The popularity of e-commerce has grown in the past few years by leaps and bounds. E-commerce based website are not limited to shopping sites only, rather, they have become popular among many other fields also.
The impact of e-commerce on shopping, procurement, business collaborations, after sale services, and customer services as well as on delivery of various services is so important that today almost every organization gets affected.
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E-Commerce Applications
There are many applications of EC, such as home-banking also known as net-banking, shopping in malls, buying stocks, job hunting, conducting an online auction, collaborating with business partners online and providing after sale customer services. Some popular e-commerce applications are explained below:
Retail and Wholesale
E-commerce has a number of applications in retail and wholesale. E-retailing or online retailing is the selling of goods from Business-to-Consumer through electronic stores that are designed using the electronic catalog and shopping cart model.
Cybermall is a single Website that offers different products and services at one Internet location. It attracts the customer and the seller into one virtual space through a Web browser.
Marketing
Data collection about customer behavior, preferences, needs and buying patterns is possible through Web and E-commerce. This helps marketing activities such as price fixation, negotiation, product feature enhancement and building relationship with the customer.
Finance
Financial companies are using E-commerce to a large extent. Customers can check the balances of their savings and loan accounts, transfer money to their other account and pay their bill through online banking or E-banking. Another application of E-commerce is online stock trading.
Many Websites provide access to news, charts, information about company profile and analyst Ratingen the stocks.
Manufacturing
E-commerce is also used in the supply chain operations of a company. Some companies form an electronic exchange by providing together buy and sell goods, trade market information and run back office information such as inventory control.
This speeds up the flow of raw material and finished goods among the members of the business community. Various strategic and competitive issues limit the implementation of the business models. Companies may not trust their competitors and may fear that they will lose trade secrets if they participate in mass electronic exchanges.
Auctions
Customer-to-Customer e-commerce is direct selling of goods and services among customers. It also includes electronic auctions that involve bidding. Bidding is a special type of auction that allows prospective buyers to bid for an item.
For example, airline companies give the customer an opportunity to quote the price for a seat on a specific route on the specified date and time. Later, depending upon some restrictions one of the customer who participated in bidding, may be allotted the seat.
Govt Sector
Government e-commerce applications are those e-commerce based applications that are utilized by some level of government, whether it is federal, state, or local. These are an important segment of the growing e-governance services delivery field. Government e-commerce applications may involve G2B (Govt-to-Business), G2G (Govt.-to-Govt.), or G2C (Govt.-to-Consumer/Citizen) mechanisms.
FAQs Section
What are the e-commerce applications?
These are the e-commerce applications:
1. Retail and Wholesale
2. Marketing
3. Finance
4. Manufacturing
5. Auctions
6. Govt Sector.
