has created an app for smartphones to enable orders on the go.
This steady transformation of e-commerce in to m-commerce has been mainly manifest in new months.
There are places such as China, for instance, where many people go online on their mobiles as against to home computers - and branch them in to buyers is many retailers' best goal.
Martin Gill from Forrester Research thinks that the smartphone is apropos that crucial paste unfailing to connect the online and the offline practice together.
"Apps similar to club ethics scanning, store locator, checking earthy batch online around your phone - all of these features are branch your mobile in to a shopping friend or a shopping assistant," he says.
"These technologies are convincing and considerably witty ways of enchanting shoppers - they make the experience interesting, they make it unique to you, perplexing to erect an romantic connection and emanate a link that resonates on a personal level."
Even such giants and pioneers of online trade as eBay and Amazon that have never even had earthy stores, have finally assimilated the throng and followed you from your living room right in to your car, sight or your child's playground.
"Mobile shopping is a hugely-growing trend," says Angus McCarey, eBay's sell director.
"In 2010 you tripled the amount of universal business that you did over the mobile, reaching $2bn (1.2bn), and this year, we're on follow to twice it - we'll do $4bn (2.4bn) or more."
In the UK, deliberate the many rapidly-developing European marketplace in m-commerce, during final year's XMas legal holiday season eBay had 10% of its turnover by a few type of mobile application.
And eBay is not interlude at simply boring you onto their website around your phone.
With ever-evolving technology and consumer habits, the firm has had to innovate to all the time stay ahead of the game.
For instance, book lovers in a store right away have a selection of possibly shopping the piece in front of them or using a special smartphone app to find that book on eBay - for reduction money.
"The world of offline and online shopping is blurring by the mobile, and with scanning technologies such as Red Laser, you can examine the cost of a book that you're seeking at in the emporium and demand it really rapidly online," says Mr McCarey.
And although this technology is still often paltry to scanning easily-catalogued products such as books and DVDs, it shortly might be probable to tear a print of that overwhelming but funny pricey red skirt on a mannequin in a shop's window - and by a few internet illusion instantly find it far cheaper on the web.
And a few are going even serve in their query of bridging the online, offline and mobile worlds.
The UK sell hulk Tesco already has a numerous of stores around the planet, but its South Korean branch Home Plus, mutually owned by Tesco and Samsung, has motionless to try out a new initiative.
It right away thinks of bringing the supermarket shelves right in to the subway.
The idea aims to place outrageous digital billboards with images of Tesco products on practical shelves onto transport hire walls - so that commuters could use their smartphones to indicate the items' barcodes, place an order, pay and prepare a smoothness whilst watchful for a train.
"This is a idea and is not functional - however, you are always seeking to innovate is to gain of our customers and make their lives that little bit easier," says a Tesco spokesperson.
"We recognize that, increasingly, people instruct to be able to emporium at home or when they are on the move, together with in our stores."
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