Benefits and Limitations of E-Business

Once the meaning and types of e-commerce are clear, the Andhra Pradesh Intermediate Commerce syllabus expects a student to weigh the genuine advantages that e-business offers against the real problems it still faces.

On the side of benefits, e-business greatly widens market reach, allowing even a small firm to offer its products to customers across the state, the country or the world without opening a physical branch in every location. It reduces transaction and operating costs, since a firm can save on rent for large showrooms, on the number of intermediaries in the distribution chain, and on paperwork, by handling orders, invoicing and payments electronically. It offers round-the-clock, twenty-four-hour convenience, letting a customer browse and buy at any time rather than only during a shop's business hours. It also makes comparison shopping easy, since a buyer can compare prices, features and reviews of similar products from several sellers within minutes, which improves competition and generally benefits consumers.

For businesses, e-commerce data also enables better and faster decision-making, since patterns in customer orders, preferences and feedback can be tracked electronically and used to plan production, pricing and promotion more accurately than through traditional, slower feedback methods. It further supports faster and often more transparent delivery tracking, since a customer can usually follow the status of an order from confirmation to delivery. …