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Examples of E-commerce Business

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Very many entrepreneurs today have resorted to operating their businesses while using technology and E-commerce is one way of technology. This is because this form of operation is a lot better than the old traditional way of running businesses. However you should note that this isn’t a new industry but on the other hand it has greatly created a new economic model. There are a number of people that have agreed that this technology will impact the economic society positively in the future but the impacts are hard to gauge in the early stages. There are also those others that have noted that this technology is a class of incorporeal evolution. Some of the benefits of e-commerce include; Through E-commerce, people are able to sell their goods and services throughout the entire globe without having to move all over, low costs of running business as compared to local stores, business processes simplified, no rent, less man-time required and so much more. With all those benefits, it’s nearly impossible or impossible for humans to look back as the technology keeps improving so often. But first, let us first get an understanding of E-commerce before we can explain or look at its examples;

What is E-commerce?

E-commerce refers to the transaction of buying and selling goods and services online or on the internet. Some of the technologies used for conducting E-commerce include things like electronic funds transfer, online transaction processing, mobile commerce, and automated data collection systems, supply chain management, electronic data interchange (EDI), internet marketing and inventory management systems.

So how, does it operate?

Some of you might already be interested in moving your business to E-commerce but first you are wondering how it works and here is how! In this kind of technology, there is an exchange between two parties over a form of electronic medium majorly the internet involving an exchange between a consumer and a company. It happens in a way that the consumer will purchase the service or product while using a credit card payment over a secured website.  Amazon.com online store is an example of a business to consumer e-commerce and through this, all you need is internet access, credit card and then browse through and select what you want and finally purchase that product while using your credit card payment. The delivery is received through email. Then another example of e-commerce is eBay.com which is an online marketplace that is between individuals or between two consumers. And in the same way you will require a credit or debit card and internet access. However the difference between Amazon.com and eBay.com is that in eBay.com the products are sold by individual sellers and not one large online store like Amazon.com

