Thousands of dinner meeting e-stores now thrive on the Web, providing people with a way to purchase goods and services electronically. For small businesses, the Internet can deliver a global market. Depending on which survey you believe, that may be more than 350 million people, with another 500 million Internauts projected over the next few years. If the demographics of the online community match your dinner meeting customer profile, that's a lot of potential new business. While the potential is there, however, challenges loom large.
Remember, it takes time for people to adopt to new technology and modes of transactions. Many people remain reluctant to give out their credit card numbers over the Internet for dinner meeting purchases. But most analysts project healthy growth for dinner meeting online sales, especially as security issues are addressed.