E-commerece

 Define e-commerce? What are the benefits of using e-commerce?

The term ‘electronic commerce’ has evolved from electronic shopping, to imply all
aspects of business and market processes enabled by the Internet and World Wide Web
technologies.According to Philip Kotler :E-commerce can be defined as a general term for buying and selling process that is supported by electronic means.Electronic commerce, also known as e-business, a term for all kinds of business that are established electronically especially over the Internet. This includes both electronic sale(internet shops) and B2B transactions, i.e. business between two companies. It is any online transaction of buying and selling where business is done via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). E-Commerce can be defined from different perspectives – 
 1.Communications perspective, 2. Business process perspective, 3. Service perspective and4. Online perspective.

Basic Benefits of E-Commerce

The major benefits are increasing sales and decreasing costs. The other benefits are as
follows:1. Increased accessibility to customersi)Allows people to carry out operations without barriers of time i.e. 24 hours a day, seven
days a week.
ii) To reach out to global consumers easily and is also cost effective.
iii) It helps business to reach out new markets.
iv) Consumers and suppliers can be directly approached over the Internet.
v) Acquisition of new consumers over the internet is considerably cheaper..

2. Convenience of making comparisons:E-commerce helps consumers to make comparisons while shopping . Automated online
shopping assistants called hopbots score are available to find deals on anything from
flowers to perfume

3. Increased Profitabilityi) The direct cost to sale for an order taken from an web site is lower as compared to
traditional means. Moreover processing errors are virtually eliminated in e-selling
besides being faster and more convenient to visitor.
ii) It provides the solution by decimating the costs, which are incurred.

4. Innovation:E-commerce enables business organization to create new products or services.

5.Improvement in consumer service:There is a direct benefit in improvement of consumer service. High levels of customer
satisfaction generate increased sales and increased profits.

6. Tangible advantages:From the buyer’s perspective e-commerce provides a lot of tangible advantages:
i. Reduction in buyers sorting out time
ii Better buyer decisions.
iii.Less time spent in resolving invoice and order discrepencies.
iv. Increased opportunities for buying alternative products.

7. Stratergic Benefits:It helps to reduce delivery time,labour cost and also the cost incurred in the following
areas:
i) Document prepration.
ii) Error detection and correction.
iii) Reconciliation.
iv) Mail Prepration.
v) Telephone calling.
vi) Data Entry.
vii)Overtime.
viii)Supervision Expenses.

B2B - Business to Business

It is a mode of conducting business between two or more companies over the Internet,
rather than more traditional modes such as telephone, mail, and face to face.
In the past EDI was conducted on a direct link of some form between the two businesses
where as today the most popular connection is the Internet.
The two businesses pass information electronically to each other. B2B e-commerce
currently makes up about 94% of all e-commerce transactions.
Some of the advantages of B2B are:
i) Improved customer satisfaction
ii) Improved inventory system
iii) Easy and cost effective marketing
iv) Coordination between manufacturers, distributors and dealers.
v) Better management of business

 B2C -Business to Consumer

This is where the consumer accesses the system of the supplier. It is still a two-way
function but is usually done solely through the Internet.
In B2C e-commerce companies sell goods to consumers online in a dynamic environment.
Each transaction under B2C represents an individual buying online.
Some examples:- Conducting individual stock trades, a co. offering lots of books for sale
on its web site.
An example of B2C model is Amul.com which sells Amul branded products online.