In financial management, a pure play is a company whose shares are publicly traded and that either has, or is very close to having, a single business focus.[1] Coca-Cola is an example of a pure play in this context because it retails only beverages. On the other hand, PepsiCo is not a pure play because it also owns the Frito-Lay snack foods brand.[2]
The pure play approach or pure play method is a method for estimating the cost of capital for a proposed new project or product line. It involves examining other companies, which are pure plays in the proposed line of business and inferring a cost of capital based on their capital structures (eg Debt-to-Equity ratio) and betas.[3]
In e-business terms, a pure play is an organization that originated and does business purely through the Internet; they have no physical store (brick and mortar) where customers can shop. Examples of large pure play companies include Amazon.com (in its initial business when it was only involved in retail products) and Netflix.com (in content). With a much lower barrier to entry, the Internet affords smaller companies the ability to compete with much larger brands due to typically lower overhead and marketing costs. Though multichannel marketing is a hot buzzword, there is still plenty of growth opportunity for pure play merchants.