MTB Schools and Colleges
Course Title: Entrepreneurship Class: BSCS 5th Semester
Lecturer: Rana Atiq ur Rehman Lecture #: 20
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Discuss The Emerging Trends of the Internet & E-Commerce:
Peter F. Drucker has stated that the “truly revolutionary impact of the Information
Revolution is just beginning to be felt the explosive emergence of the Internet as a major,
perhaps eventually the major, worldwide distribution channel for goods, for services, and,
surprisingly, for managerial and professional jobs is profoundly changing economies,
markets, and industry structures; products and services and their flow; consumer
segmentation, consumer values, and consumer behavior, jobs and labor markets.”
This quote summarizes quite succinctly the tremendous impact that the Internet is having
on the global market place. The statistics appear to support this claim of profound change
from the “Internet explosion” the following table shows the results of E-commerce business.
Years to reach 50 Million users
Radio TV Cable Internet
38 Year 13 Year 10 Year 4 Year
Manufacturers and financial services companies are pushing their electronic-commerce
(e-commerce) initiatives especially aggressively. Media companies, retailers, and even
utilities, however, are also spending billions of dollars in hopes of mastering the Internet’s
promise and turning it into a revenue and profit generating tool for themselves.
Online business is very simple. Online technology provides a low cost, extremely efficient
way to display merchandise, attract customers, and handle purchase orders. But getting all
the parts of an e-commerce strategy to work smoothly can be a challenging experience.
Discuss The E-Commerce Challenge.
Electronic commerce (e-commerce) the marketing, promoting, buying, and selling of goods
and services electronically. It is simply the integration of business processes electronically
via information and communication technologies. The Internet is the new wave in
transacting business. E-commerce encompasses various modes of Internet use:
• E-tailing (virtual store fronts), which is a site for shopping and making purchases.
• Electronic data interchange (EDI), which is business-to-business exchange of data.
• E-mail and computer faxing.
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• Business-to-business buying and selling.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, online retail marketing is currently
experiencing about a 200 percent annual growth rate, with online traffic doubling every 100
days.
Challenges:
1- Cost:
The most immediate obstacle facing companies that seek to fully implement E-commerce
is the cost. Experts estimate that a small business would need an initial investment of
$10,000 to launch an E-commerce site and approximately 20 percent of the launching funds
to maintain it annually. The technical barriers involve both personnel and data.
2- E-Names or the Web Address:
The most basic step in e-commerce is to choose an Internet name. Perhaps surprisingly,
this step of choosing an Internet brand name isn’t easy. Because customers are less likely
to remember long or awkward names, short and snappy Web addresses are at a premium.
The dot-com renderings of big portions of the English vocabulary have been used up
already, as have obvious techno-permutations of those words. E-toys.com, Cyber-toys.com,
and NetToys.com, for example, are all taken, as is Toys.com. Network Solutions Inc. a
Herndon Virginia company that handles registration of domain names has issued 5 million
of the dot-com addresses to date.
3- Other Challenges:
Managing upgrades such as anticipating business needs and application.
Assuring security for a Web site & the back-in integration with existing company
systems.
Avoiding being a victim of fraudulent activities online.
Handling the costs required to maintain the site.
Finding and retaining qualified employees.
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