Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is very popular by the advent of commercial services on internet. Internet commerce is just a part of e-commerce. Electronic commerce is playing a huge role in changing the way of carrying out business where buying and selling of products and services are carried out. Electronic commerce includes electronic trading of goods, services. Today, many companies are switching towards e-commerce for increasing their business. Before e-commerce became popular and widely accepted, means of trading goods and services was known as traditional commerce.
Traditional commerce Vs. Electronic commerce
In traditional commerce, traditional manual methods were or are used for exchange of goods and services and for all fund related transactions like funds transfers. Traditional commerce included a lot of paperwork which consumed time a lot which ultimately increased the cost of products and services.
In contrast, electronic commerce referred to paperless work and exchange of products and services or any information using Electronic Data Interchange, e-mail, electronic funds transfer. Due to this, manual process got automated which further reduced time, cost of products and services and as a result, productivity and efficiency went up. E-commerce , undoubtedly, played a very huge role in increasing economy of country.
Some of the advantages of e-commerce can be listed as below:
1. Paperless exchange of goods.
2. Overcome on traditional methods.
3. Increase in productivity and efficiency.
4. Expansion in business globally.
Some of the disadvantages of e-commerce can be listed as below:
1. Reliability.
2. Security if adequate security hasn't provided then huge loss can be incurred.
3. Late deliveries of goods is a huge concern.
e-commerce can be utilized in various phases of trade cycles viz., Repeat trade cycle, credit transactions and cash transactions.
Repeat Trade cycle: Regular and repeatition of transactions between two commercial trading partners or companies.
Credit transactions: These kind of transactions occur when there are irregular transactions between commercial trading partners where execution and settlements gets separated.
Cash transactions: These occur when there are once-off trading relationships between trading partners where execution and settlements are usually combined.