Advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce

Although early reactions to online shopping websites were often mixed ("It takes too long to find what you want", "I'm not sure they're secure", "The things I want are never in stock", "You can't see what you're buying"), things have improved greatly over the last decade and online businesses have found ways round most of the drawbacks. (For example, some online clothing stores sensibly offer free returns if you don't like the clothes you've bought or if they turn out not to fit.) Many people now swear by online shopping and wouldn't dream of setting foot in a real-world store where prices are often higher, waiting lines are longer, and the doors open only during normal business hours.

For businesses too, e-commerce has opened up all kinds of new opportunities. Not many can compete with huge businesses like Amazon or eBay, but anyone can open an online store and start trading within a matter of minutes. Small local stores, long threatened by the growth of giant retailers like Wal-Mart and Tesco, have found a new lease of life by trading online and selling their products mail order.

E-commerce has also threatened many traditional ways of doing business. When people flock to online shopping sites for the Christmas rush, they naturally spend less in real-world stores. Savvy existing businesses such as Wal-Mart have tried to offset the threat by seizing the opportunity: "bricks and clicks" (having real world stores and a seamlessly integrated website) is now generally seen as the way to go. Shoppers have become equally savvy and are adept at inspecting products in real-world stores before buying online, or using websites to locate local branches of stores where they can inspect and purchase exactly the goods they want. It's important to bear in mind that e-commerce still represents only a fraction of all the trade that we do (for 2015, the US Department of Commerce reported e-commerce reaching about 7.2 percent of total retail sales, as shown in the chart below)-but that fraction has been growing very steadily, and will keep doing so.

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