Question

1）How has the ability to visualize the vast amount of data on the internet changed the face of ecommerce in the last 5 years?

2）How do you think it will transform business in the next 5 years?

Answer 1

1）How has the ability to visualize the vast amount of data on the internet changed the face of ecommerce in the last 5 years?

Answer:

As the world of online retail continues to grow at a fantastic rate, the knowledge that's possible to gather and analyze also grows along side it. We are ready to access a tremendous amount of detailed information, to assist our online businesses make more informed decisions regarding our customers, products we provide and the way we will organize and execute our marketing campaigns. This big data has become an important component to several successful e-commerce businesses that look to the present information to assist guide their future business moves. Here are just a couple of of the foremost significant ways you'll make use of massive data within your online business.
There has been an increasing emphasis on big data analytics (BDA) in e-commerce in recent years. However, it remains poorly-explored as an idea , which obstructs its theoretical and practical development. This position paper explores BDA in e-commerce by drawing on a scientific review of the literature. The paper presents an interpretive framework that explores the definitional aspects, distinctive characteristics, types, business value and challenges of BDA within the e-commerce landscape. The paper also triggers broader discussions regarding future research challenges and opportunities in theory and practice. Overall, the findings of the study synthesize diverse BDA concepts (e.g., definition of massive data, types, nature, business value and relevant theories) that provide deeper insights along the cross-cutting analytics applications in e-commerce.
In the past few years, an explosion of interest in big data has occurred from both academia and therefore the e-commerce industry. This explosion is driven by the very fact that e-commerce firms that inject big data analytics (BDA) into their value chain experience 5–6 to the next productivity than their competitors (McAfee and Brynjolfsson 2012). A recent study by BSA Software Alliance within the us (USA) indicates that BDA contributes to 10 % or more of the expansion for 56 you look after firms (Columbus 2014). Therefore, 91 you look after Fortune 1000 companies are investing in BDA projects, an 85 to extend from the previous year (Kiron et al. 2014a). While the utilization of emerging internet-based technologies provides e-commerce firms with transformative benefits (e.g., real-time customer service, dynamic pricing, personalized offers or improved interaction) (Riggins 1999), BDA can further solidify these impacts by enabling informed decisions supported critical insights (Jao 2013). Specifically, within the e-commerce context, “big data enables merchants to trace each user’s behavior and connect the dots to work out the foremost effective ways to convert one-time customers into repeat buyers” (Jao 2013,p.1). Big data analytics (BDA) enables e-commerce firms to use data more efficiently, drive a better conversion rate, improve deciding and empower customers (Miller 2013). From the attitude of transaction cost theory in e-commerce (Devaraj et al. 2002; Williamson 1981), BDA can benefit online firms by improving market transaction cost efficiency (e.g., buyer-seller interaction online), managerial transaction cost efficiency (e.g., process efficiency- recommendation algorithms by Amazon) and time cost efficiency (e.g., searching, bargaining and after sale monitoring). Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV)(Barney 1991), we argued that BDA is a distinctive competence of the high-performance business process to support business needs, such as identifying loyal and profitable customers, determining the optimal price, detecting quality problems, or deciding rock bottom possible level of inventory (Davenport and Harris 2007a). In addition to the RBV, this research views BDA from the relational ontology of sociomaterialism perspective, which puts forward the argument that different organizational capabilities (e.g., management, technology and talent) are constitutively entangled (Orlikowski 2007) and mutually supportive (Barton and Court 2012) in achieving firm performance. Finally, service marketing offers the attitude of improving service innovation models, which has been reflected by firms like Rolls Royce (Barrett et al. 2015), Amazon, Google and Netflix (Davenport and Harris 2007a). As such, the extant literature identifies BDA as the platform for “growth of employment, increased productivity, and increased consumer surplus” (Loebbecke and Picot 2015, p.152), the “next big thing in innovation” (Gobble 2013, p.64); “the fourth paradigm of science” (Strawn (2012); “the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity” (p. 1) and the next “management revolution” (p. 3) (McAfee and Brynjolfsson 2012); or that BDA is “bringing a revolution in science and technology” (Ann Keller et al. 2012); etc. Due to the high impact in e-commerce, notably in generating business value, BDA has recently become the main target of educational and industry investigation (Fosso Wamba et al. 2015
Although an increasing amount of published materials has focused on practitioners during this domain, the literature remains largely anecdotal and fragmented. There is a paucity of research that gives a general taxonomy from which to explore the size and applications of massive data in e-commerce. The purpose of this research therefore is to spot different conceptual dimensions of massive data in e-commerce and their relevance to business value. This paper focuses on e-commerce firms that capture business value through using big data analytics (BDA). The extant literature shows that BDA could allow an e-commerce firm to achieve a range of benefits, such as: enhanced pricing strategies for products and services (Christian 2013); targeted advertising; better communication between research and development (R&D) and product development; improved customer service; improved multi-channel integration and coordination; enhanced global sourcing from multiple business units and locations, and, overall, suggesting models and ways to capture greater business value (Beath et al. 2012; Fosso Wamba et al. 2015a; Sharma et al. 2014).

