Analysis of the Future Prospects of E-commerce in Retail industry – Literature Review Assignment Help

Introduction

Importance of the Topic
Every research study has its significance in the field with which, it is related. In this context, this research topic has significant importance in the current business world as it is related with E-commerce and its future growth prospects. E-Commerce in the retail industry has become an integral element in the business world and made an important contribution in expanding the economy of the countries (Peacock, 2010). In this regard, the topic selected for the work can be considered quite effective in exploring overall aspects of new trends of business which is closely integrated and interrelated with technologies such as internet and E-commerce.

E commerce has a very important role to play in retail industry. The fact can’t be denied that retail industry is undergoing a dramatic change and e commerce will be very helpful in capturing a large amount of market share which ensures the growth and development of retail industry. E commerce is on booming phase and retail industry needs to apply e commerce in its marketing if it wants its development as it has been observed that retail industry is facing a declining phase (Kraemer, et.al, 2006).
Scope of the Review
There are differentiated aspects of the topic that will be covered in the review. The literature review highlights the issues and future prospects of E-commerce in retail industry. The literature research mainly concerns with work of different scholars and their perspective on the concepts of Ecommerce and its growth and emergence in retail industry with the advancement of technology to enhance widely dispersed market.
Criteria Used for Literature Selection
For the purpose of collecting information, numerous sources of secondary data, which were used including journals, online articles, reports, magazines, books, periodicals have been taken into consideration. All the sources used in the work are contemporary, authentic and peer reviewed. There are 6 sources of information have been collected.
Organisational Pattern of Review
For enhancing the viability and comprehensiveness of the research topic and literature review, systematic approach have been followed different review, systematic approach have been followed different review, systematic approach have been followed in which different literatures are flowed in different topics, such as Concept, Significance, Current trends and Future prospects of E-commerce in the long run.

Literature Review

Concept of Ecommerce
Ecommerce is internet based commerce which is all about click and buy. In the knowledge industry, E-commerce can be considered as new and effective phenomena in existing time period. Bentrum (2002) states that ecommerce can be defined as the process in which different crucial online business transactions are performed in which transfer of funds takes place among seller of the commodity and its buyers. In support of this, Zhao (2006) has explained that the concept of ecommerce has offered several advantages to the vendors as they can find search engines without the advertising campaigns. Also it allows the sellers to identify needs and preference of the customers as he can establish positive relationship and direct communication directly to customers.
Ecommerce has offered many advantages to the consumers also. The E-commerce allows the consumers to make purchases at any time of day. At electronic platform, consumers can easily search the wide range of desired products with employing much time and efforts.
Significance of E-commerce in retail industry:
Highlighting the importance of ecommerce ‎ AlGhamdi, Nguyen & Jones (2013) have stated that business retail industry can avail some crucial advantages of employing E-commerce related practices. As per the authors, E-commerce can be regarded as cost efficient and effective methods as in contrast to conventional method of commerce, E-commerce helps the retail industry in growth of their business as with the help of e commerce they don’t remain geographically restricted and increase their access to variety of customers.
E commerce not only provides opportunities to consumers but also provides various opportunities to the retailers as the reduction in consumer search cost helps them to expand their customer network with the help of internet (Kraemer, et.al, 2006).
In this way, it can be reflected that E-commerce can be regarded as one of the important phenomena for retail industry, which wants to cater mass market and reduce its operational cost.

Current trends of Ecommerce in retail industry
The current picture of Ecommerce market is very much different from its advent. As the technology has been changing rapidly C are coming up with new techniques and facilities to make it more efficient. Recently we have seen that most of the online retailers are becoming market leaders for guest blogging, website optimization and general improvement in site performance (Bentrum, 2002). Due to the changes in technology, social networking and personalization, new trends in the world of ecommerce marketing have emerged. Most of the retail categorises like electronics, media, clothing and accessories are experiencing vast change due to the emerging needs of adopting E commerce in their business. For EXAMPLE Wal-Mart has experienced vast growth and development with the help of E commerce. Wal-Mart initially was not connected to Ecommerce but the changing business environment leads it to grow its business with the help of Ecommerce. Wal-Mart provides various opportunities and choices of the products and services to its customers through online trading. E commerce has helped Wal-Mart in attracting diverse and loyal customers (Cox, 2006).
Nowadays, the owners of the online store are building sites that work efficiently on smart phones and tablets. Still, the other products like smart watches and google glasses are becoming popular products, yet there are several other products, which are emerging in the current marketplace. If these new devices also become popular among the customers, the retailers of these products can provide a good discount on their sales and thus can promote these products. Kelly Goetsch, (2001) in this context has specified that online stores not only provide their services to personalise customers but they also serve prospective customers on equal level.

