What is e-commerce?
Electronic Commerce is simply called e-commerce, where the buying and selling of goods and services through the Internet, including payment processing, marketing, promoting, delivering, and servicing without visiting the store or speaking with any dealer. In today’s world, it is common practice in every person’s day-to-day activities. In simple words, If you wish to have a pancake to retrieve from job tension, you are not required to go out or order your clerk to buy the same, there are lots of applications (apps.) to do online ordering, payment processing, and delivery tracking. The only thing is to have a smart application accessible on mobile phones to do most of our needs by sitting in a chair. We can save more time, cost, and energy by practicing e-commerce functions in our daily routine, such as paying bills online, purchasing products, selling products, and booking doctor appointments. The below shows a generic customer purchasing process of a product online.
Customer Purchasing Process in Online - Flow Chart
Certain components are required to integrate through the e-commerce supply chain process to achieve an efficient supply of goods and services to enhance customer satisfaction.
Key components of e-commerce
- Online platform
- Product catalog
- Making customers experience the shopping sensation by having Carts and Checkout as a conformity
- Payment processing
- Order Management
- Inventory and Warehouse Management
- Customer Relationship Management
- Digital Marketing
- Internet Security
What is E-Fulfillment?
E-commerce consists of a specific area called E-commerce fulfillment, which involves the overall logistics operation including order handling, warehouse, packing, shipping, and delivery. Post-COVID-19, many businesses are competing in the market with the effective establishment of an e-fulfillment process to ensure the best service to the customer this is because logistics operations during a pandemic were the major problem faced by the retailers. This situation has educated every customer about the supply chain and its operations. For instance, during COVID-19, the marketing team intervenes in the logistical process in certain companies due to inefficient supply chain operations, which is unnecessary corruption among the departments. There are six major types of e-fulfillment models practiced in this century, image with a brief idea is illustrated below.
E-Fulfillment Process and Model
Adoption of buying and selling in E-commerce platforms is normalized and flexible after the COVID-19 pandemic, because, people have experienced lots of difficulties in shopping for daily needs, so they are compelled to use online purchasing apps to fulfill day-to-day needs. Even after the pandemic, individuals continue purchasing online due to user-friendly purchasing, saving costs and time. This has increased e-commerce retail users to 33% of users (2.71 billion users) of the world population in 2024, whereas in 2018, it was 23% of retail users (1.8 billion users) of online purchasing.
Source: DataReportal, eMarketer, eCommercefuel, Cowen Inc
In an e-commerce business, choosing the appropriate business model based on the business type and the product, and effective technological implementation will build up customers due to flexibility in purchasing online. The result of a successful e-commerce supply chain has been noted in past years with the increased trade value. According to the article by Forbes in March 2024, retail e-commerce trade value is expected to reach 6.3 Trillion US Dollars in 2025 and to meet 7.9 Trillion US Dollars in the next three years.
(Full article: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/ecommerce-statistics/#:~:text=The%20global%20e%2Dcommerce%20market%20is%20expected%20to%20be%20worth,from%20%245.8%20trillion%20in%202023.) At last, but not least, technological development in the business operation along with the educated community will smoothen the supply chain activities and saves environmental resources.
Never miss a story from us, get weekly updates in your inbox.