Online Shopping Mania

Posts Tagged ‘global market’

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 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.