Future Trends of E-Commerce

Future Trends of E-Commerce

Outline

This paper deals with the future trends of e-commerce. The research project is focused on how the e-commerce market place will look like next year and after five years. The transformed position of the e-commerce after a decade is also discussed here. The improvement that has been made by the advanced technology on the future e-commerce transactions is the focusing point of this research paper.

Reply to the Tutor

E-commerce will provide improvement in the communications, processes and decision making. The application of e-commerce in organisation will facilitate the transferring of data in more accurate and speedy ways accessible to all of the individuals in the organisation. In place of mere communication process, e-commerce facilitates the discussion between the members in the organisation in a more strengthened ways. In e-commerce based communication along with voice based data transfer, audio visual features are also applicable and thus it improved the communication process. It avoids the problems in traditional communication process such as data over load, as well as time lagging and supports better organisational environment. Thus e-commerce based communication process improves the organisational efficiency.

Discuss Future Trends of EC

E-commerce market is one of the growing markets due to the increased users of internet. E-commerce is the purchase or sale of products or services through internet. It is alternatively known as Online Shopping. The payment is through electronic means. B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) are common types of E-commerce.

E-commerce after one year

After one year it is expected that there will emerge new business models and revenue streams in the e-commerce business sector. The cost and time required for the e-commerce transactions should be reduced and it will improve the operational performance of the business in the sector. Reliability and high speedy access will support the customers as well as the business firms to get better servicing. Due to the rapid change of technologies, the cost will be reduced and thus the attractive pricing policies can be adopted by the firms for their online marketing. According to Moors Law, “the performance of micro-processors (computing power) doubles every 18 months resulting in cheaper, faster and convergent technologies.” (Current and future trends 2001). Thus business firms will be supported with provision of better shopping options and competitive pricing. It will help to carry out the business in more cost-effective manner and with speedy expansion of the market. The business processes shall be streamlined by using the innovative and advanced techniques. The customer base and demand shall be increased further with the added advantages of the e-commerce sector. The value chain of the business should be strengthened with increased profit margins.

After 1 year it is expected that the mobile internet marketing will be a prominent method of online marketing. Innovative mobile phone products supported with high speed digital mobile services will gain more customer base. It is expected to get elevated growth rate in the sector with advanced speedy service and lower consumption cost. The new trend in the e-commerce sector is related to technological advancement. E-commerce will provide improvement in the communications, processes and decision making. It will enter in all aspects of the organisation. It will have an incredible opportunity in the purchasing and supply functions. In the field of communication it will grow to be an invaluable tool. By better supporting of e-commerce, the supply chain system in the business will become more advanced and greatly facilitated. (Carter 1999, p.33).

E-commerce in the next five years

Various trends have taken out in e-commerce over the past few years. There are a variety of opinions about the future of e-commerce. Some argue that the e-commerce will be heading in the coming years although online sales are growing. Giga Information Group analyst Andrew Bartels in his interview with Economic Times points out that the current trends are the continuation of the past trends and are significant for e-commerce. The five trends identified by him are multichannel retailing, more satisfied customers, consumers do their own thing, death of the mid size e-tailer, and more profits. (Regan 2002).

A recently published report says that e-commerce sales are expected to grow to about $30billion in the next five years. U.S. E-commerce Forecast 2008 to 2012 Report by Forrester Research Inc points out the following figures of online retail sales from 2008 to 2012.

Year sales          &n