E-commerce
E-commerce refers to the buying and selling of goods or services over the internet. It encompasses a wide range of online transactions, from online retail stores to online auctions and business-to-business trading. E-commerce has revolutionized the way businesses operate, providing a platform for global reach, accessibility, and convenience for both businesses and consumers.
7 Key excerpts on "E-commerce"
eBook - ePub- Janice Burn, Peter Marshall, Martin Barnett(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This connectivity has allowed goods and services to be bought and sold over computer networks. In the case of digital goods, these goods, including music, software and text, can be bought, sold, and distributed over the Internet. With other goods and services, the goods are purchased and paid for over the Internet and distributed by logistics carriers to business addresses and consumers’ homes. Such online buying, selling, and paying for goods and services constitutes electronic commerce or e-business. Planning and managing such systems requires an integrated multi-dimensional approach across the e-business and the development of new business process models. 1.5.1 e-business impact While it captures public attention, the use of electronic tools and internet technologies to market to end users (business-to-consumers, or B2C trading) is in its infancy. This form of e-business still constitutes a very small proportion of the total economy, whichever way it is measured. Recent figures from the US Department of Commerce show that for the third quarter of 2000, online retail sales in the USA amounted to US$6.373 billion. This represented only 0.78% of total retail sales. Thus whatever the significance of E-commerce, it is not significant because of the size of the phenomenon. Furthermore, in terms of remote shopping, we have had TV shopping and catalogue shopping well before the turn of the century, but it could be argued that these forms of retailing, although similar to Internet-based retailing, captured public imagination and media attention much less than online retailing. Just why this is the case is not easy to pin down, but computers have always been seen as a modern or avant-garde technology. Professional investors’ and venture capitalists’ imaginations have also, many would argue, been captured by the new E-commerce possibilities...
eBook - ePubThe Digital Economy
Business Organization, Production Processes and Regional Developments
- Edward J. Malecki, Bruno Moriset(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The definitions quoted above put emphasis on ordering. Therefore, they fail to embrace the whole phenomenon, because numerous tasks in the trading process may be performed through digital networks. Online payment, is regarded by consumers as a critical step. Because most grocers’ shops in developed countries accept credit card payment, a large share of the whole retail trade sector must be regarded in some way as digital. Some people like to browse the electronic catalogue before ordering by post-mail and paying by check, because they are reluctant to use their credit card identity on the Web. Another ambiguity lies in the treatment of teleshopping and telephone ordering in catalogue shopping. While TV and the telephone are becoming digital and interactive, increasingly running under IP (a result of the digital convergence), there are fewer and fewer reasons for excluding these practices from E-commerce considerations. Following Currah (2002), we are therefore invited to consider a “multichannel, or ‘brick-and-click’, organizational paradigm,” which makes tight subdivisions between traditional and digital commercial channels increasingly irrelevant. A taxonomy of E-commerce The most popular subdivision of electronic commerce looks like a 2x2 matrix (Peet 2000; Dixon and Marston 2002) presented in Figure 5.1. ■ Business-to-Business (BtoB or B2B) refers to inter-firm exchanges performed on electronic market places such as Agentrics presented below) or on firm extranets dedicated to procurement. ■ Business-to-Consumer (BtoC) includes retail trade of goods and services (Amazon.com, Dell.com, and Travelocity.com). ■ Consumer-to-Consumer (CtoC) refers to transactions between individuals, the intermediary firm acting only as a meeting marketplace which never has ownership of the goods being sold...
- Su Mi Dahlgaard-Park(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...Finally, it presentsthe contributing success factors and challenges. Business Domain Commerce has been experiencing revolutionary changes. Traditionalcommerce requires buyers and sellers to participate in a marketplace,whereas electronic commerce (E-commerce) permits both parties tointeract with each other in a marketspace using the Internet,ideally through computers. The latest form of commerce (i.e.,m-commerce) permits its users more mobility—they now can access themarketspace from mobile devices, primarily mobile phones, tabletcomputers, and personal digital assistance devices. It is a popularbelief that m-commerce is a subset of E-commerce; however, m-commercepossesses a set of unique features that are not available in E-commerce:m-commerce can be conducted from anywhere (ubiquity), at any time(immediacy); it allows location-based or location-specific services(localization); services are always “on” (constant connectivity); itpermits proactive marketing allowing push marketing such as digitalcouponing (short message service [SMS] marketing); and it can identifythe owner unambiguously using a unique subscriber identity module andother identification mediums (augmented identity tracking down)—the lasttwo features permit target marketing. Hence, m-commerce introduces aparadigm shift that already has gained reasonable attention because ofits potential to surpass the success of traditional as well asE-commerce business models. Advances M-commerce possesses huge potential to civilization: it is capable ofcreating a ubiquitous society that offers most of its products andservices to its citizens unconstrained by time and location—whichtraditional commerce cannot do...
eBook - ePub- Michael J. Shaw(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The undergraduate students involved in creating Mosaic subsequently founded Netscape. Netscape as a company exists now only in the history books, but other companies, such as Amazon and eBay, have moved beyond being the icons of the new economy. Paying visits to their Web sites has become part of our regular life. Aside from changing consumers’ behavior, an increasing number of companies whose core businesses are based on the Internet are generating respectable financial returns. Significantly, newcomers in the second and third generations, such as Google, are doing very well in continuing the evolution. The keyword is evolution. By now it has become clear that E-commerce in the business context, for most companies, can be best seen as a complement. Likewise, to understand E-commerce, one needs to take a holistic view, because there are as many transformations occurring in consumer experiences as there are in the whole industrial value chains. Just as E-commerce has transformed industry structure by giving companies new ways to run their businesses, it has also empowered consumers by providing them with more choices, more information, and more ways to buy. While the digital economy, when realized, can improve the welfare of many, the picture is not entirely rosy, and major barriers remain. The business logic that can tie IT capabilities with business value, enterprise adoption, and consumer acceptance is still fuzzy. Concerns over security, risks, and legal issues remain mostly unresolved. Considerable resistance in moving E-commerce and the digital economy forward still stems from the lack of trust, both in business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) relationships. There are gaps between technological capabilities and user acceptance of these capabilities...
