E-commerce (Essay Sample)

E-COMMERCE: ITS DEVELOPMENT AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
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Electronic commerce, often termed as ecommerce refers to business that is conducted via electronic channels, mainly through the internet and other computer networks. Ecommerce uses applications which basically rely on the internet. These applications include instant messaging, electronic mail, web services and shopping carts, among others. Ecommerce can take place between a business and a customer or between two businesses and may involve the transmission of goods, services, funds, data or their combination. This paper seeks to discuss the development of ecommerce and its future perspectives.
According to Cucuzza, the achievement of appropriate procedures and security measures for ecommerce involved many years of keen development. Choi explains that prior to 1999, ecommerce had not established its foothold in the global platform. Businesses were still searching for a secure and proper way of interacting with other businesses. Nevertheless, after the bust of the dot com era, retailers realized the great potential of the internet and decided to explore it through the use of effective marketing tools.
Choi believes that the development of ecommerce has led to the expansion of the global business market. He believes that ecommerce has made it possible for products and services to come closer to the consumers. The advantages of ecommerce to the consumer include convenience and ability to exercise choice. Electronic commerce provides a platform for convenient trading since it is available twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. In terms of the exercise of choice, online stores offer a wide range of goods and services from which the consumer is able to select. In addition to this, ecommerce has a universal reach and in most cases, the customer care service is very efficient.
On the other hand, the advantages of ecommerce for businesses include the ability to establish market presence with minimal costs, ability to enrich the already existing market, provision of an efficient distribution chain and provision of cheaper goods and services. In addition, ecommerce has made it possible for businesses to eliminate the barriers of global trade. In this way, many goods and services are made available to consumers as virtual data, thereby removing obstacles like distance, time and cost of course. Cucuzza explains that Target, a mass retailer, is a good example of a firm which has successfully implemented ecommerce to its benefit. Apart from having physical shops, this firm has an online store which allows customers to shop for an assortment of goods and services.
Notwithstanding its numerous advantages, ecommerce has some disadvantages to both consumers and businesses. Some of the disadvantages to the consumer include limited customer service, lack of instant gratification and the inability to see and touch a product. In terms of limited customer service, the consumer does not have a direct avenue for communication with the seller in order to know which item would best meet his/ her requirements. In terms of instant gratification, the consumer is not able to immediately access the purchased product since the product has to be shipped to the required destination. Finally, the consumer is not able to physically view and touch a product. Sometimes computer images do not tell the whole truth about a product and therefore the customer may end up getting dissatisfied when he/ she receives a product that is different from what was expected.
Based on the foregoing advantages and disadvantages of ecommerce, expert opinion on the future of ecommerce varies significantly. Some experts are pessimistic about the future of ecommerce, while others are very optimistic about it. Those with a pessimistic view like Cucuzza feel that even though ecommerce is currently flourishing, it will not be able to sustain this growth in the near future due to the various security issues that are involved in electronic transactions. For instance, the number of hackers who search for opportunities everyday continues to grow thereby making ecommerce sites, payment gateways and services prone to cyber-attack. In addition, mechanical failures, which are unavoidable, may sometimes end up causing unpredictable effects on the transaction processes.
However, Choi argues that despite the risks involved in internet transactions, a lot of people and many more new businesses are continuing to embrace ecommerce. The s...