E-COMMERCE: THE CURRENT MILIEU
Concept Note
The birth and growth of e-commerce has been met with
a myriad of views ranging from the limited impact on existing traditional
set-up of commerce to the extreme view that it will eventually lead to total
demolition of the existing brick-and-mortar business system. Simultaneous with
the growth and penetration of e-commerce, the industry has seen spectacular
hypes, as well as failures. However despite all these inconsistencies in views
and trends, it is certain that the arrival of e-commerce has brought about
major changes in the methods and means of conducting business and further
radical changes are much more likely than not.
E-commerce in essence is conducting business
transactions using telecommunication networks. Thus it is not just restricted
to buying or selling of good and service via electronic means but covers the
whole business process and encompassing Business-to-Customer (B2C), Customer-to-Customer
(C2C), Business-to-Business (B2B), other Inter-organizational dealings, and
intra-organization processes. In the current market scenario e-commerce
encompasses one or more of the following:
•EDI (Electronic Data Inter-change)
•EDI on the Internet
•E-mail on the Internet
•Shopping on the World Wide Web
•Product sales and services on the Web
•Electronic banking or funds transfer
•Outsourced customer and employee care operations
Typically e-commerce automates the conduct of
business among enterprises, it s customers and partners, creating
interdependency and changing the market dynamics. With the onset of the
internet, e-commerce boomed across industries, from fewer than 40 million users
connected to the internet in 1996, the number of internet users in 2014 was
almost 3 Billion, a steep growth trajectory that has wide implications for all
aspects of human society including commerce and business. Internet based
e-commerce has shrunk the boundaries between industries making it possible to
amass an assorted variety of product in one site, as successfully implemented
by be e-commerce retail giants (e-tailers) like amazon.com and e-bay.com etc.
The growth in e-commerce is unlikely to relent soon, traditional retailers are
expected to play catch-up by assimilating technology and in the immediate
future the subset m-commerce (mobile commerce) is anticipated to explode into
the scene,
E-commerce has undoubtedly brought immense benefit
for customers and businesses alike. To buyers it has afforded convenience,
flexibility, elimination of search cost and switching cost, and unrestricted
information access. Major benefits accrued to business include economies of
scale, efficient inventory and supply chain management, enhanced proximity with
customers, specialization, superior scope for relationship building and
customer care etc. While e-commerce has proved to be robust and versatile, it
also suffers from various shortcomings and does not have a well defined path
for the future, presenting it with intriguing challenges. Academia, industry
and well as regulatory institutions thus have ongoing interest and important
stakes in e-commerce. Major areas of interest in e-commerce, especially in the
context of India include:
·
Identifying the drivers of growth in
e-commerce
·
Challenges to adapt, survive, and grow
for traditional retailers
·
Tackling consumer concerns for privacy
and information security
·
Developing and enacting laws to govern
the continuously evolving, fluid, and often boundary less e-commerce industry
·
Addressing the problem of information
cluttering on the virtual marketplace.
·
Defining ethical practices for
conducting business online
·
Challenges of cyber crimes.