Economics

Today, you simply cannot read a US newspaper, listen to the radio, or watch television without stumbling across the word "ecommerce". Corporate CEOs and small business merchants want ecommerce because they crave such advantages as the shopping convenience, speed of shopping sessions, error elimination, global reach, and cheaper processing. Introduced in the 1990s, ecommerce is short for ‘Electronic Commerce’. It is simply the idea of replacing physical business transactions with electronic business transactions using the Internet. Ecommerce cuts through boundaries such as time and geography to put store- owners and customers into a virtual contact with one another. A key ingredient of ecommerce is the ability to take orders and receive payments through an electronic storefront. Between 1999 and 2000, Dell Computers sold $16 million per day of custom-made products through their Websites. Amazon.com won the 1999 Webby Ecommerce Award with its streamlined selling of $3 million worth of products per day. Sounds great! Why isn't every company successfully selling its wares online? The simple answer is that ecommerce is easy to start, but it is very difficult to do well. Today, virtually all ecommerce businesses are reporting considerable losses and economists are questioning if this activity will plateau at relatively low level. This paper will discuss some of the challenges faced by ecommerce businesses such as: the delivery requirements and the lack of personal contact.
The latest ecommerce survey results from customers are very telling. Studies show that online customers are particularly worried about product delivery and return policies.       A Rubric study shows that through the year 2000, 48 percent of ecommerce sites did not have a Return Goods policy. These ecommerce sites failed to develop a return goods policy and clearly state it on their site.
In general, customers don't trust ecommerce. They can't find what they're looking for, and can't easily pay for... [continues]

Read full essay