Commerce or Electronic Commerce means buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet.
E-Commerce (e-commerce) or electronic commerce, a subset of e business, is the purchasing, selling, and exchanging of goods and services over computer networks (such as the Internet) through which transactions or terms of sale are performed electronically.
The advantages of e - commerce are discussed below:
(i) Wider choice: With the help of a well-developed computer networking system, business units can operate at the national as well as global level. The customers thus, have a wider choice of products and services. The businessmen also get a wider market for their products and services.
(ii) Improved customer services: Suppliers of goods and services can offer a wide range of services to the customers, before as well as after sales such as information about products, guidance for use, responding to customers' querries about quality and usefulness of the product, etc.
(iii) Quick response to customer needs: In e-commerce business transactions take far less time as compared to the normal process of buying and selling. This is because the producers cut short the distribution channel and supply products and services directly to consumers.
(iv) Cost saving and price reduction: There is substantial cost saving in business transactions conducted through e-commerce. There is no need to display goods in showrooms or keep large stock in godowns. The number of employees required to carry on the business is less. Thus, the cost of operation naturally comes down. So the customers may get goods at a lower rate.
(v) Market information: Access to market information available through the internet enables business concerns to identify varied customer needs and produce new goods and better services accordingly.
