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E-commerce vocabulary · Online Stores and Marketplaces

Direct-to-consumer

Meaning in e-commerce, with examples

adjectiveCommon term

In e-commerce, direct-to-consumer means: Describes a brand that makes its own products and sells them straight to customers, mainly through its own online store, without wholesalers or retail chains.

In Turkish: doğrudan tüketiciye, D2C

How it is used

Common in startup and brand talk: a direct-to-consumer brand, model or channel. Shortened to D2C or DTC. These brands usually own their customer data and invest heavily in marketing and customer experience.

Example sentences

  1. We started as a direct-to-consumer brand and only later entered department stores.

  2. The direct-to-consumer channel gives us higher margins but more customer service work.

Common collocations

  • direct-to-consumer brand
  • D2C model
  • DTC channel
  • go direct-to-consumer
  • B2CShort for business-to-consumer: a business selling directly to individual people who buy for their own use, as most online shops do.
  • online storeA website or app where a business shows its products and customers can order and pay for them without visiting a physical shop.
  • customer lifetime valueAn estimate of the total revenue, or profit, a business can expect from one customer over the whole time they keep buying from it.
  • omnichannelDescribes selling through several connected channels, such as an online store, app, marketplaces and physical shops, that share stock, customer data and one experience.

More terms: Online Stores and Marketplaces

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