Examples of e-commerce

  1. Amazon.com: most of you might know amazon.com as an example of electronic commerce. This is basically an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company that was founded in the year 1994 by a one Jeff Bezos. There is no doubt that this is the largest internet based retailer in the globe through total sales and capitalization of the market. Initially it began as an online bookstore but later on it diverted to sell other things like Blu-rays, DVDs, CDs, video and MP3 downloading and streaming, food, jewelry, toys, apparel and furniture. Then it also goes ahead to produce some consumer electronics like fire tablets, Amazon Kindle e-readers and fire TV. Amazon is also one of largest providers of cloud infrastructure services and they also sell particular low-end products like USB cables under its in-house brand which is AmazonBasics. So how does Aamzon.com obtain its revenue? Well, over the decade between 2000-2010, Amazon obtained a customer base that was of around 30 million people. This e-commerce business is primarily a retail site that contains a sales revenue model. So it makes its revenue through taking off a small percentage of the sale price that is of each of the items that are sold through its website to the customers. What it does is let the companies advertise their products through paying to be listed as one of its featured products.
  2. eBay Inc: this is basically an American multinational corporation as well as an e-commerce company that is why I picked it up as an example. What it does is be able to provide both businesses-to-consumer and consumer-to -onsumer sales services through the internet. It was founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar and today it has become a very notable success story of the dot-com bubble. It is one of those multibillion-dollar e-commerce businesses that contain operations that are localized in over 30 countries in the world. eBay.com is managed under this company and it is practically an online auction as well as shopping website where people and businesses are able to buy and sell a wide variety of services and goods all over the world. As time passed on, the company with all it already did, decided to expand to include some things like ‘buy it now’ shopping , online classified advertisements through kijiji or eBay classifieds, shopping by ISBN, UPCA or any other type of SKU through Half.com, online event ticket trading through Stubhub and so on. In the past, it used to provide online money transfers through PayPal that was completely owned subsidiary of the eBay from a period between 2002 up to 2015 only. What makes eBay.com one of the very best is that it is entirely free to use for buyers alone however the sellers are charged a particular fee that is for listing their items and then even when those items are also sold.
  3. Etsy: another popular example of e-commerce is through this Etsy which is basically a peer-to-peer or P2P e-commerce website that is majorly concentrated on the vintage or handmade items and suppliers along with only one of its kind factory manufactured items. It has a wide range of products that it deals with like clothing, toys, jewelry, beauty products, art, knick-knacks, photography, quilts, bath and food. There are various sellers that also sell craft suppliers for instance wire, beads and jewelry-making tools. All the vintage items that they sell should be at least 20 years old. What it does unlike the modern websites is that it follows in the tradition of open craft fairs and this way it gives the sellers personal storefronts in which they get to list their goods for a cost of US $ 0.20 for every item. By the end of December 2014, this company had registered 54 million users as members and its online market place for the handmade as well as vintage goods connected a total of 1.4 million active sellers with a 19.8 million active buyers with 29 million listed items on the website. In the same year, it clocked total sales OF US$1.93 billion Gross Merchandise sales. Let me break that for you, 30.9% is the amount that was generated from outside the USA while 36.1% was obtained from the purchases made on mobile devices. It generates its income mainly from three revenue streams which are its marketplace, seller services and then the ‘other’ revenue. In November of 2016, this company was able to disclose its purchased Blackbird technologies for $32.5 million and this is basically a startup that developed the AI software that is used for shopping context search applications.
  4. Craigslist: This is mainly an American classified advertisement website that contains a number of other sections devoted to jobs, community, for sale, gigs, housing, items wanted, discussion forums, wanted, personals services and resumes. It was actually started in 1995 by Craig Newman as an email distribution list to friends and featuring local events that were in San Francisco bay area. However later on, it expanded to other services and to the USA in 2000 but today it now covers up to 70 countries. Some of the sites that are on this Craigslist are able to cover wide regions rather than individual metropolitan areas like for instance the U.S states of Delaware and Wyoming and so forth. Currently, it serves more than 20 billion page views every month. It also contains more than 80 million new classified advertisements every single month and this is the reason it is the leading classifieds service in any medium. It is also the top job boards in the globe with up to 2 million new job listings every month.
  5. O’Neills Irish International Sports: this is an easy example of one of the businesses dealing in e-commerce and doing so well. This company has the domination when it comes to ordering equipment and apparel for international sports especially for the Irish sports of hurling and Gaelic football. This company has a very high level of uniqueness that it can pretty much do what they want and still be able to sell to American clubs as well as teams that would like to own their own kits and jerseys. What O’Neil did was to take several large extra steps to endeavor that one American club stayed very satisfied and happy rather than taking a single clubs money and running like most business do. What makes this e-business very successful is their level of quality and customer satisfaction like for instance when Nashville Gaelic Athletic club ordered for tracksuits together with some other items that were to be shipped to Ireland. What happened is that the O’Neills observed that the tracksuit pants had a small defect on a few of them so they immediately notified the club about the problem. They didn’t only stop at that but went ahead to send the flawed items as extras and then they didn’t only stop there but also manufactured the ideal pants that they sent over in addition. They did all this even without or before the club had raised any complaints or suggestions. Now that is how to gain trust and a wider range of clients to your online business.
  6. Laura Ashley: a further example of e-commerce is through this Laura Ashley business which is basically an online clothing and home décor giant. This company is known for their outstanding as well as storied reputation that has spent actually decades in making. They have a system that lets buyers or customers receive quality products in the mail and the clients are usually very delighted that they actually do get exactly what they need without having to fight the department store crowds over receiving poor quality. What makes this particular online store one of the very best is that they actually do take their accountability to their clients to the next level so they are always happy. There was a time they surprised a customer who had ordered a bedding set online in a way that the customer obtained a special surprise two days before the delivery was done. They sent the client a thank you note and then also offered the client a set of cozy Laura and Ashley lounging socks.
  7. Raw Generation: this is one of the best examples of e-commerce especially for the small businesses because it was able to grow its sales from $8,000 per month up to $96,000 per month. The founder of this Raw Generation is a one Jessica and she deals in Fresh juice and in the beginning it was just a small business similar to many out there but she had to go through some phases of figuring out ways in which her e-commerce business would generate sales. What we should never forget is that it is not easy to sell any kind of product and to also gain momentum to grow the sales is another challenging issue. But this Raw Generation founder had to figure out some of the ways to position her juicing product and also look for the most effective way in which her business could generate sales. So she then experimented with some deal sites like for instance Groupon and so on and then was able to grow her business from that point.

REFERENCES:

Vanilla Farmer, Amazon Retailer & Tech Researcher. Yosaki is my personal blog but I'm working on some big tech project back doors. I will keep on posting various topics on things I have knowledge about.

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