E-Commerce Activities: Impact, Global Reach, and Competitiveness

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of e-commerce activities and their impact on modern business organizations. It begins by defining e-commerce and its various types, such as business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and consumer-to-consumer. The essay highlights the advantages of e-commerce, using Tesco as an example of a traditional business that successfully transitioned to online operations, leading to increased revenues and reduced costs. It further discusses six key impacts of e-commerce, including global presence, improved competitiveness, electronic monitoring of customer preferences, analysis of product interest, vendor information management, and disintermediation. The challenges associated with globalization, such as the need for effective global strategies and understanding diverse customer preferences, are also explored. The essay concludes that while e-commerce offers significant opportunities for business growth, it also requires careful planning and investment to navigate the complexities of the global market.

Running head: ANALYSIS OF E-COMMERCE ACTIVITIES
ANALYSIS OF E-COMMERCE ACTIVITIES
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ANALYSIS OF E-COMMERCE ACTIVITIES
Answer 1
E-commerce refers to the activities related to the selling and buying of the services
and products over the internet. The process of selling with the help of e-commerce related
activities depends on the various technologies like, electronic transfer of funds, mobile
commerce related activities, management of supply chain, marketing with the help internet.
The modern e-commerce related activities are supported by the usage of the world wide web
for one part of the life cycle of the transaction. The typical types of e-commerce activities
include the purchase of online books from Amazon, purchasing music from the various music
apps and many more. The e-commerce activities mainly include three major areas which are,
online retailing, online auctions and electric markets (Mazzarol, 2015). The e-commerce
related business organizations can further employ other areas like, online shopping, providing
and participating in the online marketplaces, business-to-business transactions. The
ecommerce related activities consist of different types which are, business-to-business,
consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer, consumer-to-business, business-to-
administration and consumer-to-administration.
For example, Tesco had been operating its physical stores all across the various areas
in UK. However, the organization had started its online operations to compete with the
ecommerce giant Amazon. This had proven to be a huge step by Tesco which further led to
the increase in revenues of the organization within a shorty span of time. The ecommerce
business is able to provide major advantages to the business organizations like Tesco and the
consumers. Convenience is one of the most important factor that affects the ecommerce
business revenues. The facility that is provided by the ecommerce services are related to
shopping related activities at any time of day or night from the website of Tesco, is able to
attract more consumers (Hiles & Hon, 2016). The consumers can receive the entire details of
the products in the website from where they are to purchase the same. The visibility of

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products in the search engines is another major benefit that is received by Tesco after it
transformed its physical processes. The inventory management related costs of the company
were also reduced to huge levels which helped the business in saving huge amounts of
money. The organization was easily able to understand the buying related behaviour of the
consumers. The reviews that are provided by consumers on the website of Tesco has helped
in increasing the sales and the revenues of the organization (Doloto & Chen-Burger, 2015).
The reach of the ecommerce based services of Tesco is quite high and further helps in
increasing the customer base of the organization. The products that are sold on ecommerce
platforms have 24*7 availability as compared to the products sold in the physical stores of
Tesco. The investment that was required for the ecommerce based business of Tesco is low
and this has proved to be the best option for an organization like Tesco. The awareness
related to the brands of Tesco is increased among the customers which has been helpful for
the company to increase its profitability in the market. The various costs that are decreased
with the application of ecommerce include, advertising and marketing costs, personnel costs
and many more (Kumar & Vijayalakshmi, 2016).
Answer 2
The six different impacts that are caused on the business organization due to the
advent of ecommerce are,
 Firms now have a global presence and the customers have global choices as
well – The global presence of the firma demand higher levels of strategies
which can be helpful in understanding the global customers and managing the
operations in the various countries.
 Firms can improve their competitiveness and the quality of the services with
the help of access that is allowed to their services at any time of the day – The

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customers get access to the services of the firms at any time of the day and this
demands continuous alertness of the employees to address the issues and
needs of the customers at the earliest (Yang & Shi, 2016).
 The firms can monitor the preferences of the customers in an electronic
manner – The organizations are able to monitor the preferences of the various
customers faster and this further urges them to take appropriate actions to
formulate the services and products according to the choice of the customers.
 The firms can further analyse the interest in the various products that based on
the number of request for the information and the number of hits – The interest
of the customers can be analysed by firms with the help of website searches.
However, the searches may or may not have been done by the actual potential
customers. This can be quite misleading for the company (Levina & Vilnai-
Yavetz, 2015).
 The firms can obtain detailed information about the various vendors who
handle the mass customization related operations of the organization and the
personalized products as well.
 The roles that are played by the intermediaries in the various organizational
processes are reduced which is related to a process called disintermediation.
The first impact that is related to the globalisation of the services of various firms
with the help of ecommerce activities can be major challenge for many organizations. The
firms can face immense challenges related to the formation of effective globalisation
strategies which can be helpful for the company. The strategies of the firms further need to be
based on the different preferences of the customers belonging to the different countries or
regions (E-Commerce., 2018). The formation of appropriate strategies will require the
appointment of experts in the field which can prove to be of high cost for the various firms.

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Globalisation increases the reach of the consumers, however it also further increases the
responsibility of the organizations as well. This process of globalisation thereby requires the
formation of strategies by the various global firms. This will be helpful for the firms to
increase their revenues in the various global locations where they are planning to expand their
operations with the help of the ecommerce website (E-Commerce Definition - Entrepreneur
Small Business Encyclopedia., 2018). The expansion will help to increase their revenues,
however, the firms will also have to invest a huge amount of time and labour to understand
the new market area in which they can operate in a successful manner.

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References
Doloto, U., & Chen-Burger, Y. H. (2015). A Survey of Business Models in eCommerce.
In Agent and Multi-Agent Systems: Technologies and Applications (pp. 249-259).
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E-Commerce Definition - Entrepreneur Small Business Encyclopedia. (2018). Entrepreneur.
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commerce
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from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4872-what-is-e-commerce.html
Hiles, A., & Hon, F. B. C. I. (2016). E-Business Service Level Agreements: Strategies for
Service Providers, E-Commerce and Outsourcing. Rothstein Publishing.
Kumar, V. S., & Vijayalakshmi, N. (2016). Emerging Trends in E-Commerce. ITIHAS-The
Journal of Indian Management, 6(2).
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and comparison of individual firms and sets of firms in e-business. Electronic
Commerce Research and Applications, 14(6), 480-498.
Mazzarol, T. (2015). SMEs engagement with e-commerce, e-business and e-
marketing. Small enterprise research, 22(1), 79-90.
Yang, Z., & Shi, Y. (2016, October). Scale Expansion and Operations Inefficiency in Pure E-
commerce Firms. In Web Intelligence Workshops (WIW), IEEE/WIC/ACM
International Conference on (pp. 54-57). IEEE.

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