Advantages and Disadvantages of E-Commerce
Due to today’s digital age, we have gone far ahead. In old times, when we had to buy something, we used to go to the shop. But times have changed a lot. Ever since online shopping e-commerce sites like Flipkart, Amazon, and Meesho have come, shopping has changed, but do you know the advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce, which is very important for you to know about it?
Advantages of e-commerce
Following are the various Advantages of e-commerce:
1) Quick purchase process to save time
The problem with a traditional physical store is that the product that the consumer wants to buy may or may not be available, which may lead to delay in purchase. E-commerce eliminates such problems and consumers can easily get the products. It helps the consumer to choose from a wide range of products, as well as from other sellers, makes the network of available goods more efficient and makes the process of processing payments faster. With the availability of a wide range of options from a spectrum of sellers, e-commerce is not only helpful in diversification of the market but also helps in reaching the global market online. All these processes also help in reducing the travel and delivery time of the products.
2) Personalized Stores as per Consumer Preferences
This comes from a major aspect of conducting online business. As features enhance the shopping experience. Each user is first introduced to a different page based on their location and advanced search to make a purchase. The consumer’s purchase history also reflects the personalized experience of online commerce. It allows consumers to avail services like special benefits and discounts to meet customer expectations based on their loyalty, order history, etc.
3) Reduce recurring costs by hiring virtual support resources
One of the major factors that helps reduce costs for e-commerce is the outsourcing of functions to different countries or employees that e-commerce businesses use. This makes it possible for a company to have a presence in multiple locations at a fraction of the cost of a physical presence.
4) Retargeting customers is easy
Retaining a customer is an important part of maintaining a customer base. Below are some techniques that can be used to retarget customers:-
• Sharing coupons when customers leave the checkout page is a good strategy.
• By sending emails that are pushing upsells and cross-selling.
• By redirecting the consumer to the desired web page or targeted advertising based on consumer data.
5) Easy to encourage potential purchases
Impulse buying is an important tool in the strategy of sellers where it works as a way for consumers to act on their preference for particular products. It acts on the psychological behaviour of humans where some of us have personality traits that encourage impulsivity. This is often due to the urge to feel good, and also the attempt to gain emotional value from certain products that make them feel good.
6) Available Reviews
The review system allows the consumer to make a decision based on a variety of factors as well. The presence of positive comments or high ratings of one’s business not only adds value, but it also builds consumer trust on the product as well as the business. It not only makes the business transparent, it also helps consumers to give their opinion about their choice in products.
7) Detailed information available to the consumer
The availability of detailed information is one of the major strengths of e-commerce. All consumers always want to get detailed information on the product they are interested in as it helps them make an informed decision. The availability of information allows the consumer to assess the relevance and value of the product or service according to their needs. It is the detailed description of the product that helps the consumer to make a confident choice according to their needs.
8) Quality Service at Significantly Lower Operating Costs
When it comes to physical presence of businesses, operating costs are a major expense. Usually for a business to maintain a physical presence, they have to pay a lot of money in the form of rent, salaries for employees, maintenance and other expenses. E-commerce plays a vital role in reducing the cost of operations by eliminating a significant portion of that expense as the business does not have to depend on physical presence to provide quality service.
9) Quick and Affordable Marketing
E-commerce offers businesses a cost-effective way to market effectively. This is in contrast to the costly and time-consuming processes used in physical marketing practices. Some pointers to understand marketing techniques are listed below:
* Availability of quality content to attract customers, this is a key factor to be more visible or noticeable in the market. Creative marketing videos explaining the product and services for better understanding.
* Social networking is important to ensure one’s presence everywhere and helps in developing popularity for a product. Applying different tricks to reach out to customers, which is easy through digital marketing techniques.
10) E-commerce has flexibility with 24/7 service capability
Flexibility in terms of both accessibility and affordability are the key areas where e-commerce is powerful compared to traditional stores and retail locations as it allows 24/7 service to the consumer. Not only does it have the ability to provide round the clock shopping options, but e-commerce also helps consumers by providing chat support, recommendations and identifying the products that the consumer demands at any time and place.
Disadvantages of e-commerce
There are many disadvantages of e-commerce, some of which are listed below:
1) Lack of personal touch
What plays a huge role in consumer satisfaction is the ability to see and touch any product in person. This is a crucial factor when it comes to customer satisfaction because even the best detailed, articulated and explained product may fail to convince and attract the consumer.
2) Uncertain about quality
When it comes to buying products online, it is difficult for the consumer to determine its quality. It is also common that there has been corruption when it comes to artificially boosting sales and fake reviews for low quality or faulty product.
3) Late delivery
One of the assurances of businesses practising e-commerce is the delivery time of the product. There is a whole range of problems that come up at the time of delivery of the purchased product; therefore businesses avoid giving exact delivery dates and try to provide windows for the same. Many times, this results in the consumer having to wait for the product for longer than the assured period of time.
4) Difficulty in purchasing certain products
Certain precious products like gold and customized products like made-to-order furniture (due to measurement issues) are difficult to be purchased online. Trust is a key factor when it comes to the authenticity of these products, and the lack of ability to physically verify them can act as a barrier to purchasing products online.
5) Site crash issues
There is still some uncertainty about the functioning of servers and the availability of round-the-clock and quality internet service. This can cause a lot of hindrance from a sales perspective, and it can hurt consumers as they may have to wait for an unspecified amount of time for the transaction to proceed.
6) Cybercrime and data privacy issues: Last but not the least
E-commerce is prone to cyber security threats as well as data breaches specific to the cyber world. E-commerce web portals are more prone to information than any other online site, as these sites/portals store users’ data, including financial details of buyers and sellers. Hence there is a constant challenge to secure this data from a wide range of security challenges including malware, hacking, ransom ware as well as misuse of personal sensitive information / preferences for targeted marketing / campaigns etc.
Conclusion : Advantages and Disadvantages of e-commerce
E-commerce sites are being used extensively all over the world but let us tell you that there are Advantages and Disadvantages of e-commerce as well due to which there are some items which cannot be purchased online. The quality of the item ordered from the e-commerce site cannot be estimated which is its biggest Disadvantage of e-commerce .
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