E-Commerce - Advantages
E-Commerce advantages can be broadly classified in three major categories −
Advantages to Organizations
Advantages to Consumers
Advantages to Society
Advantages to Organizations
Using e-commerce, organizations can expand their market to national and
international markets with minimum capital investment. An organization
can easily locate more customers, best suppliers, and suitable business
partners across the globe.
E-commerce helps organizations to reduce the cost to create process,
distribute, retrieve and manage the paper based information by digitizing
the information.
E-commerce improves the brand image of the company.
E-commerce helps organization to provide better customer services.
E-commerce helps to simplify the business processes and makes them
faster and efficient.
E-commerce reduces the paper work.
E-commerce increases the productivity of organizations. It supports "pull"
type supply management. In "pull" type supply management, a business
process starts when a request comes from a customer and it uses just-in-
time manufacturing way.
Advantages to Customers
It provides 24x7 support. Customers can enquire about a product or service
and place orders anytime, anywhere from any location.
E-commerce application provides users with more options and quicker
delivery of products.
E-commerce application provides users with more options to compare and
select the cheaper and better options.
A customer can put review comments about a product and can see what
others are buying, or see the review comments of other customers before
making a final purchase.
E-commerce provides options of virtual auctions.
It provides readily available information. A customer can see the relevant
detailed information within seconds, rather than waiting for days or weeks.
E-Commerce increases the competition among organizations and as a
result, organizations provides substantial discounts to customers.
Advantages to Society
Customers need not travel to shop a product, thus less traffic on road and
low air pollution.
E-commerce helps in reducing the cost of products, so less affluent people
can also afford the products.
E-commerce has enabled rural areas to access services and products, which
are otherwise not available to them.
E-commerce helps the government to deliver public services such as
healthcare, education, social services at a reduced cost and in an improved
manner.
E-Commerce - Disadvantages
The disadvantages of e-commerce can be broadly classified into two major
categories −
Technical disadvantages
Non-Technical disadvantages
Technical Disadvantages
There can be lack of system security, reliability or standards owing to poor
implementation of e-commerce.
The software development industry is still evolving and keeps changing
rapidly.
In many countries, network bandwidth might cause an issue.
Special types of web servers or other software might be required by the
vendor, setting the e-commerce environment apart from network servers.
Sometimes, it becomes difficult to integrate an e-commerce software or
website with existing applications or databases.
There could be software/hardware compatibility issues, as some e-
commerce software may be incompatible with some operating system or
any other component.
Non-Technical Disadvantages
Initial cost − The cost of creating/building an e-commerce application in-
house may be very high. There could be delays in launching an e-Commerce
application due to mistakes, and lack of experience.
User resistance − Users may not trust the site being an unknown faceless
seller. Such mistrust makes it difficult to convince traditional users to switch
from physical stores to online/virtual stores.
Security/ Privacy − It is difficult to ensure the security or privacy on online
transactions.
Lack of touch or feel of products during online shopping is a drawback.
E-commerce applications are still evolving and changing rapidly.
Internet access is still not cheaper and is inconvenient to use for many
potential customers, for example, those living in remote villages.
