E-commerce | impacts of ecommerce

 

E–Commerce - An Advanced Way Of Business

According to Statistics of 2021, there are around 1.2 billion mobile users in India, out of which 750 million are smartphone users and worldwide there are almost 15 billion mobile phones are operating. As of 2022, approximately there are around 69% of the world’s population or 4.9 billion people, actively use the internet. And these stats are going to be increased rapidly in coming years. The penetration of electronic devices such as smartphones and the availability of internet in every corner of the world has changed the business industry massively.

Today internet and new technologies have made their space in every sector all around the world, then how business sector will be left out. After all, everything at the end is business. Earlier and today also buying and selling are done physically i.e. buyer or seller has to be physically available on a particular place to do business. But now, with the help internet and other new technologies, business can be done electronically, there will be no physical contact between buyer and seller and this is termed as E-Commerce.

“E-Commerce is the process of buying and selling, products or services electronically, through internet”.

E-Commerce is basically a means to carrying out business transactions over internet. We can also say that, for a business E-Commerce is the best way of using technology to fulfil customer’s demand.

Some of the top E-Commerce platforms are Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, Shopify, Quikr, etc. According to the statics of 2021, there are over 24 million E-commerce websites worldwide. Around 70% of visits to E-Commerce sites are made on mobile devices. From a cheap item to a luxury goods, there’s no limit to what you can buy using just your phone.

According to eMarketer, top 10 countries, retail ecommerce sales share in 2021 are:

·       China with 52.1% of total worldwide ecommerce.

·       US with 19.0% of total worldwide ecommerce.

·       UK with 4.8% of total worldwide ecommerce.

·       Japan with 3.0% of total worldwide ecommerce.

·       South Korea with 2.5% of total worldwide ecommerce.

·       Germany with 2.1% of total worldwide ecommerce.

·       France with 1.6% of total worldwide ecommerce.

·       India with 1.4% of total worldwide ecommerce.

·       Canada with 1.3% of total worldwide ecommerce.

·       Brazil with 0.8% of total worldwide ecommerce.

Now, if we talk about sales growth retail ecommerce 2021, India is at No.1 with 27% change followed by Brazil, Russia, Argentina and Mexico with 26.8%, 26.1%, 26.0%, 21.1% respectively.

Types of E-Commerce

There are broadly five types of E-Commerce:

·       Business to Consumer (B2C) – This type of E-Commerce involves business and consumers interaction. It is a process of selling products and services directly to individual consumers rather than businesses. All major online shopping platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, etc. are based on B2C model.

·       Business to Business (B2B) – This type of E-Commerce involves business to business interaction. It is basically selling or issuing goods by the manufacturer to the retailer or wholesaler. This type of business encourages to do online business. Import/Export is easy in b2b as compared to other types of businesses. Some of the major examples of b2b is India MART, Alibaba.

·       Consumer to Business (C2B) – In this type of E-Commerce, transaction is conducted between consumer and a business organization. It is similar to b2c model, the only difference is that, in this case the consumer is seller and the business organization is the buyer. Consumer demands specific products or services from respective businesses. Websites such as freelancer, fiverr and affiliate programs in companies such as Amazon, are the perfect examples for c2b E-Commerce.

·       Consumer to Consumer (C2C) – This model involves customer to customer interaction. It is basically a business model that facilitates the transaction of products or services between customers. One of the best examples is OLX, eBay. Suppose there is a customer A who wants to sell is product to another customer B. Now, A can post his/her product on OLX and their B can buy that product.

·       Peer to Peer (P2P) – P2P includes sharing of computer related files and other computer related resources. It is a process where two individuals interact to buy or sell goods or services directly without an intermediary third party, or any business firm.

Impact of E-Commerce

·       E-Commerce helps in offering great products 24 hours a day along with 24-7 online customer service.

·       These days people don’t have to time to physically go to store for shopping, instead they prefer to shop online by sitting at their comfort zone. People can easily find and choose products or services, what they want or need.

·       In business, E-commerce helps in fast selling of goods and services, fast supply chain management, automated inventory management system and automated data collection system.

·       E-Commerce makes online presence that allows to engage with customers. It provides immediate feedback about how the product is, any area of improvement in product or service, etc.

·       For offline business or a physical store, there will specific customers from that particular area or region. But online business, whole world can be your customer. You can sell your products or services and build relationship with customers who is sitting miles away from in different city or country.

·       E-Commerce provides various marketing opportunities, as your website is one of the best marketing tools, you can use SEO i.e., Search Engine Optimization to rank your website on search engines and get customers. Apart from this a lot of marketing techniques can be used such as Pay Per Click, social media marketing, email marketing, etc.

·       E-Commerce saves operational cost such as teller, accountant, office rent, security, electricity, water.

·       E-Commerce allows us to perform data driven selling i.e. with the help of digital marketing we can understand the customers mindset, what they want, how they want, why they want and can fulfil customer’s need according to their interests. By this process we can customer’s name, address, email address, contact number, and we can re-sell the products or services.

·       E-Commerce is one of the best ways to do branding of your business. Digital branding is the fastest and cost effective. In traditional branding such as TV ads, print ads, posters are expensive slow and low result.

The E-Commerce will surely have a great future and the most important factor for its future sustainability is high sale and low cost. There is huge profit margin in E-Commerce or any online business, its just that you have skills like digital marketing and awareness about the business.

E-Commerce helps in creating new job opportunities such as SEO content writer, virtual assistant, PPC expert/manager, web developer, etc. During the covid-19 lockdown, E-Commerce has seen a tremendous growth and will grow further in future also.