E-Commerce

Define e-commerce? What are the benefits of using e-commerce?

Ans:

The term ‘electronic commerce’ has evolved from electronic shopping, to imply all aspects of business and market processes enabled by the Internet and World Wide Web technologies.

According to Philip Kotler :

E-commerce can be defined as a general term for buying and selling process that is supported by electronic means.

Electronic commerce, also known as e-business, a term for all kinds of business that are established electronically especially over the Internet. This includes both electronic sale (internet shops) and B2B transactions, i.e. business between two companies. It is any on- line transaction of buying and selling where business is done via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). E-Commerce can be defined from different perspectives –

1. Communications perspective,

2. Business process perspective,

3. Service perspective and

Basic Benefits of E-Commerce

The major benefits are increasing sales and decreasing costs. The other benefits are as follows:

1. Increased accessibilityto customers

i)Allows people to carry out operations without barriers of time i.e. 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

ii) To reach out to global consumers easily and is also cost effective. iii) It helps business to reach out new markets.

iv) Consumers and suppliers can be directly approached over the Internet.

v) Acquisition of new consumers over the internet is considerably cheaper..

2. Convenience of making comparisons:

E-commerce helps consumers to make comparisons while shopping . Automated online shopping assistants called hopbots score are available to find deals on anything from flowers to perfume