E-Commerce and Its Emerging Trends

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What is e-commerce…………………………………………………………..p. 3

How did e-commerce begin…………………………………………………..p. 3

Revenue generated by E-Commerce………………………………………….p. 3

Social Media and E-Commerce……………………………………………….p. 4

Mobile Technology……………………………………………………………p. 4

“Founding Fathers” of E-Commerce…………………………………………..p. 5

Value Propositons………………………………………………………………p. 5

Conclusions……………………………………………………………………..p. 6

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….p. 7

Shopping online is arguably one of the most trending directions the internet has gone in the last few decades. We’ve come to the point where we can’t even imagine a world without being able to shop online because it would be a huge inconvenience to consumers and a detriment to companies that operate their businesses online. E-commerce is simply being able to sell and buy products on the internet and it is one of the biggest emerging trends in our world today. E-commerce was first introduced in the 1960s via an electronic data interchange on value-added networks (Rivera, A. 2017). Once the internet started becoming more available to people across the world, then e-commerce started to really expand and becoming as big as it has become. CompuServe was the first networking service for people who used computers at home and they were the one’s that introduced Electronic Mall, which allowed consumers to buy products from nearly 110 different companies. Tim Berners-Lee created the “WorldWideWeb” in 1990 and with the help of the National Science Way, who helped lift a ban on companies selling their product online, this was the beginning of e-commerce and the way its become one of the biggest markets.

The US Census Bureau released a report showing retail e-commerce sales reached an estimated %105.7 Billion in Quarter one 2017, a 4.1 percent increase over the previous quarter and 14.7 percent year-over-year increase compared to quarter 1 2016 (Gesenhues, A. 2017). E-commerce continues to grow at such a rapid pace and eventually will become the biggest contributor to retail sales as time goes on. The trend has become doing everything digitally because its quicker, easier and more convenient for the consumer. About 71% of consumers are shopping online to find the best price and 50% of shoppers have made more than one purchase in the past year (Lazar, M. 2017). One of the biggest drivers to the increase in sales of e-commerce is arguably social media. With the emergence of social media, it has paved the way for online retailers to promote and advertise their companies. Social media sites increasingly act as points of entry to e-commerce sites, and vice-versa, as e-commerce sites build rating, loyalty and referral systems tied to social media (Schumacher, R. 2011). Another affiliate to e-commerce would be the emergence of mobile technology and mobile-commerce which is its own market, but they play hand and hand with one another. Now with the importance of Smartphone, this adds another way of us buying goods online at our own fingertips. We don’t even need to be at home to be able to go on the internet and buy something digitally. We can even place an order at Starbucks and better yet, purchase our order without having to be in the store. We are rapidly approaching the time where designs must be created for the mobile web first, and for the desktop second (Schumacher, R. 2011).

Two of the biggest companies that have dominated the e-commerce market are Amazon and eBay. Amazon started off as a book shipping business but as the internet grew, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon realized there is room for growth for his company and now you can purchase almost anything you’d like on Amazon. eBay on the other hand was founded by Pierre Omidyar who had a different idea on how he’d like to tackle the digital retail market and that was to get people around the world to sell their own things on his website. eBay was like a link from buyer to seller without having to sell anything but just provide a way for the consumer to purchase things from the owner from anywhere around the world. Amazon’s lead in the mobile shopping space is growing by a wide margin, tripling the number of the US unique visitors to its mobile app over the past two years (Kim, E. 2017). Amazon and eBay are the “founding fathers” of how to do business in the e-commerce market but there are other companies that are becoming just as big like Ali Babas and Wal-Mart. There is no doubt that eBay and Amazon are the perfect examples of success in the e-commerce market and they were the ones that jumped at the opportunity first.

E-Commerce retailers are no different than in-store retailers when it comes to customer satisfaction and what they are trying to provide their consumers other than the products itself. The value proposition for online retailers can vary from customer service, free shipping, reward points… these are all factors that online retailers can consider when building their value proposition to ultimately ensure that customers are happy with their service. Your company’s value proposition is the reason consumers buy your products or services. You may have more than one value proposition, as every customer segment you serve may derive value from different aspects of your offer (Traxler, D. 2012). Every company can have a different value proposition, but this is a critical part to any business because you are targeting a certain market and you must ensure that you value things that your consumers can relate too. Amazon’s value proposition is based on three important factors which are: Convenient, fast and choice. They have followed this model and I think we can all agree that when you think of Amazon, those are the three things you get from your experiences with them. That could be in direct correlation with why Amazon’s revenue is estimated to grow 20% in each of the net couple years compared to one of their competitors, Wal-Mart which is estimated at 3-4% growth (Shaw, B. 2014).