E-Commerce Systems - Issues, Benefits, and Current Trends - Case Study Example

Heading: E-commerce Your name: Course name: Professors’ name: Date Glossary Term Definition m-commerce The use of mobile phones and other portable devices to conduct business transaction online Merchants payment solution An online platform which offers an integrated payment solution Executive summary E-commerce has many benefits; the major benefits include cost reduction and access to global audience. This report recommends an e-commerce website with merchant’s payment solution to Amanda Jane Horse Wear in order to boost its sales. This website functionality will allow purchase of products from anywhere in the globe and get the product through a preferred shipping option. E-commerce has evolved and it includes m-commerce which employs portable devices to conduct online transactions. E-commerce is expected to improve sales of the company while decreasing costs associated with marketing of the products to the public. 1. Introduction This report focuses on the benefits and challenges of e-commerce and how e-commerce can be used to revolutionize the way in which business is conducted. Based on the existing e-commerce functionality, recommendations are issued to Amanda Jane Horse Wear, a horse apparel company owned by Amanda Jane. The company is expected to benefit from the proposed e-commerce solution because of its capabilities. 2. Background The client in this case is Amanda Jane Horse Wear which deals with sales of horse apparels such as riding tops and hats. The company users word of mouth and horse events to conduct its business. The company’s advertising is through pony clubs and other horse riding organizations. The company is facing limitation in product sales and marketing strategies available. This report offers e-commerce solution that the company can take advantage of. 3. E-commerce systems: 3.1. The meaning of e-commerce According to Elaine (2013) ecommerce involves purchase and sale of goods or services via electronic means like the internet. Online retailing is convenient because of its 24-hour availability and global reach. Despite the fact that purchasing items online being the major facet of e-commerce, e-commerce is more than that. It is important at different levels including enterprise level. According to Reynolds (2004, p.5) e-commerce is the exchange of information through electronic services; e-commerce has existed for decades in for of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) where the supplier and the customer set a dedicated data link between them in order to conduct their business. Since then, online platform has transformed into a modern 21st century trading platform. More and more companies are joining online platform in different capacities. Some are customers, purchasers and even middle-men. As noted by Rosen (2002, p.2) E-business is the integration of company’s business aspects such as procedures, products, and services over online platforms. E-commerce is a broad system of online business activities involving products and services. The two main categories of e-commerce are business –to-business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) (Bhasker 2006, p.46). 3.2. Issues and benefits There are a number of challenges facing e-commerce in the business world. As usual, employees are often reluctant to changes and they tend to resist changes that directly threaten their jobs. As an example, e-commerce provides a platform for businesses to directly contact their customers and make sales; this eliminates the need for marketers, especially direct marketers that need to travel from one point to the other. To the business, this is a cost saving but to the marketer, it is a job threat and that is why there are always resistance to integration of e-commerce into an organization (Zhou 2004, p.6). The other e-commerce challenge is lack of proper understanding of the guiding principles of e-commerce. Integration of e-commerce with limited knowledge often proves fatal and an additional cost instead of increasing sales (Watson & Lewis 2012). E-commerce undoubtedly provides a cost effective solution to a business, it eliminates barriers that contribute to increased cost of doing business. The first one of geographical limitation, since e-commerce is based on online platform, the need to traverse large distances looking for customers is eliminated (Bhasker 2006, p.45). Notably, the advent of m-commerce is also playing an important role in eliminating existing geographical barriers because majority of the people globally can afford a hand-held device with internet connectivity. It is also possible to profoundly increase customer base online as compared to an offline business mode. With high visibility on search engines, it is by far possible to have a wide clientele base because most customers often use the search engines such as Google and Binge to search key words or products that they need to purchase (Graubner-Müller 2011). It is often possible for these clients to land on new e-commerce everyday and start transacting. E-commerce offers lower costs which allow the company to pass the lowered cost to the consumer in terms of discounts on prices (Deans 2005, p.47). Some of the most common ways of cost reduction in e-commerce includes marketing and advertising using organic search engines like social media traffic marketing and pay-per-click, personnel required can be reduced by using automated checkout, payments, billing and inventory management. E-commerce also eliminates one of the major needs of businesses, a physical location. Other benefits includes elimination of travel and time cost, availability of alternative shopping options, large pool of information, availability throughout and creation of niche products among others. 3.3. Current trends and examples in e-commerce There are new trends in e-commerce at the moment; one of the most common e-commerce trends is the m-commerce. M-commerce is the use of portable devices such as mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and tablets among others to conduct online transactions. E-commerce has evolved to include these devices in order to make online transactions even more convenient and flexible as compared to traditional offline transactions. According to Mohapatra (2012, p.34) the other trend in e-commerce is the advent of online merchant payment solutions. This allows for a transaction with all the available options such as Paypal, Visa, MasterCard, Maestro Card, and bank transaction within one system. The availability of these options to the customer makes it more flexible for them to pay for products and services using any means convenient to them. The traditional middle men have also been transformed online, this is the current trend, and these middle men achieve this by linking the buyer and the seller at a common market place (Basu 2007, p.12). E-bay is a good example of this, alibaba.com is also another example, and all these online supermarkets allow payments using any means available and also allow the user to view the transaction on wait list or in the virtual shopping basket (Shah 2009). 