Question

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Question; What is your opinion of e-business and e-commerce and their roles in today’s world of business? Analyse a case study to support your ideas.

Answer 1

The terms e-commerce and e-business are often used interchangeably, however they both have different interpretations that have different impact and influence on today’s businesses. The only similarity prevailing is the electronic medium that includes use of Internet for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) to conduct business activities

E-Commerce covers only the outward facing operations i.e. online buying and selling of goods and services that include order receiving, dealing, delivering and paying. The e-commerce strategy aims at understanding consumer behaviour that help them provide reliable, functional and user-friendly services.

E-Business has emerged as a mainstream solution for many businesses. It focuses on the business as a whole and is not restricted to commercial transactions. It involves streamlined and automated construction and maintenance of business processes across production, development, corporate infrastructure and product management.

Momentum in the economic development due to globalisation in the recent years has compelled businesses to move beyond domestic and national markets. The penetration into international markets through technological transition provides businesses a superior competitive position that enables them to buy, sell and manage on a global scale with much speed and ease.

E-Commerce sales are growing more as compared to its counterpart because it facilitates efforts to improve operations that result in substantial cost savings along with the following advantages:

• Reduced transaction costs;
• Lowered advertising and promotion costs;
• Instant communication between buyers and sellers;
• Ability to target new customers;
• Shortened supply chains, including decreased transport barriers and delivery costs;
• Overruled limitation of time and space.

CASE STUDY

Firms like Amazon and Flipkart are involved in practicing both e-commerce and e-business using shopping cart technology with a turnkey solution. As an e-business, they incorporate personalisation, effective customer service and streamlined supply-chain management. They use the two most common business models- business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) after carefully analysing their business and accordingly evaluating the best system to realise the benefits and ensure reduced operational costs of each model.

Amazon is an international e-commerce company, started in the year 1994. It was launched in India in the year 2013 with no infrastructure in India and now it dominates the Indian Market.

Amazon has consumer market in United States but it is a growing online consumer market in India having different

challenges. The first and foremost challenge in India faced by the amazon was restrictions on foreign companies

using e-commerce to sell their products directly to the Indian consumer. Another difficulty that Amazon India faced was the limited infrastructure available to get the goods to consumers.

Fact behind formation of Amazon in India was its huge number of headcounts i.e. 1.25 billion four times as big as

the U.S.’s and more than doubles Europe’s. Of these, 500 million, around 35 percent, are internet users. As per

researches the yearly growth rate of internet users is highest in India around six million users join every month.

Researchers expect the online shopping market in India to reach $15 billion by 2016 up from only $35 million in

2014.

Amazon is known for knowledgeable products. Amazon in India work on complex business challenges to innovate

and create efficient solutions that enable various Amazon businesses, including Amazon websites across the world

as well as support Payments, Transportation, and Digital products and services like the Kindle family of tablets, e-

readers and the store. Reasons of its success are the finest talent and strong leaders with proven experience working

to make Amazon the Earth’s most customer-centric company. Apart from this Technological innovation drives the

growth of Amazon, offering customers more selection, convenient shopping, and low prices