A parked domain is one that is taken, but it's not associated with any other service - web or e mail hosting. To put it differently, this kind of domain won't load any actual content when you type it inside a web browser, but nobody can take it as you have already registered it and you are its owner. The benefit of obtaining a domain name and parking it afterwards is that you’ll be able to keep it and not stress that somebody else may register it meanwhile if, for example, the website for it is not ready yet. You can create a short-term Under Construction website page for a parked domain while you're working on the site, or direct it to another web address - temporarily or permanently. The second option can be employed if you have already registered domain.com, for instance, and you get domain.net and domain.org, so as to protect a brand name or a trademark. In such a case, the .net and .org domain addresses can be parked and directed to the .com as you do not need separate sites for them.