Rajiv Sharma, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.452, Volume 07 Issue 05, May 2017, Page 47-50 E-Commerce in India Rajiv Sharma (Asst Professor, A.S. College, Khanna, Punjab, India) Definition: The buying & selling of products & Abstract: E-commerce is definitely one of the services by businesses & customers through on business options that one will have to explore in the electronic medium, without using any paper future. Ecommerce is said to bring about paradigm documents. E-commerce is widely considered the shift in the world for trading. Prediction ebuying & selling of products over the internet, but commerce is showing tremendous business growth any transaction that is completed solely through in our country. Backed by increased online user electronic measures can be considered ebase & mobile phone presentation, Indian ecommerce. E-commerce is subdivided into threecommerce has seen impressive growth in the last categories: business to business or B 2 B (Cisco), few years. Considering India’s demographic business to consumer or B 2 C (Amazon) & dividend & rising internet accessibility, the sector Consumer to consumer C 2 C (eBay). is slated to scale greater heights. Although, India’s overall retail opportunity is substantial, the sector is ECOMMERCE in India: beset with some serious challenges. The present study has been undertaken to describe the present status & future growth of e-commerce in India. Analyze the present trends of e-commerce in India & examine the challenges & opportunities of ecommerce in India. Keywords: E-commerce, Online retail, Increasing internet users, Electronic fund transfer. Introduction E-commerce stands for electronic commerce. It means dealing in goods & services through the electronic media & internet. The rapid growth of ecommerce in India is being driven by greater customer choice & improved convenience with the help of internet the vendor or merchant who sells products or services directly to the customer from the portal using a shopping basket system or digital cart & allows payment trough debit card, credit card or electronic fund transfer payments. In the present scenario e-commerce market & its space is increasing in demand as well as an impressive display or range of a particular type of services. Ecommerce is already appearing in all areas of business, customer services, new product development & design. E-commerce business is growing in India because of wide range of product with minimum price wide range of suppliers & customers internet. In this modern era every business units want to join online business because increasing ratio of internet users in India. Ecommerce in India is still in growing stage but it offers considerable opportunity. There are some essential factors which will significantly contribute to the boom of e-commerce industry in India i.e. Legal requirement of generating invoices for online transactions, multiple payment option, replacement guarantee, quick service, the product quality and dedicated 24/7 customer care centre should be there. Ecommerce also provides various types of opportunities for retailers, wholesalers/distributors, producers and also people. A. Services for Producers Producers can take advantage of ecommerce by linking themselves with online, by giving better information about their product to the other links in the business chain and by having brand identity. Producers can sell their goods directly to the consumers and retailers. Providers has easy potential for communication and they can no longer rely on the customer to be forced to communicate with them by sending leaflets or through advertisements. B. Services for whole Distributor Wholesalers can take advantage of ecommerce who is capable of establishing contractors with reputed producers and linking their business with the on-line. Ecommerce decreases the cost of creating, processing, distributing, storing and retrieving information by digitizing the process. C. Services for People http://indusedu.org This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Page 47 Rajiv Sharma, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.452, Volume 07 Issue 05, May 2017, Page 47-50 People can buy with a click of mouse button without moving out of their house or office, online services such as banking , ticketing including airlines ,bus, railways, hotel booking etc have been tremendous benefit for the customers. E-commerce allows consumers to interact in electronic communities and to exchange ideas and compare experiences. D. Services for Retailers A Retailer can save his existence by linking his business with the on-line distribution.They can make available much additional information about various things to the consumers, meet electronic orders and be in touch with the consumers all the time. Retailer put the information of their product on such web site which is heavily visited by user like yahoo.com etc. When their product advertisement is seen by many people, more customers will get attracted and thus merchant can get more orders. Advantages of e-commerce A. To Consumers: The distinct advantages e-commerce can offer to the consumers include but are not confined to the following only: (i) Consumers have a much wider choice available on the cyber market. (ii) They bear lower costs for products due to increased online competition among sellers. (iii) Because of wide-scale information dissemination, consumers can compare products, features, prices and even look up reviews before they select what they want. (iv) They enjoy wider access to assistance and to advice from experts and peers. (v) They enjoy saving in shopping time and money. (vi) Consumers also avail of fast services and delivery of products and services. (vii) They also have the convenience of having their orders delivered right to the door step. (viii) Finally, consumers are driven to eshopping in hordes as even branded goods cost less on the Net. B. To Suppliers: The major advantages that ecommerce can bring to the companies/suppliers are: 1. It minimizes inventory cost E-commerce venture need not maintain huge inventories or expensive retail showrooms. Their marketing and sales force is a fraction of that of traditional mortarbased businesses. Ecommerce can minimize inventory costs by adopting just-intime (JIT) system enhancing the firm’s ability to forecast demand more accurately. 