E-commerce

• E-Commerce or Electronic Commerce means buying and selling of goods, products, or services over the internet. E-commerce is also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce.
• Some people view the term commerce as describing only buying and selling transactions conducted between business partners. If this definition of commerce is used, the term electronic commerce would be fairly narrow.
• Thus, many use the term e-business instead. E-business refers to a broader definition of EC, not just the buying and selling of goods and services, but conducting all kinds of business online such as

servicing customers, collaborating with business partners, delivering e-learning, and conducting

electronic transactions within an organization

• Online stores like Amazon, Flipkart, Shopify, Myntra, Ebay, Quikr, Olx are examples of E-commerce websites. By 2020, global retail e-commerce can reach up to $27 Trillion.

Advantages of e-commerce

Global Reach 

• With a physical brick and mortar store you're limited geographically to nearby markets, i.e., if you have a store in New York and want to also sell in New Jersey, you’ll need to open another physical location.

• Ecommerce doesn’t have this limitation. Instead, you can sell to anyone, anywhere in the world via your digital ecommerce business.

Always Open 

• Physical businesses usually have limited hours, but an online ecommerce shop remains “open” 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This is hugely convenient for the customer and an excellent opportunity for merchants.

Cost Savings 

• Ecommerce businesses have significantly lower operating costs compared to physical shops. There's no rent, no staff to hire and pay, and very little in the way of fixed operating costs. This makes ecommerce stores extremely competitive on price, which usually increases the market share dramatically.

Laser Targeted Marketing 

• Online merchants can collect an amazing amount of consumer data to ensure they target the right people for their products.
• This lowers the cost of customer acquisition and allows ecommerce online businesses to remain extremely agile. Imagine being able to target just males between 18-24 years old, living in urban areas. That’s laser focused marketing for you- there's no way you'd get that with just a physical store.

Location Independence 

• An ecommerce business owner isn't tied to any one location when running their business. As long as you have a laptop and an internet connection you can run your ecommerce business.

E-commerce carries the following disadvantages:

• Limited customer service. If you are shopping online for a computer, you cannot simply ask an employee to demonstrate a particular model's features in person. And although some websites let you chat online with a staff member, this is not a typical practice.

• Lack of instant gratification. When you buy an item online, you must wait for it to be shipped to your home or office. However, retailers like Amazon make the waiting game a little bit less painful by offering same-day delivery as a premium option for select products.

• Inability to touch products. Online images do not necessarily convey the whole story about an item, and so e-commerce purchases can be unsatisfying when the products received do not match consumer expectations. Case in point: an item of clothing may be made from shoddier fabric than its online image indicates.

FUTURE OF E-COMMERCE

• New studies projected that the worldwide retail eCommerce sales will reach a new high by 2021. Ecommerce businesses should anticipate a 265% growth rate, from $1.3 trillion in 2014 to $4.9 trillion in 2021. This shows a future of steady upward trend with no signs of decline

• Once a giant, the United States’ share of the total global eCommerce retail market is projected to decrease by as much as 16.9% in 2020. One of the main drivers of the decrease is due to the rise of globalization and the improvement of technology and infrastructure from the non-western regions.

• shoppers are increasingly looking for products online outside their home country. In fact, 57% of online shoppers reported having made an online purchase from an overseas retailer in the last six months.

• Mobile is continuously shaping the landscape of customer engagement. For the past couple of years, the mobile market has already matured and will already be reaching 70% of eCommerce traffic by the end of 2018.

Forces that drive the widespread use of e-business

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sagar gupta