Issues Facing Ecommerce

Firstly, one of the least harmful issues being that conversions between:

-times
-currencies
-language

that come about when doing business internationally.  Foreign countries face issues with this when dealing with big trading partners such as the United States. (Smeu, www.cosmin.com/pr/article-ecommerce-globalization.html) Confusion occurs when dealing with different measurement units, and currencies.  Language barriers may completely cause the consumer to buy locally or restrict their online purchases. (Smeu, www.cosmin.com/pr/article-ecommerce-globalization.html) 

Another issue that should be assessed is one that is more serious; an issue of security, and safety.  There are several different possibilities that could occur during a transaction that could compromise the safety of the transaction.  When a transaction is in process, a lot of sensitive information is exchanged, for example:

-credit card numbers
-banking information
-passwords to accounts
-PIN numbers
-other private information 

This information could be intercepted by a third party or used by the company in a negative way. (United Postal Services, eCommerce Security.) The information can be altered and delivered to another address in hopes of stealing the products, the information can be used to make additional charges to another the individual’s account, the possibilities are endless. 

Another harmful issue surrounding ecommerce is the negative impact of making online purchases relating to the possibility of addiction.  Individuals can purchase products and easily

1. lose track of how much money they have spent,
2. do not have physical reminders of how much they have purchased,
3. continue to buy. 
Furthermore, the perception of the products being purchased becomes altered through a variety of ways:

-through larger pictures of the products
-audio clips and even
-video renderings. 

These renditions of the products draw you into them and force you to buy them, a sense of excitement is brought upon through the shopping experience.  (LaRose,http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol6/issue3/larose.html#learning)

Opportunities That Ecommerce Brings Forth

There are three different types of ecommerce:
- B2B - business-to-business
- B2C - business-to-consumer
- C2C - consumer-to-consumer 

These types of ecommerce were not as possible and easily done without the Internet and World Wide Web in the past.  B2B enables businesses to easily communicate over the World Wide Web and easily complete transactions. 

Business to consumer is the common purchases made at large business by an average individual, an example can be found at http://www.bestbuy.com/.  Best Buy allows the consumers to purchase any product in the store at their convenient website.  If the individual cannot go to the store because it is too far, they have no transportation, or time to go there; they can easily purchase the product online if they have a credit card. 

Benefits to Ecommerce B2C:

-Online businesses have lower overhead costs as they do not require as much staff in most situations, or stores, just large warehouses, and offices. (United Postal Services, eCommerce Security.)
-Most individuals have access to the Internet, at home, work, libraries or other places and can easily get involved in ecommerce purchases. (United Postal Services, eCommerce Security)  -----Ecommerce allows small businesses to be able to distribute their products all around the world, in a low cost fashion, and example of this would be this great antique shop’s website, http://www.tias.com/malls/pam/.  This tactic allows them to be able to compete on the international scale without large investments that they may not be able to afford.  (United Postal Services, eCommerce Security) 

Consumer to consumer allows an average individual to sell a product that they have to a fellow consumer, examples are:

-www.ebay.ca
-http://toronto.craigslist.org. 

These two sites connect consumers together to be able to sell products in auctions, or classified listings. 

All forms of ecommerce allow the consumer or business to become educated about the products they are interested in by viewing consumer reviews, or looking at high-resolution images of the products.  The World Wide Web arms the consumer with the capability to do comparison shopping for the products they are interested by easily clicking on what they are looking for. 

Globalization as a By-Product

Globalization is an important by-product of ecommerce.  Marshall McLuhan coined the term ‘global village’ making us realize that the planet was becoming smaller because of the communications infrastructure in place. (Symes, http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/bas9401.html)  Being that we are able to connect to people across the planet with in a click of a button, it is easy to adapt this technology so that businesses and everyday individuals are able to sell products and services online.  Instead of calling the store to find out if they carry a product, we now have adopted the World Wide Web as a means to access information about anything, even if a little store in Wisconsin carries a product that they would ship to Mississauga.  Ecommerce brings businesses closer to consumers, businesses closer to businesses, and consumers closer to consumers, which is a key aspect of globalization.  The physical space is no longer important; the virtual space is what matters.   

Evolution of Ecommerce

The evolution of ecommerce is very interesting, in the past, for B2B communications, companies were connected via intranet.  They used local network connections in order to communicate business orders. This connection caused the two businesses involved to commit to conducting business together for a long time simply because the investment was sizeable, and only connected these two companies.   (Trastour, Bartolini, Preist. http://www2002.org/CDROM/refereed/211/) As the World Wide Web evolved ecommerce evolved simultaneously.  Ecommerce now involved creating websites, and portals to sell products.  These new capabilities enabled the businesses involved to be able to forge relationships with other businesses.  (Trastour, Bartolini, Preist. http://www2002.org/CDROM/refereed/211/)

Personal Experiences with Ecommerce

I have only started making purchases online in the past year, however, now, I regularly make purchases online, with several different stores.  I feel that applications such as paypal, https://www.paypal.com, have made it easier for the average individual to make purchases online, whether they are consumer to consumer or business to consumer, or even business to business.  I have bought several items on ebay, www.ebay.ca, and I feel comfortable using paypal to make the purchases, and trusting the seller in that I will receive the item in a timely manner.  I have benefited a lot from ecommerce, I enjoy researching and comparing products online.  I also enjoy, www.amazon.com, and being able to easily click on books that I am interested in and receiving related items and other suggestions.