4. Recommendations It is important for Amanda Jane Horse Wear to integrate e-commerce solution to its business because of the advantages that comes with e-commerce integration. Since Amanda Jane Horse Wear is targeting the public for sale of horse apparel, the first step that Amanda Jane Horse Wear should consider is having a website about the products that the company is offering and explanation of different brands and prices. This will be the first step of creating an e-commerce platform. The second step is integrating merchants’ payment solutions to the website created and create a list of products, prices, shipping expenses and alternatives. This will allow the visiting customer to view the different apparels available and make purchases online. The advantage of integrating a merchant’s payment solution is because of its existing capabilities. It will manage transactions on behalf of the company and also ensure the safety of the funds without involving the company. After integrating the solution to the website, ensuring visibility will be another crucial step for the company (Omkarprasad & Kumar 2006). Having a website that is not visible to users is of no use, at this stage different marketing strategies should be employed to acquire online presence and hence have a substantial traffic channeled towards the website. This system is recommended to Amanda Jane Horse Wear because it will offer a cheaper alternative to opening many stores in many areas with potential market. Online solution through a website will save on the cost. By doing so, a discount can always be given to customers and hence helping the company to increase its sales. 5. System specifications In order for this system integration to be possible, the offices of Amanda Jane Horse Wear must have a small Local Area Network with computers, servers and other network resources. Information personnel will also be needed in order to ensure that the LAN and the servers communicate effectively (Nagurney 2006). People The employees concerned with sales and marketing will be mandated the task of updating the products and prices frequently in order to reflect the existing market expectations ( Liu & Hai 2005). The information personnel will be responsible for maintaining the system and ensuring that the information updated by the sales and marketing team is integrated into the e-commerce website. Procedure Introduction of computers, servers and other network resources will be the main changes upon the installation of the e-commerce website. The employees will be trained on the importance of the new website solution to the company’s growth (Ferreira 2009). Data A feedback mechanism for the products and brands of Amanda Jane Horse Wear will be integrated into the website in order for issues that develop in the course of the business to be addressed in a timely manner. The system will also give daily and weekly report on sales; this will also compare with the past days and weeks in order to allow for effective monitoring of the changes in sales (Gillespie & Jeannet 2012). 6. Conclusion This report recommends an e-commerce website with merchant’s payment solution to Amanda Jane Horse Wear. The rationale for the proposal is because of the cost effectiveness of the system and access to wider potential clients because e-commerce employs the internet which basically eliminates geographical barriers and the need for middle-men. 7. References  Basu, S 2007, Global Perspectives on E-commerce Taxation Law, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.,London. pp.12-45. Bhasker, B 2006, Electronic Commerce: Framework, Technologies and Applications, Tata McGraw-Hill Education, London. Pp.45-56 Deans, PC 2005, E-commerce and M-commerce Technologies, Idea Group Inc (IGI), New Jersey.pp. 47-65. Djeraba, C 2003, Multimedia Mining: A Highway to Intelligent Multimedia Documents, Springer, New York.pp.113-119. Elaine, JH, 2013, What is E-Commerce? BusinessNewsDaily Contributor August 02 2013. Ferreira, WN 2009, Design of a Multi-echelon Global Supply Chain Network with MicrosoftRTM Excel Premium Solver Platform, ProQuest, New York. Gillespie, K & Jeannet JP 2012, Global Marketing, Cengage Learning, Michigan. Pp.234-243. Graubner-Müller , A 2011, Web Mining in Social Media: Use Cases, Business Value and Algorithmic Approaches for Corporate Intelligence, BoD – Books on Demand, New York. pp. 40-49. Liu, F.-HF & Hai, HL 2005, The voting analytic hierarchy process method for selecting supplier. Int. J. Prod. Econ vol. 97 , no.3, pp. 308-317.  Mohapatra, S 2012, E-Commerce Strategy: Text and Cases, Springer, London.PP. 34-45. Müller, H & Pun, T 2004, Learning from user behavior in image retrieval: Application of market basket analysis, International Journal of Computer Vision, vol.56, no.1/2, 65-77. Nagurney, A 2006, Supply Chain Network Economics: Dynamics of Prices, Flows And Profits, Edward Elgar Publishing, London. Omkarprasad, SV & Kumar, 2006, Analytic hierarchy process: an overview of applications. EJOR, 169:1-29. Patel, BV & Meshram, BB, 2012, Content Based Video Retrieval Systems. International Journal of UbiComp (IJU), vol.3, no.2. PP.13-19. Reynolds, J 2004, The Complete E-Commerce Book: Design, Build & Maintain a Successful Web-based Business, CRC Press, London. Pp. 5-10. Rosen, A 2002, The E-commerce Question and Answer Book: A Survival Guide for Business Managers, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, New York. P.2-7. Shah 2009, Supply Chain Management: Text And Cases, Pearson Education India, London. Watson, M & Lewis, S 2012, Supply Chain Network Design: Applying Optimization and Analytics to the Global Supply Chain, FT Press, New York. Zhou, Z 2004, E-commerce and Information Technology in Hospitality and Tourism, Cengage Learning, New York. P.6. Zhu, X & Davidson, I 2007, Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining: Challenges and Realities, Idea Group Inc (IGI), Chicago.pp. 101-108. Read More