Concept Note
The birth and growth of e-commerce has
been met with a myriad of views ranging from the limited impact on existing
traditional set-up of commerce to the extreme view that it will eventually lead
to total demolition of the existing brick-and-mortar business system. Simultaneous
with the growth and penetration of e-commerce, the industry has seen
spectacular hypes, as well as failures. However despite all these
inconsistencies in views and trends, it is certain that the arrival of
e-commerce has brought about major changes in the methods and means of
conducting business and further radical changes are much more likely than not.
E-commerce in essence is conducting
business transactions using telecommunication networks. Thus it is not just
restricted to buying or selling of good and service via electronic means but
covers the whole business process and encompassing Business-to-Customer (B2C),
Customer-to-Customer (C2C), Business-to-Business (B2B), other
Inter-organizational dealings, and intra-organization processes. In the current
market scenario e-commerce encompasses one or more of the following:
•EDI (Electronic Data Inter-change)
•EDI on the Internet
•E-mail on the Internet
•Shopping on the World Wide Web
•Product sales and services on the Web
•Electronic banking or funds transfer
•Outsourced customer and employee care operations
Typically e-commerce automates the
conduct of business among enterprises, it s customers and partners, creating
interdependency and changing the market dynamics. With the onset of the
internet, e-commerce boomed across industries, from fewer than 40 million users
connected to the internet in 1996, the number of internet users in 2014 was
almost 3 Billion, a steep growth trajectory that has wide implications for all
aspects of human society including commerce and business. Internet based
e-commerce has shrunk the boundaries between industries making it possible to
amass an assorted variety of product in one site, as successfully implemented
by be e-commerce retail giants (e-tailers) like amazon.com and e-bay.com etc.
The growth in e-commerce is unlikely to relent soon, traditional retailers are
expected to play catch-up by assimilating technology and in the immediate
future the subset m-commerce (mobile commerce) is anticipated to explode into
the scene,
E-commerce has undoubtedly brought
immense benefit for customers and businesses alike. To buyers it has afforded
convenience, flexibility, elimination of search cost and switching cost, and
unrestricted information access. Major benefits accrued to business include
economies of scale, efficient inventory and supply chain management, enhanced
proximity with customers, specialization, superior scope for relationship
building and customer care etc. While e-commerce has proved to be robust and
versatile, it also suffers from various shortcomings and does not have a well
defined path for the future, presenting it with intriguing challenges.
Academia, industry and well as regulatory institutions thus have ongoing
interest and important stakes in e-commerce. Major areas of interest in
e-commerce, especially in the context of India include:
·
Identifying the drivers
of growth in e-commerce
·
Challenges to adapt,
survive, and grow for traditional retailers
·
Tackling consumer
concerns for privacy and information security
· Developing and enacting
laws to govern the continuously evolving, fluid, and often boundaryless
e-commerce industry
·
Addressing the problem
of information cluttering on the virtual marketplace.
·
Defining ethical
practices for conducting business online
·
Challenges of
cybercrimes.