How E-commerce Creates New Opportunities for Entrepreneurs- TutorsIndia

How E-Commerce in India Creates New Opportunities for Entrepreneurs in 2020 Dr. Nancy Agens, Head, Technical Operations, Tutors India info@tutorsindia.com

I. INTRODUCTION E-commerce, also known as electronic commerce in its extended form, is a business model which is a process of buying of goods from retailers and selling it to the consumers, and also the financial transactions conducted electronically on the internet. For example, Flipkart.com is one of the most popular online stores in the e-commerce industry.

E- commerce provides many advantages to emerging entrepreneurs (Bermudez et al. 2012). They can ship products with logistics support, maintain financial transaction online, can open the store for 24*7, global coverage of the customers and less infrastructure cost for establishing a business.

Here ,some examples are listed below showing how e-commerce creates new opportunities for entrepreneurs:(Understanding eCommerce, 2019; Wu et al., 2011) 1. BY REDUCING THE COST OF INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDED FOR STARTING A BUSINESS As we all know, the traditional way of starting a business is quite costly and risky for a new entrepreneur as it needs huge investment in establishing the required infrastructure. In contrast to this, the online store does not need any support in terms of infrastructure to start a business and hence any kind of risk does not exist.

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SAVING ON RENT

There is no need to have a high charging rented space to start a business because all kind of commercial transaction is conducted through the internet. So, the entrepreneurs does not have to arrange extra money to rent a space. 

DECREASE IN NUMBER OF STAFF

Big physical setups are not present with e-commerce business, so there is no need of more work staff, which is a favourable condition for the entrepreneurs.

2. GLOBAL COVERAGE OF THE CUSTOMERS 

The business is always started in a regional locality, and therefore it has limited customers belonging to that area only, but e- commerce provides a medium to reach out and can buy and sell vice versa, the products internationally. For example, let an entrepreneur started a business of Banarsi sarees in a small locality of Banaras. The local area customers can only purchase that Sarees from the shop and therefore profit will be very nominal and restricted to the locality. Through ecommerse, the suppliers get the opportunity to register themselves with e-commerce websites through a contract.

Thus, the publicity of their products such as Saree in this case becomes straightaway available to entire list of

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customers associated with the ecommerce website. It is thus, ecommerce is helping not only sellers but also customers particularly remotely located from cities which don’t have direct access to the products.(Brzozowska & Bubel, 2015)

2. OMNIPRESENCE 

3. PERSONALIZATION AND CUSTOMIZATION OF CUSTOMERS HELP ENTREPRENEURS TO UNDERSTAND THE BEHAVIOR AND CHOICES OF THE CUSTOMERS 

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With the help of e-commerce [Bharati and Chaudhury(2015)], the entrepreneurs can customizes their websites to reach people internationally.

They can design the website according to the need of the locals of that particular country.

It also provides the facility to personalize the customer choices, by understanding the behavior through their past purchases and suggesting the products similar to their previous choices. This in-turn enhances the satisfaction level of the customers and profit margin of the entrepreneurs.(Bucko et al., 2018)

3. ADVERTISEMENT AND PROMOTION 

1. INTERACTIVITY 

Interactivity feature of e-commerce provides the entrepreneurs, the facility to interact with the people even before they become their customers. They can know the requirements of the people, and can provide the products according to their need only. This will decrease the chances of rejection of the product by the customer and hence increases the profit margin of the entrepreneur. (Kim & LaRose, 2004)

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E- commerce websites are characterised by its omnipresence behavior i.e it is almost available everywhere and at any point in time. Customers can purchase any products of different brands without physically going outside for shopping, at a single platform and at any time of their choice from their desktop only. This will help the entrepreneurs to reach out their business prospects and the customer can also get their needs fulfilled. For instance: we can purchase ethnic wear of almost all the popular brand from myntra.com at any time and also from anywhere. (Asheim & Isaksen, 2002)

Before purchasing anything , the customers should know about products and offers related to it and this can be easily achieved by advertisement and promotion. E-commerce websites can deliver the advertisement and promotional activity to the customer through the internet, very effectively and this will help to influence the customer for purchasing the goods. For example , the present e-commerce websites like flipkart, amazon offers the season end sale and big billion sale to the customers and advertise it so well over the internet , that when these sales started customers are in the queue to purchase the goods, which in turn enhances the profit margin of the sellers.

4. INFORMATION TRANSPARENCY

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Availability of bulk information in ecommerce markets, compel the sellers to keep the costs of the goods nominal.

Price transparency is characterized by

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the process ransparency refers to the ease with which customers can compare the variety of prices for a specific goods . for example customers can compare the cost of a particular policy, offered by different companies , and then can decide which one to purchase.

(Isenberg, 2010)

and Social Change. [Online]. 78 (8). pp. 1412–1425.

Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0 040162511000758.

REFERENCES [1] Asheim, B.T. & Isaksen, A. (2002). Regional innovation systems: the integration of local ‘sticky’and global ‘ubiquitous’ knowledge. The Journal of Technology Transfer. [Online]. 27 (1). pp.

77–86.

Available from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1013100 704794.

[2] Brzozowska, A. & Bubel, D. (2015). E-business as a New Trend in the Economy. Procedia Computer Science. [Online]. 65. pp. 1095–1104. Available from: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S187705 0915028732.

[3] Bucko, J., Kakalejčík, L. & Ferencová, M. (2018).

Online shopping: Factors that affect consumer purchasing behaviour. Cogent Business & Management. [Online]. 5 (1). pp. 1535751.

Available from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23311 975.2018.1535751.

[4] Isenberg, D.J. (2010). How to start an entrepreneurial revolution. Harvard business review. [Online]. 88 (6). pp.

40–50.

Available from: https://institute.coop/sites/default/files/resources/Isen berg - How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution.pdf.

[5] Kim, J. & LaRose, R. (2004). Interactive e-commerce: promoting consumer efficiency or impulsivity?

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[Online]. 10 (1). pp. JCMC10112. Available from: https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/articleabstract/10/1/JCMC10112/4614485.

[6]

Understanding eCommerce (2019). Benefits of eCommerce for Entrepreneurs. [Online]. 2019.

Understanding eCommerce. Available from: https://www.understandingecommerce.com/benefitsof-ecommerce-for-entrepreneurs/. [Accessed: 10 February 2020].

[7] Wu, J.-N., Zhong, W.-J. & Mei, S.-E. (2011).

Application capability of e-business, e-business success, and organizational performance: Empirical evidence from China. Technological Forecasting

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