View Source: ECommerce - Waikato Linux Users Group

Edit PageHistory Diff Info LikePages

A buzzword for conducting transactions remotely over the [InterNet].

ECommerce was to be the saviour of business in the late 1990s. The advantages of ECommerce are:
# Sales can be made to international customers as easily as local customers.
# The totol number of people able to access to shop is very high, this is particularly important for specialist shops with a very narrow target audiance.
# Physical bricks-and-mortor shop fronts are no-longer necessary, which saves on renting, stocking and staffing costs
# "Shrinkage" due to customer shoplifting ceases to be a problem
#


The disadvantages are:
# Because customers aren't local, the costs of shipping goods to them in the timeframe they expect can be very high
# Local knowledge is lost, because there is no local
# Credit card scams are more of a problem
# Many types of sales (cars and fruit, for example) have a heavy emphasis on personal inspection, which is very hard to do in an ecommerce situation.
#

The businesses which seem to have succeeded in [ECommerce] appear to be those that cater to a need not filled by traditional shops:
# Supermarkets selling groceries to house-bound customers
# Booksellers selling from an (perhaps virtual) inventory which would be unmanagably large for a traditional bookshop
# Specialist craftspeople reaching out to a narrow, widely distributed target market

3 pages link to ECommerce:

Last edited on Monday, October 6, 2003 5:52:24 pm by StuartYeates

Edit PageHistory Diff Info LikePages