1. Introduction
E-commerce has changed the conventional manner of doing trade. Electronic trade gives traders remote access to the local, along with the outside marketplace. Quite a few companies have practiced outstanding triumph in the e-commerce business, i.e., Amazon.com, which is considered the biggest online bookstore in the era, applied £3 billion on online trade earnings in the form of profit. Evidently, the electronic market offers more advantages in creating trade simpler compared to conventional trade. But then again, e-commerce is not devoid of locks and barriers. Actually, e-commerce environments are equipped with new complications such as the character aspects of the internet, trade risks, and different market frameworks, along with the fast-paced skills that are part of digital landscapes.
Generally speaking, one important fact about the present-day digital economy is the triumph of e-commerce business. This business has altered the way we do trade and is expanding more for its technological advantages vis-à-vis huge investments in internet technology and the search to discover new purchasers. Exhilarating stories can be heard about how dotcom companies performed exceptional business and escalated sales in the e-commerce market. Yet another study observed that a larger population of the planet's market members live beyond the digital divide and e-commerce is unproductive if there is no pervasive communication platform among trading parties. One more study discovered a lot of drawbacks in e-commerce, such as safety, technological, and consumer-related issues. Hence, to Bluetooth mobile commerce in the retail industry is a three-fold study. Initially, it aims to examine the e-commerce market structure and the numerous procedures associated with it. Subsequently, it examines the numerous security, technological, and social issues. Lastly, it will furnish future outlines of this e-commerce retail industry.
2. Security
Unlike in other businesses, the more payment methods available will benefit e-commerce enterprises. Many payment options can be made in a shorter period of time on a website so that the transaction is not trapped by customers who only have one payment method. However, it is better not to offer a lot of payment options because it can make customers confused. This is because the more options offered, the more insecure and hampered the security on the company's website. Such a system is very susceptible to attacks, especially in the payment process. This diverting payment system page hack can be done to hack credit card information or other personal information. Furthermore, e-commerce businesses have shipping company collaborations when shipping goods from their stores to consumer destination addresses. This shipping company can be a business partner in technology development and requirements to ensure the best security and integrity of the organization's system.
The internet certainly brings a huge impact to the e-commerce business. Everyone can now shop online from various online shops. We can get everything we want as long as we have money and can find the best place to buy those things. Today, transactions are moving in the cyber world and that is where it all started. E-commerce, supplying products and services through the Internet, including desktop access and mobile devices, increases the risks as well as the possibilities that customers face. Although business operators in traditional commerce need to be aware of online trading-related challenges, e-commerce, networked electronically, is inherently insecure, but there is no clearly identified security concept in a virtual system transactions environment.
3. Logistics and Delivery
Framework Prosecuting e-commerce requests in a large international setup is the next obstacle in this study. Even though the company chose a reliable delivery guarantee program, around twenty-three percent of the worldwide sales were sold-out. Great effort is needed to collaborate with intermediaries for packaging and shipping practices in alternative national areas. Finally, international customers are highly concerned about ordering non-of-their-watching goods. For example, customers from Africa have collected more than 30% of orders, with continents such as Asia and Europe buying more than 15 percent. Finally, logistics-related selection problems are the source of costly 13Ps and transit e-commerce requests in alternative nations. At present, there are standard 13.8% of BIIC services that amalgamate transportation problems with total owner's fulfillment system costs. The last hunted barrier to buying and selling operationalists was the issue of transportation alongside lower prices, with solutions such as easy access to reliable transportation products and services, and cheap transport upgrades.
Difficulties experienced in advancing this payment model. The more obvious and transparent payment collaborations are as part of the marketing encounters. Not to mention that these financing operations have standard formal provisions and stringent requirements, resulting in pre-arbitration and non-standards as payment methods. Another major commercial e-commerce barrier is global delivery issues such as payments. First, the largely uncontrollable delivery times are a little worrying given the significant reductions in e-commerce periods by the client. This is where the big drop on-time execution observations. With evaluations showing large time delivery variations, globally the average time period for deliveries cannot be less than 27 days compared to an internal average delivery time of 6-8 days.
One of the greatest negative issues of operating the e-commerce business nowadays is the logistic support of the internationalization and moving materials. Logistic problems are one of the biggest problems that e-commerce entrepreneurs are facing nowadays, and this just cannot be underestimated. The overall e-commerce model can be maintained by innovations along the road such as mobile money marketing collateral, mobile broadband and advanced technologies as dependent, fast sales solutions, cross-border e-commerce graphic formations, and fast bar code solutions. However, the maximum feasible direct selling of lower-value goods still stands, well reflected in default logistics services.
4. Customer Trust and Satisfaction
Regardless of the company's size, in the new economic context, it is inevitable that it maintains an e-commerce front of some dimension and investment savings that will come as a consequence of the solution's technological value proposition. However, challenges still arise for e-commerce operators who want to lower cost or revenue barriers as fast as possible. It does not sound close to the time when managing an operation in the virtual environment is a simple task, quickly, without impact or any level of organizational complexity for those who wish to act in the virtual environment. Despite the options and integrations in solution offers, integration can become a big challenge for those who seek immediacy and simplicity in accessing a 24/7 virtual shop. A brief view at platforms and solutions used to develop e-commerce is essential, observing how they integrate. Platforms marketed as a total solution for sale online, integrating electronic data interchange (EDI), CRM (client relationship management), and after-sales must face complex integration process that involves, for example, for solutions sold in the Brazilian market: an ERP, payment solutions, and logistic operators that stabilize dilemmas of placing the ordered product in the hands of the purchasing customer quickly and safely.
Much has been said about the potential advantages of e-commerce business, from 24/7 open shop to the elimination of huge expenses with staff and structure. On the other hand, challenges are still barriers to the optimization of the necessary tasks for daily operations and the validity of retaining customers in organizations. These difficulties can be softened through information sharing, capable tools, and adequate procedures that make e-commerce operation more robust and less complex. The objective of this work is to identify the challenges and critical success factors in electronic commerce business, daylighting the reflection due to increasing in complexity regarding the effective customers' trust and customer satisfaction. Therefore, the presented work used market inquiries tools, literature review, and the Design Science Research Method - DSRM as a theoretical research framework in order to allow fulfillment of the earlier mentioned goal.
5. Competition Challenges
Let us go a little deep into understanding everything better. This is not a specific reason when it comes to a challenge profile. This will be a reality when we are about to explain the inherent process difficulties that exist within this specific industry. The e-commerce industry is expected to open the next phase of growth and empowerment in India, which is believed that a lot of things have to be redirected and marked. Security in e-commerce is more popular than any other. The reason is there is more involvement of client information and it has to be taken extra care than in commerce. In the history of 10 years, the internet and e-commerce have historically been an inflexible goal to e-security. For example, Flipkart closed more automated security and seller cooperation on its e-commerce site by running certain assessments.
The e-commerce industry in India is growing at a remarkable pace, and it has now made it almost a cakewalk. The increased use of the internet is helping the e-commerce industry to boom seamlessly. In India, the e-commerce business is growing. It is increasing at a fast pace and is gaining popularity in almost every sector. While the mere mention of the word commerce makes one think of business transactions, there happens a lot of processes in the background to ensure a seamless experience for the B2C or B2B customers. