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Online shopping has become the second-biggest chunk of the $520 billion U.S. retail market, after overtaking grocery stores and restaurants in June.

Amazon.com on March 9 hinted that fighting counterfeits was a reason for its sudden and unexplained purge of thousands of vendors that sowed panic among longtime suppliers.

Amazon.com abruptly stopped buying products over the past two weeks from many of its wholesale vendors, encouraging them to instead sell their products directly to consumers on Amazon’s marketplace.

Costco Wholesale Corp. may be a latecomer to e-commerce, but consumers love it even more than Amazon.com, according to a customer satisfaction survey released Feb. 26.

For online retailers, one of the challenges with the reverse logistics process is knowing what to do once items are returned. Some products could be returned to a finished goods warehouse whereas defective ones could go to a location to refurbish or recycle the product.

As the continued rise of e-commerce increases the number of product returns, retailers and shippers are working to ease the returns process to boost customer satisfaction. They’re doing so by turning to logistics providers for technology and services that can optimize their reverse logistics networks and keep costs low.

Walmart Inc. has refurbished its Jet.com site to cater even more to the city dwellers who make up the bulk of its shoppers.

NEW YORK — Waiting is so yesterday. Shoppers increasingly want their orders to arrive at their doorsteps as soon as they click a button, whether it’s a hot meal, groceries or a sofa. In response, retailers are betting big on delivery services to drop off packages faster.