E-COMMERCE AND TRADITIONAL OFFLINE BUSINESS

E-Commerce and Traditional Offline Business

E-Commerce and Traditional Offline Business

Introduction

Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, is a very broad term. E-commerce conducted between businesses differs from that carried out between a business and its consumers. For business-to-consumer e-commerce, the Web has become the dominant pipeline. E-commerce is not just about buying and selling things over the Internet but also the electronic exchange of business data between two or more organizations' computer systems. E-commerce includes buying and selling any item over the Internet, electronic fund transfer, smart cards, and all other methods of conducting business over digital networks. A good example is Amazon.com. The company offers lots of books as well as merchandise for sale on its Web site. Consumers find what they like, type in their credit card number and unpack the books or merchandise a few days later. Their website even makes recommendations based on items similar to what other consumers had purchased as well as spending patterns. Conducting individual stock trades, moving money from checking to savings or tracking an overnight package delivery via the Internet are other examples. The paper debates that that E-commerce will ultimately replace the traditional offline business.

Discussion

Increasing competition worldwide, increasing demands made by customers, and the rapid pace of change in technology are forcing companies to review the way they do business, the kinds of products and services they offer, and the speed with which they release products to market. Today, most companies have worked to expand and improve their process and practices internally. But, the massive use of the Internet by consumers is forcing businesses to focus on external relationships and their business models. In order to meet the demand made by Internet users, organisations are now beginning to rely on e-commerce solutions that help reach as well as keep customers, open new markets, and condense the business processes. There are very few successful companies that do not use computers in their everyday business activities, which also means there are few companies that do not use e-commerce.

Without a doubt, the Internet has ushered in an era of sweeping change that will leave no business or industry untouched. E-commerce is a multi-billion dollar industry today and if you have products or services to be sold on the web, then you "MUST" take advantage of the opportunities e-commerce offers. With rapid technological advances these days and the boom in online spending on the web, it has become easy to setup an e-commerce business at very low up front costs especially for small businesses. Overall, the main benefits of e-commerce are speed, consumer flexibility and easy accessibility. Business is done 24 hours a day, 7 days a week including holidays.

E-commerce also affects large sectors such as communications, banking and the retail industry, as well as education, health and government. E-commerce also has an impact on sectors that transmit information (postal service, communications, radio and TV) and those that produce it (finance, entertainment, travel agents or ...