2）How do you think it will transform business in the next 5 years?

Answer:

5 main factors that will drive e-commerce growth in the next 5 years and transform business:
From relative obscurity to a potential game changer in a matter of just few years, online retail has not only captured a larger share of mind space; it has been grabbing market share rapidly. Flipkart, one among the most important online retailers in India, grew five times in volume of products sold between 2013 and 2014. Snapdeal, another large player, is reported to possess grown sixfold within the same period. Is this growth rate sustainable? Here are five factors which will help online retail grow in coming years.

• Localisation of Internet content

Google India spokesperson says that web page search in Hindi has grown a whopping 155 per cent within the past year, which is significantly above the expansion of content search in English. Hindi content searched through mobile Internet grew at even higher rate of 300 per cent within the same period. Growth in traffic in other languages, too, was impressive.
Sensing a chance , Snapdeal launched its interfaces in local languages. “We launched Snapdeal’s multilingual interface in January 2014 in Hindi and Tamil languages and have seen an incredible response from customers towards this. We will shortly be adding four more regional language interfaces,” says Ankit Khanna, senior vice-president (product management) at Snapdeal.com.
Online travel firm MakeMyTrip launched its Hindi app in November 2014 and plans to add four more languages — Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam — in the coming months.
With incremental growth in mobile subscriber coming mostly from people that are comfortable with languages aside from English, online retailers see this emergent segment as new growth driver. Mohit Bahl of consultancy firm KPMG says localisation of content may be a great innovation, which can be helpful in future. For those that have already done it, there'll be first mover advantage. Others are likely to follow suit, he adds.

• Growth in cities beyond metros

About 20 per cent of India’s population lives in cities outside of metros. There are several pointers that suggest this massive group of city dwellers have significant purchasing power. Honda, as an example , sells 60 per cent of its Amaze car in tier-II and tier-III cities. These cities account for 55 per cent of Honda’s City models.
Consumer demand is rising rapidly even in small towns and cities. Talking about the potential of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, a 2012 Nielsen report says: “While metros will remain a staple for marketers and increasing a rural footprint will be critical for volumes within the end of the day , there's a growth opportunity that's vastly under-rated by many marketers today, which could emerge as a key growth engine for the next 10 years. Middle India, a neighborhood made from approximately 400 towns each with a population of 1-10 lakh, are home to 100 million Indians.” It further says: “These cities are ready to behave like the metros of tomorrow…The annual per capita FMCG consumption of Middle India towns touched Rs 2,800”, which is much higher than the national average of Rs 1,600.
The Nielsen report clearly shows that non-metro cities offer an enormous growth potential for several companies. “At Snapdeal.com, we recover from 60 per cent of the sales from tier and beyond towns and cities,” says Khanna. Other online retailers have reported the same trend. The contribution of those cities in coming years is about to become even bigger. “In addition to the convenience, another factor that's driving our sales in such cities is that a lot of of the brands don't have footprint in these areas. No physical retailer can have the type of assortment of products that we've ,” observes Praveen Sinha, co-founder of online retailer Jabong.

• Growth of mobile commerce

Online retailers’ growing reach in non-metro cities is being driven by the increase in usage of mobile internet within the country. According to Internet and Mobile Association of India, the amount of mobile internet users within the country stood at 173 million in December 2014. It is set to grow manifold by 2020. A Confederation of Indian Industry report estimates that within the next six years, the amount of individuals accessing the web through mobile is about to succeed in 600 million. “This growth are going to be spurred by a pointy rise in smartphone adoption, expected to succeed in 50 per cent penetration by 2020,” says the report. “Given the increased mobile penetration and smartphone adoption in these areas, mobile is certainly one among the main factors driving this trend,” adds Khanna of Snapdeal.com

• Growing usage of debit cards for cashless transaction

There has been a net addition of nearly 140 million debit cards within the country within the past two years. What is more, the usage of debit cards at point of sale terminals has seen a growth of 86 per cent within the same period. It indicates the willingness to use debit cards for purposes other than withdrawing money at ATMs has increased. With many online retailers still insisting on use of cards for top value transactions, it's a welcome change. It will allow e-tailers to reach out to many areas and many more customers in coming years.Currently, cash on delivery constitutes nearly 70 per cent of all transactions for online retailers. But online retailers say the usage of cards for online transactions is steadily rising.

• Growing investment in logistics and warehouses

Online retailers say they need extended their reach to “12,500-15,000 pin codes” out of nearly 100,000 pin codes within the country. There also are reports of online retailers trying to traffic jam with India Post and petrol pump stations to succeed in bent more customers. Expected aviation boom in small cities may additionally widen the reach of online retailers in future.