2. It can improve customer services It has been found that providing both customer and after-sale services account for up to 10 per cent of the operating costs. By putting these services on-line under ecommerce, these costs get reduced, on the one hand, and simultaneously the quality of services also gets improved, on the other. High quality customer relationship called” “customization” is crucial for retaining custom-ers in the e-commerce environment. That is the reason why Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become the buzzword which everybody is talking of now. Ecommerce provides ample opportunity for Customer Relationship Management solution and, in turn, in establishing better relationship with the customers. It becomes absolutely necessary for the company to enhance customer loyalty. Otherwise the customer, who is full of choices, can jump from one website to another. If company is to stay in business then it will have to deliver the products or services to customers as they want, when they want, and how they want. 3. It reduces distribution costs as well The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) based on Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study has revealed that the time needed to process an order declined abruptly by a minimum of 50 per cent to a maximum of 96 per cent. It is really amazing. 4. It helps business globalize E-commerce by minimizing costs enables companies’ especially small ones to make information on its products and services available to all the potential customers spread over worldwide. This is well confirmed by Amazon. Com. founded by Jeff Bezos, the largest bookstore in the net by taking away a large amount http://indusedu.org This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Page 48 Rajiv Sharma, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.452, Volume 07 Issue 05, May 2017, Page 47-50 of sales from the traditional booksellers. In India, the experience of reinfusion-on-the- net presents the similar case. problem that early stage of ecommerce startup will face. C. Product Target 5. It helps market products more quickly By taking the entire product design process online, drawing partners and customers into the process and removing the traditional communication barriers, companies can bring products and services to market far more quickly. Internet commerce solutions allow customer to reduce the costs of sales and open new markets, speed and simplify order accuracy, approval, and processing, tracking and delivery and improve decision making, leverage existing investments in infrastructure, business systems and repositions and link manufacturers with suppliers on the same network. CHALLENGES IN E-COMMERCE More companies flood the marketplace with new products; target marketing is becoming an increasingly important tool of differentiation. Product which is not satisfactory for the customers tend to got replaced or returned. Some products take long delivery time to reach customers home. Delivery time of products may range from days to month .This is major issue which leads into overall loss in revenue, loss of shipment costs and reputation. The average Indian customer poses great trust issues for e-commerce transactions. D. Less Awareness There are some barriers responsible for slow growth of e-commerce in India. Hamilton (2002)2 indicate some barrier in using e-commerce including security problems, lack of skills, cost etc. Customer resistance to changing from a real to virtual store. People do not yet sufficiently trust paperless, faceless transactions. For the growth of E-business in India it needs a focus and should to make country in the lines of E-business. Indian customers are more comfortable in buying products comfortable. They tend to choose the product by touching the product directly. Majority of Indian rural population are unaware of internet and it uses. When it comes to ratio of internet consumers, scenario is not so admirable one. Very few are aware of the online corruption and fraud and thus darkness still exists. A reliable survey reveals that 50% of Indian online users are unaware of solution of online security. A. Security Issues E. Cash on Delivery Fear of making online payment is a universal psychological factor of Indian customers. 60% of the users do not trust the web as payment channel. Web transaction takes place with credit card, but credit card itself is not safe. Anyone who can transfer the data of credit card on the web is not sure about the salesman identity. Buyer is also not sure that card is not used for malicious purpose which also causes big challenge for e-commerce in banking also. E-commerce companies are offering COD as one of mode of payment for the buyers. It is seen that majority of the customers denied to make the payment at the time of delivery of the product. 30%50% of buyers are also taking advantage of this while purchase of any product and service over internet. COD has been introduced to counter the payment security issues of online transaction but this mode has been proving expensive to companies. B. Customer Acquisition Forces Conclusion Successful e-commerce interaction between markets should be strong. Issues related to lack of supply chain integration, high charges for products, delay in delivery and lack of proper courier services in some areas also make customers frustrated and one of challenge faced by ecommerce. To get people to come on e-commerce site and make purchase involves heavy cost due to advertisement and marketing which is biggest E-commerce provides various services to wholesalers who can take advantage of Ecommerce and capable of establishing contractors with reputed producers and linking their business with the on-line. Also Retailers meet electronic orders and should be in touch with consumers all the time with Ecommerce. Nowadays, E-commerce is the extensive use of computer network with internet. http://indusedu.org This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Page 49 Rajiv Sharma, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.452, Volume 07 Issue 05, May 2017, Page 47-50 REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Kaur,P.and Joshi, M.M., “E-Commerce in India: A Review”, IJCST,Vol.3, Issue 1,Jan-March 2012,pp802-804 Kaur,Ranmeet, E-Commerce in India, Asian journal of research in business economics and management, vol.2, issue 6,2012 Awais and Samin(2012),Advanced SWOT Analysis of E-Commerce, International journal of Computer Sciences Issues, Vol.9, Issue 2. Abhijit Mitra,E-Commerce in India-A Review, International Journal of marketing, Financial Services & Management Research, Vol.2, No.2, February (2013). 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