E-Commerce - Overview

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E-Commerce or Electronics Commerce is a methodology of modern business, which addresses the need of business organizations, vendors and customers to reduce cost and improve the quality of goods and services while increasing the speed of delivery. Ecommerce refers to the paperless exchange of business information using the following ways −

  • Electronic Data Exchange (EDI)
  • Electronic Mail (e-mail)
  • Electronic Bulletin Boards
  • Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT)
  • Other Network-based technologies
e-commerce overview

Features

E-Commerce provides the following features −

  • Non-Cash Payment − E-Commerce enables the use of credit cards, debit cards, smart cards, electronic fund transfer via bank's website, and other modes of electronics payment.

  • 24x7 Service availability − E-commerce automates the business of enterprises and the way they provide services to their customers. It is available anytime, anywhere.

  • Advertising / Marketing − E-commerce increases the reach of advertising of products and services of businesses. It helps in better marketing management of products/services.

  • Improved Sales − Using e-commerce, orders for the products can be generated anytime, anywhere without any human intervention. It gives a big boost to existing sales volumes.

  • Support − E-commerce provides various ways to provide pre-sales and post-sales assistance to provide better services to customers.

  • Inventory Management − E-commerce automates inventory management. Reports get generated instantly when required. Product inventory management becomes very efficient and easy to maintain.

  • Communication improvement − E-commerce provides ways for faster, efficient, reliable communication with customers and partners.

e-commerce overview

Traditional Commerce v/s E-Commerce

Sr. No. Traditional Commerce E-Commerce
1 Heavy dependency on information exchange from person to person. Information sharing is made easy via electronic communication channels making little dependency on person to person information exchange.
2 Communication/ transaction are done in synchronous way. Manual intervention is required for each communication or transaction. Communication or transaction can be done in asynchronous way. Electronics system automatically handles when to pass communication to required person or do the transactions.
3 It is difficult to establish and maintain standard practices in traditional commerce. A uniform strategy can be easily established and maintain in e-commerce.
4 Communications of business depends upon individual skills. In e-Commerce or Electronic Market, there is no human intervention.
5 Unavailability of a uniform platform as traditional commerce depends heavily on personal communication. E-Commerce website provides user a platform where al l information is available at one place.
6 No uniform platform for information sharing as it depends heavily on personal communication. E-Commerce provides a universal platform to support commercial / business activities across the globe.
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