You must have browsed through flipkart.com and indulged yourself in their vast range of fashion accessories, mobile accessories and cameras. Or if you’re the literary type, you have in all probability grabbed the discounts they offer on your favorite books. If you’re the quintessential shopaholic student with a flair for bargain, chances are that you have had your share of deals at ebay. The future i-bankers out of you are already trading through their d-mat accounts. Those into preparation for Civil Services and CAT have subscribed for the online editions of TIME and The Economist and those who have recently relocated to a different city have put an ad on Sulekha.
If you do not fall under any of these categories, you still have recharged your cellphone from the convenience of your rooms using online payment services, or have booked travel tickets through makemytrip or redbus. And all of you must have, at some point of time or the other, thrown up your hands in dismay at the sluggishness of the IRCTC website!
These are all examples of e-commerce, which has brought the world of our desires right into our computer screens. Internet has created an advanced economic ecosystem, the e-commerce marketplace, which has become the virtual main street of the world. E-commerce provides an answer, or part of an answer, to almost any need that you may ever have. And if you don’t agree, wait till you pass out of your college, and you will surely be relying on Naukri.com for getting that dream job, or on Shaadi.com or jeevansaathi.com for getting that dream (or nightmare) life partner!
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet, especially on the World Wide Web (www). After a somewhat unsuccessful launch in 1991, e-commerce took a re-birth in 2001. And this time, backed by improved technology and IT infrastructure, it took the entire world by storm. So much so that today with a growth rate of 19.4%, e-commerce is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Indian e-commerce industry has been showing a strong growth of approx. 30% y/y since 2006-07, and is only expected to become stronger, and become the main driver of growth of internet related industry.
As a corollary, e-commerce is expected to be giving out among the most promising job prospects for students and young professionals in the future and is going to create huge demand for professionals from the field of IT, algorithmic programming, Operations, supply chain management and online marketing.
These are not just tall claims. E-commerce is here to stay because of some very fundamental competitive advantages that it has over the traditional retail industry. It provides you a more satisfying shopping experience by providing multiple options in one place, which enables one to make an assured product selection after rigorous price comparisons. It saves time and is more convenient than traditional retail as the purchases are made from the comfort of your homes.
And perhaps most importantly, it saves money. Goods and services are available at cheaper rates on e-commerce websites for a number of reasons. Rising real estate prices are making owning and maintaining a brick and mortar store in a prime locality more and more costly; and this is a cost e-commerce is free from. Besides, e-commerce supply chain is fundamentally more efficient, as products are shipped straight from a warehouse to the customer’s doorstep, as against traditional retail, where the shop store has to be kept stocked with goods. Besides, with the access to technology and technical know-how which the e-commerce companies have, they have made improvements in their supply chain and made them even more cost-efficient than the traditional retail stores. Flipkart, therefore, can afford to give you greater discounts than the retail bookstores, as Flipkart has fundamentally more efficient systems which save their costs. Amazon, which has a business model similar to Flipakart’s, has a revenue per employee of $850,000 which is much greater than that of its retail counterpart, Best Buy, which stands at $270,000.
All these advantages of e-commerce are only going to get more and more pronounced as the global internet penetration rates rise. Today the internet penetration rates are 30.2%, and they continue to increase. With these high penetration rates come reduced surfing charges, increased speed and greater reliability of payment. These improvements have happened, and are still happening as you read these lines, thereby ensuring limitless possibilities for expansion of e-commerce.
So, if you haven’t experienced e-commerce till now, there is something that you are missing. The new main street of the world is the information highway, and e-commerce websites are the new storefronts. And there is no reason to miss out on the experience of shopping, or window-shopping on these stores, especially when they are just a mouse click away!
E-commerce has boomed in the past decade by offering a convenient and quick way of exchanging goods and services, both at the global as well as local levels. In this period, many startup e-commerce companies have proven themselves and created markets for themselves.
The e-commerce companies succeed in the retail market due to their low prices, availability of. The whole market is displayed on your computer screen, and anything can be bought with just a click of the mouse. With the secure transfer of money which takes place through a third party secured File Transfer Protocol (FTP), e-commerce results in a greater customer satisfaction in most of the retail segments. Given the flexibility, comfort and convenience that e-commerce provides, it is an option worth exploring for everyone. So, if you haven’t logged into an e-commerce website yet, we suggest you go and do it now!
