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Introduction

Assim Bhatti 13W E-Commerce Mr. Fraser Introduction Myself and a group of friends from college have decided to set up a mail order cosmetics company. The company will produce, market and sell its own range of cosmetics aimed at the age group of 18 - 30 for both male and female. Part of my role in this new company is to produce a plan on how a business could introduce E-commerce. Introduction To E-Commerce E-Commerce is the exchange of information across electronic networks, at any stage in the supply chain. It can be done within an organisation, between businesses and to businesses to consumers. It can also be carried out between the public and private sectors, whether paid or unpaid. The growth of e-commerce is mainly down to the business opportunities that it can bring to the company. Why A Business Should Develop E-Commerce Businesses should develop e commerce in their organisation, as it will have many benefits to the company as a whole. ...read more.

Middle

In most cases, these obstacles can be overcome. E-commerce also has many barriers that the company will have to overcome if their website is to be a success. They are as follows: * Lack of commitment to the project. * Need for technical skills to maintain and to keep the site up to date. * Organisational culture might discourage this change. * The organisation may have very few employees with the appropriate skills. * There is no clear promotional or marketing strategy. * The cost of carrying out this operation is very high demand for their products. This can be caused by e-commerce. * Lack of trust, in the Internet being a safe and secure way for conducting business. * The effect on the company image, if the site is not constantly updated. Methods Of Overcoming These Barriers For some businesses, barriers to E-commerce may appear to be impossible to overcome, for example when products cannot be sold electronically, the company cannot deal with such high demand or response rates. ...read more.

Conclusion

Another advertising tool, * A brochure to provide product details for customers, * E-mail newsletters * A way in which the company can gain market research on their customers. Some business trade only on the Internet, an example of this type of company is WWW.LETSBUYIT.COM. Others will just use it as one of many sales channels, an example of a company this type is a supermarket, travel agents etc. A businesses involvement in E-commerce may be progressive, for example a business may start using the web, to advertise their products, then slowly move towards providing a service, which allows customers to buy their products online. Business buying online is known as e-procurement and forms part of supply chain management. The supply chain management includes: * Procurement * Inventory management * Forecasting * Warehousing * Logistics/distribution Most businesses that are not successful in their E-commerce strategy fail because of poor distribution systems or stock levels that cannot cope with demand. Both of these factors may be the result of the company not forecasting properly. ...read more.

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