Information extracted from Vinisign and edited by Sam Lim – EduX Services

Electronic commerce, or E-commerce , which literally means buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over computer networks, has been around since mid 90s. However, recently, E-commerce is getting more and more attention from entrepreneur and consumers, both local and international. The reason for this could be due to the highly successful operations of some well-known names on the Internet, such as eBay, Yahoo and Dell. The sales revenue these companies shown in their annual reports are without doubt, one of the biggest factors why E-commerce is important in the commercial market nowadays .

E-commerce proved its importance based on the fact where time is important . In the commercial markets, time plays an important role to both the business and consumers. From the business perspective, with less time spent during each transaction , more transaction can be achieved on the same day. As for the consumer, they will save up more time during their transaction. Because of this, E-commerce steps in and replaced the traditional commerce method where a single transaction can cost both parties a lot of valuable time. With just a few clicks in minutes, a transaction or an order can be placed and completed via the Internet with ease. For instance, a banking transaction can be completed through the Internet within a few minutes compared to the traditional banking method, which may take up to hours due to queuing and the processing of the transactions. This fact obviously proves that E-commerce is beneficial to both business and consumer wise as payment and documentations can be completed with greater efficiency.

From the business viewpoint, E-commerce is much more cost effective compared to traditional commerce method. This is due to the fact where through E-commerce; the cost for the middleperson to sell their products can be saved and diverted to another aspect of their business . One example is the giant computer enterprise, Dell, which practice such a method by running most of their business through Internet without involving any third parties. Aside from that, marketing for E-commerce can achieve a better customer to cost ratio as putting an advertisement on the Internet is comparably much cheaper than putting up a roadside banner or filming a television commercial. For E-commerce , the total overheads needed to run the business is significantly much less compared to the traditional commerce method. The reason due to that is where most of the cost can be reduced in E-commerce . For example, in running an E-commerce business, only a head office is needed rather than a head office with a few branches to run the business. In addition to that, most of the cost for staff, maintenance, communications and office rental can be substitute by a single cost, web hosting for the E-commerce business.

To both the consumers and business, connectivity plays an important part, as it is the key factor determining the whole business. From the business point of view, E-commerce provides better connectivity for its potential customer as their respective website can