Online Shopping Mania

Archive for the ‘E-Commerce’ Category

Ecommerce has revolutionized the global market affecting a number of industries for the better and even the way customers send gifts and greetings to their near and dear ones. Changing lifestyles and increased purchasing power of customers in the emerging markets like India and China have made vendors to see the business potential in establishing online gifts and greetings store.

One of the common inhibitions to send gifts and greetings to their loved ones on occasions of importance and achievement was distance and time. Communication setups based on internet had shorted both time and distance but delivering physical items to loved one required strong and cheap shipping facilities. This emotional requirement of individuals has been well exploited by online gift and greetings stores which led to mushrooming of a number of websites in the internet offering such services.

Online gift stores enabled customers to choose their favorite gifts items or gift vouchers for branded retailers in the town or city of their loved ones. Most of these are online storefronts which have a direct tie up and registration with wholesale retailers of leading brands. On receipt of such an order from customers, the order is transferred to the dealers and fulfillment of such order is achieved in the name of the online storefront instead of the wholesaler.

Electronic commerce or eCommerce or e-comm is all about buying and selling of products or services over electronic medium like the Internet. It forms the back bone of all the online process of development, marketing, selling/buying and fulfillment services. Electronic commerce uses a wide range of technologies like e-mail and mobile devices during an online transaction. The present day electronic commerce involves the World Wide Web at least once in the entire transaction cycle.

In 1970s, technologies like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) were allowed for businesses wherein purchase orders were generated and transferred electronically. Later in 1980s, usage of credit cards and automated teller machines (ATM) were brought in by electronic commerce. Internet banking and phone banking in 1990s made airline reservation system possible for the first time electronically in US and UK. There after the system took a lot of twist and turn to grow in strength encompassing enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) and data processing.

Later by 2000, ecommerce has become famous among people as an entity which allows one to purchase or sell goods over the internet by the use of electronic payment services. Electronic commerce includes handling of both virtual items like the premium content in a website and physical items or goods like that in a retail shop. This brought in both small time and big online retailers in to the World Wide Web.

Electronic documentation was given acceptance over business transactions in 1970s and since then full-fledged commercial use of ecommerce in retail stores was seen in 2000. The advent of ecommerce has changed the global market completely and many countries continue to introduce new technologies to develop new business models. However, the concept drastically affected smaller firms as larger firms could work out economics to offer lower prices based on large volume of sales.

The last decade has seen ecommerce companies taking over traditional retails stores and service providers making traditional retailers to post their own commercial websites. Ecommerce was seen to affect industrial structure of book stores, travel agencies and consumer electronics stores. This was possible only because ecommerce business players have low operating cost and better inventory control in the virtual business environment.

The key for the growth of ecommerce is the increasing spending capability and the change in the consumer lifestyle in various countries other than US. Online taxation is not as strong as that for traditional sales in the US. Entry of large retailers pitching into online stores has brought competitive pricing and greater customer satisfaction. The ever increasing internet users and decreasing surfing tariffs in the emerging markets like China and India, has given greater traction to the wheels of ecommerce.  Internet has opened up global market with efficient shipping facilities at competitive cost and better service.

The success of ecommerce has forced even many large traditional retailers to enter ecommerce and establish their own commercial websites. A number of factors are considered as key for the growth of ecommerce, out of which the competitive pricing affordable due to low overhead charges is the most important of all.

A number of websites emerged in the virtual market offering products at unbelievable prices. One of the most interesting methods of selling products online is through auctions, which is most unique and is possible most efficiently only in online stores. Websites like Deals2buy, dealfun and ebay have been the most well known names in this kind of sales. These kind of websites offer deals at unbelievable prices at specific occasions like thanksgiving, Christmas etc attracting more sales and traffic to their website. This is the best way to get the latest product in the market at prices much lower than the actual market prices.

The unbelievable pricing and currency of the product always make customers to have skepticism on such deals. Rightly so, this is due to undue popularity given to scams, fake websites and inability by the customers to inspect the item before purchase. Hence it is advised to customers that all the purchase in online stores is be done using credit cards. Auction frauds can be prevented by credit card purchase as it has a better federal protection.