Today’s society uses the internet for everything from buying products to banking. Since the internet has grown at such a rapid pace and has become more reliably, business have used it to accelerate commerce. Now thousands of companies are engaged in e-commerce around the world. E-commerce is short for “electronic commerce, which refers to marketing and selling products over the internet.” With this new way to do business has come great opportunities and huge challenges for those who have started to use e-commerce.
E-commerce has many benefits over the traditional way of doing business.
- E-commerce offers buyers convenience. Buyers have increased opportunities for buying alternative products. Buyers can also visit the web sites to compare prices and make purchases. This all can be done at the comfort of their homes or offices from any place in the world.
- Buyers can immediately obtain a product or service such as an electronic book, a music file, or computer software, by downloading it over the Internet. These e-files are normal also cheaper than the physical product.
- Catalog flexibility and online fast updating allows sellers to keep cost down and allows for faster market testing. Sellers don’t have to maintain a physical store or print and distribute mail order catalogs.
- Lower cost of doing business. Don’t need to build a huge staff. Automated order tracking and billing systems cut additional labor costs. Orders placed online costs lower than the same order through the traditional means.
- Global market allows for products to be sold all over the world, regardless if you live in a town with 500 people. Sellers have the potential to market their products or services globally and are not limited by the physical location of a store.
- More efficient business relationships can be crated by internet technologies. These new technologies allow sellers to track the interests and preferences of their customers with the customer’s permission. This information than can be used to build an ongoing relationship with the customer. This information can also be used to customize web sites to meet the customer’s needs.
- Easier to start a business for anyone. If you have a product or services you can sell it online. This allows for people who couldn’t start a physical business away to still promote their products.
- Lack of security and privacy consumers also need to be reassured that credit card transactions are secure and that their privacy is respected.
- Low service levels. It’s hard to ask questions to a online Catalog about a product. Physical businesses with physical employees can help you answer any questions you have.
- The inability to test the product. You can’t test drive a car over the internet so it’s unlikely you purchase a car without driving it first.
- Generation gap is still in favor of people who grew up without the internet. As people grow up with the internet they will trust using it more. This will allow for e-commerce to grow more and become more of a normal activity.
- Social experience is a big reason many people go shopping. Going to the mall and hanging out with your friends is a very fun social experience. It’s impossible to recreate that experience on the internet.
- Legal issues can come into play buying stuff online. Since the internet is a globe market place it’s very hard to regulate across a country’s physical borders.
- Online scams are still a very real threat even though they have been on the decline the last few years. Many sites like E-bay still have issues with people selling fake products or services. These scam can be sometimes be very hard to recognize and make people scared of buying online.
As we move into the next few years e-commerce will continue to grow and improve on it’s drawbacks. By no means is e-commerce perfect but it does allow business great advantages never before seen in the business world. This allows for companies a great opportunity to grow there business. The internet is also our generations wild west and gold rush. The internet is still new and the .com boom of the late 90’s showed the initial boom of it’s growth. But now with more countries developing internet infrastructures the growth of the internet still has a long way to go.
To Your Success,
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Article by John Marshall
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This is the 100 article that I have written for this site.
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Nice explanation, helped alot =]
thanks,