One of America's largest on-line retailers, Buy.com, yesterday launched an attempt to crack the British market by offering the cheapest prices anywhere for computers, software and accessories.
The company, which has 2.3m customers in the US, plans more internet "superstores" later this year offering other product categories such as clothes, music and books.
However, its UK launch coincided with the publication of two reports suggesting that internet shopping faces a rocky road ahead.
Retail consultancy Verdict criticised e-retailers for spending too much on "glitzy" marketing at the expense of customer services.
Verdict director Mike Godliman said: "A lot of the emphasis has been on marketing, websites and advertising. There's been loads of investment going into the glitzy end, rather than into the boring end - actually delivering the goods."
Deloitte Consulting sounded another note of concern, warning that a lack of face-to-face contact could prove a real turn-off for consumers.
Both consultancies cast doubt on optimistic projections claiming that the internet will mean a complete revolution in shopping habits.
With backers including Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Buy.com is one of the most significant entrants yet onto Britain's internet "high street".
Buy.com's chief executive, Murray Hennessy, admitted there were worries in some quarters: "Last Christmas, so many e-commerce companies had so much demand that they had a lot of trouble fulfiling it."
However, he insisted that Buy.com had sufficient means to provide a reliable service: "We've got significant resources behind us in the US and we've put a lot of time, effort and money into making sure we can deliver."
Buy.com's US parent is the world's second largest e-commerce player, following Amazon.com.
The company is guaranteeing rock-bottom prices - if customers find a better deal elsewhere, Buy.com will refund the difference and pay an extra £1 for the inconvenience.
In the UK, its in-house operations consist of just a head office in London, with a few dozen staff. Calls and emails are taken by an 80-strong call centre in Exeter which is run by an outside company, Client Logic. Goods are held in warehouses run by the distribution specialist Ingram Micro and delivery has been outsourced to the parcel carrier UPS.
Mr Hennessy said the company had already dealt with 11,000 test contacts and delivered 1,300 trial orders.
There was some encouraging news for e-retailers generally in Verdict's report, which said nearly two-thirds of Britons have had products delivered to their homes in the last year.
However, Mr Godliman said companies were lagging behind customers' expectations: "We've seen home shopping beginning to mushroom - initially through catalogues and now through the internet and television. Consumer expectations in terms of service are increasing quite substantially but actual delivery isn't changing much."
He said it remained too difficult to get delivery in the evening or at weekends: "You can have the best website in the world but if people don't get what they want, they won't come back."
Deloitte Consulting found that 21% of consumers expect to use the internet to make purchases over the next five years. However, 40% said they expected their trust in companies to diminish if remote channels were the only available option.
The survey's author, David Owen, said feedback was often difficult. "Consumers need to know complaints are dealt with as voraciously as purchases," he said.
He added that there were substantial national differences in attitude, with French and Italian customers, for example, still considering face-to-face contact particularly important.
Mr Owen said: "US multinationals run the risk of treating different countries as homogeneous. I'm not saying people shouldn't be doing innovative things and taking commercial risks, but they need to adopt a multi-channel approach."
