Significance of Ecommerce in Emerging Markets

Introduction

E–commerce which is also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce means buying and selling of goods and services over the internet. E-commerce works on the principle where customers search for the products or the services online by using the internet and can place an order for the same online, but the physical delivery and payment of goods or services may or may not be conducted online. Its process can be explained in three simple steps 1) the customer places the order on an ecommerce platform 2) the company will accept the order online and the conformation will be sent to the customer 3) last is delivery of goods or services (Barnett, 2001).

One main point to remember under this is that the ultimate delivery of goods and services and payment may or may not be done online. There are five different types of ecommerce

• 1.

  Business to Business (B2B)

• 2.

  Business to Customers (B2C)

• 3.

  Customers to Customers (C2C)

• 4.

  Business to Administration (B2A)

• 5.

  Consumer to Administration (C2A) (Gupta, 2014)

There are many benefits that comes with ecommerce like ecommerce provides business owners a floor where they can reach out to customers all over the world. Not only ecommerce is providing benefits to business owners but also it is beneficial for customers as they can make purchases anytime and from anywhere. Moreover, with the advancement in the ecommerce it has now become more economical and easy to set up an ecommerce business. Also, customers are encouraged to share their feedback related to product which is again an important advantage of ecommerce which helps online businesses to learn about the customers preferences, tastes etc., and if there is any issue related to the product or services it can be solved as soon as possible and resolving these problems and listening to its customers reviews not only improves business also it aids in customers satisfaction.

There are disadvantages also related to ecommerce, one of the major drawbacks is security issue. Customers are uncertain about providing personal as well as financial information as there are chances of fraud despite of the fact that many improvements made in the system. One of the disadvantages is that customers are not able to check the product as they have to rely on the picture of the product that the company have posted on the websites because of which some people hesitate to buy online products as they are not sure of the quality despite of the facility easy return being provided to the customers if they are not satisfied with the product.

In India ecommerce have penetrated so much after the covid. Some survey’s have shown that about 31% of customers have shopped online in the last year. Among these 31% almost 28% have done online shopping of groceries only which means groceries shopping is on the top and FMGC is at 15.6% for the 12 months ended April 2022 almost an increase of 10% in the FY 2021-21 (Anuj et al., 2018).

Objective Of The Study

This is a review paper which aims to impact of ecommerce in India. Also this paper will examine the following

• 1)

  To study the impact of covid19 on ecommerce in India

• 2)

  To study the impact of covid19 and ecommerce on local markets (offline retailers)

Literature Review

Dahiya, M. (2017) found that ecommerce is very useful as it provides wide range of products and services with lots of information at an affordable price at our doorstep. But ecommerce has a bad impact on offline retailers because consumers prefer online shopping due to which there is decrease in the sale of the offline stores and these stores cannot offer wide range of products like online retailers.