eBook - ePubStore Wars
The Worldwide Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace, Online and In-store
- Greg Thain, John Bradley(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
...Chapter 12 E-RETAILING IT IS STILL easy for manufacturers to gloss over the impact on their businesses of online grocery sales as volumes are relatively small and successful retailer online business models few and far between. We estimate that online accounts for only 3% of US grocery sales and for every Tesco.com (grocery) and Tesco Direct (non-grocery) success (Tesco’s total online sales increased by 15% in 2011 1), there is a Webvan failure. However, now that successful footholds have been gained in online grocery businesses, FMCG manufacturers and retailers need to plan for a world that will soon see a substantial proportion of their sales being generated and fulfilled online. In 2008, the Centre for Retail Research was predicting that, by 2015, approximately 13% of grocery sales would be online. We see this as still being realistic and predict 20% by 2020. The growth of online grocery is potentially the biggest seismic shift in the FMCG industry since the development of the supermarket. Development of Online Sales E-commerce became possible from 1991 when the Internet was opened to the public, but in reality 1994 saw the starting point, when Netscape launched the first commercial browser and Pizza Hut offered online ordering from their Web page. Amazon commenced operations on 16 July 1995, followed shortly after by eBay. Definitions E-commerce: all financial transactions online, i.e. all retail, payment, delivery, marketing, development, advice and services E-retailing: (e-tailer, online shop) all selling of goods, anywhere a consumer buys goods or services direct, software, media, clothes, electronics, books, etc. E-grocery: the selling of FMCG, food and non-food (detergents, cleaning materials, fresh food, drinks, etc.) Eighteen years after the first online order, JPMorgan have estimated worldwide 2012 E-commerce sales of $820 trillion...
eBook - ePub- Eleonora Pantano, Bang Nguyen, Charles Dennis, Sabine Gerlach(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...When consumers immerse themselves in the shopping experience, it is easier for managers to induce consumer satisfaction and e-loyalty. It is particularly important in this respect to understand that consumers should not only be regarded as a target for products and services but also as a co-creator of experiences. E-retailers thus need to develop effective strategies that involve communicating and interacting with consumers in order to deliver increased brand value. This paradigm has been increasingly popular with the rise of Customer Experience Management practices (Klaus and Nguyen, 2013). CONCLUSIONS E-shopping is growing and e-consumers are showing great diversity in their behaviours when it comes to shopping online. Although both disadvantages and advantages exist of e-shopping for consumers, retailers and shoppers are overcoming the problems as time goes by. Shopping online today provides not just functional goods but also real social and enjoyment benefits. Although originally thought of only in mechanistic terms, e-shopping can also provide social interaction and enjoyment, especially in this social media era. Even though in some aspects such as recreation, e-shopping trails behind bricks shopping, it is often the e-retailers that are good at satisfying these non-tangible benefits that are having most success. While the stereotypes cannot be generalised with certainty, there are differences between the sexes in shopping styles. Men tend to be more purposeful and faster shoppers. Women take more care, and want more social interaction than men do. In the past, e-shopping has been more suited to the male style, but women are now heavy users of e-shopping and female-orientated sites. For technical products such as cars and computers, the gender stereotypes tend to be reversed.There is a wide range of potential communications channels available to the e-retailer...
eBook - ePub- Charles Dennis, Lisa Harris(Authors)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...m-Commerce has been forecast to reach 25 per cent of all Internet transactions by 2003. In Japan, i-mode m-commerce technology has already taken off exponentially: 70 per cent of the population have a mobile, 60 per cent of those have i-mode (14 million subscribers) – and e-Retail in Japan is already at 10 per cent of total retail sales. Users can program their likes and dislikes – very popular for meeting people, but also successful in generating m-Shopping business (Yoshida 2001). In the UK, AvantGo (www.avantgo.co.uk) is the market-leading content provider, with a wide range of information and m-Shopping, including books, CDs/videos, computers travel, electronics and clothing. Think Point Interactive digital television enables e-Shopping without a PC, potentially doubling the e-Shopper customer base. Could this development spell the end for the high street retailers most vulnerable to e-Retail competition? Figure 9.6 What m-Shoppers buy Source : AvantGo Demographic Survey for the six months to February 2001 m-CRM (customer relationship management via mobile devices) is the driver that makes m-tailing cost-effective compared to traditional high street retailing. Zagme is a permission-based example: ‘I know you’re passing, why not pop in for …?’ According to AvantCo, retail special offers redeemed by electronic bar code are achieving astonishing 5 to 8 per cent response rates. CONCLUSIONS While many will regret the passing of the old-fashioned high street, change is inevitable. With the technical security issues now largely resolved, consumers are steadily overcoming their reservations concerning e-Shopping. Beyond the hype that was prevalent pre-dotcom crash, and the pessimism that followed, e-Shopping has resumed a steady growth. Market forces in action mean that the e-Retailing survivors and leaders are the strong brands that are successfully addressing the customer service and fulfilment issues...
