E-commerce is getting increasingly popular amongst organisations for many reasons. Why is this so? In order to demostrate my point, I'm going to use Amazon.com as a example of a successful organisation. Amazon.com is an American based, multinational electronic commerce company. It's America's largest online retailer.
1) Firstly, having an online presence helps to expand your market reach. Your website can be accessed globally, across most cultural and national boundaries. For example, Amazon provides its services in more than one country. Having an website helps Amazon to reach out to their market in other countries, such as Singapore, even though it is based in America. However, organisations have to be prepared to localise and adapt your content to different countries if possible, so that the content can be easily understood, and even relatable to the target market.
2) It saves money. Having a physical store, operating costs, and the costs of buying the products all takes up money, and there might not even have enough customers to buy their products in the first place. Having a online store, however, can save the organisation money from having to buy a physical space to store their goods. On top of that, Amazon only needs to bring in the product for their customers only when they placed an order on the goods. Therefore, money is not wasted as no product is unwanted and left behind.
3) E-commerce is ubiquitous - it is available everywhere and all the time. If you feel like shopping for the greatly hyped about (but dubiously useful) new Apple product, the iPad, in the middle of the night, the website will always be there to suit your nocturnal shopping needs. Your market need not wait till the morning, when the stores are open, to buy what they want.
4) With E-commerce, organisations can better enchance their reponsiveness to customers. Amazon can sell their products cheaper to their customers now, due to their lack of middleman. They can also better serve customers, since as mentioned above, e-commerce is ubiquitous, and customers can shop and order anytime they like. However, the ability to act on and fulfill your customer's needs is important, and helps in the success of the organisation. If there is a problem with the product, or your services, it is important to act as promptly as possible.
5) Websites allow organisations to personalise their websites to each individual customers. When a customer has an account on Amazon, Amazon can quickly suggests other similar products to the customers. Organisations can even make some of their products in order to better cater to the needs of their customers.
6) The website allows organisations to better sell their products, due to the power of the Internet. Organisations can provide information richness through pictures and videos of their product, on top of just text that merely describes what the product is about. Amazon even have a review section, so that other users of the website can post their reviews about the product online. This helps the customer in deciding whether to get the product or not, and it can be all the more credible because the reviews are posted by fellow customers, who are not paid to give good reviews. The website can also be interactive. It allows the organisation to stimulate a face-to-face experience to their customers, and even allows that be on a global scale, so that they can reach out to more customers.
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