Ecommerce not only provides wide variety of opportunities to customers regarding the products and services but also helps in them in getting access to wide range of information about the products and services. The adoption of E commerce has become one of the important task of retail industry as in today’s era customers doesn’t want to go to shops and buy product , they want everything in a fast, easy way. E commerce is way through retail industry can help the customers in getting easy access to products and services. This has increased the use of e-commerce practices in the present business world.
E commerce can be proves as a boon to the retail industry, it can help the retailers in getting customers satisfaction as E commerce has reduced the time of shopping and transactions by the customers (Cox, 2006). Nowadays customers doesn’t wants to wait for the delivery of the products and services, they want everything as quickly as possible and without unnecessary bargaining which not only saves time but also saves the energy and effort of both retailers and customers which they used to spend in bargaining and explaining of the products and services to the customer.
Future prospects of e-commerce in retail industry
The e-commerce practices are growing rapidly in the marketplace and are succeeded in both developed and developing world as the usage of information technology means is increasing at the global level. With such practices the online services are improving rapidly in terms of speed efficiency and quality of services. This has made e-commerce quite popular among young customers. In this context, this has been explored by Almeida (2013) that marketing and selling sites of the companies are required to be aligned with each other in order to make customers influence to use the websites of the companies for their purchasing practices. These kinds of practices have promoted e-commerce practices among young customers. In addition to this, the retail industry can also take advantage of e-commerce through saving their advertising cost.

E commerce can help the retail industry in expanding its business by gaining access to wide variety of customer through internet. As with the help of ecommerce customers get variety of choices along with the information about the characteristics and prices of products and services in retail industry it helps the customers in choosing the right product at affordable prices which increases customer satisfaction. The emerging trend of E commerce will also help in development and innovation of its product as with the help of E commerce retailers will be able to understand customer’s preferences and demand and they will make the products and services accordingly. When the retailers will made the products and services according to customer preferences and demand, there will be less wastage and more profit to the retail industry (Qin, 2010).
Raise research question
On the basis of overall review of the work, an important research question can be searched, the presented research question is
“How E-Commerce can change the face of business transactions and operations in retail industry”
Moreover, the presented research question mainly focuses on how the economic growth can make path for the development of Ecommerce business in developing Economies

Conclusion

The main objective of this literature review is to explore the future prospects of ecommerce in developing countries. The presented review of different crucial literatures has reflected that there are several crucial gaps in the findings of the reviews as current literatures specified the implications of E-commerce in the field of retail industry, where there are ample of technical resources and financial funds are available for supporting E-commerce practices..
In context to this, different literatures reviewed in the paper has explored that Ecommerce is not restricted to online selling and buying these days, but has also spread its wings in the banking sector which is known as E-banking. Also C2G transactions are gaining popularity with the ecommerce transactions. Therefore it is seen that online business and ecommerce can boost the economy of the nations, which are still in developing phase and are expected to expand and develop further.

References

AlGhamdi, R., Nguyen, A. & Jones, V. (2013). A Study of Influential Factors in the Adoption and Diffusion of B2C E-Commerce. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 4(1): 89
Almeida, F.(2013). Ecommerce business models in the context of web. International journal of advanced information technology, 3(6): 415-466.
Bentrum, B. (2002). Building Ecommerce sites with the Net framework. United States:Sams Publishing
Corbitt, B.J. & Al-Qirim, N.A.Y. (2004). E-business, E-government & Small and Medium-size Enterprises: Opportunities and Challenges. Idea Group Inc.
Cox, R. (2006). Retailing: An introduction (5th ed. ). Pearson Education India. Pp: 302.
Goetsch, K.(2014). Ecommerce in the cloud: Bringing Elasticity to Ecommerce. California:O’Reilly Media
Hill, J. (2008). E COMMERCE : Role of E Commerce in today’s business. International Journal of business and management research, 1(7): 454-461.
Kraemer, K.L.et.al. (2006). Global e-commerce: Impacts of national environment and policy. Cambridge University Press. Pp: 115.
Peacock, M. (2010). PHP 5 E- commerce development. Birhimgham:Packt Publishing Ltd.
Qin, Z. (2010). Introduction to E-commerce. China: Springer Science & Business Media. Pp: 482.
Reynolds, J. (2004). The complete E-Commerce book. United Kingdom :Taylor & Francis.
Zhao, F.(2006). Maximise Business Profits through E- partnerships. Hershey:Idea Group Inc.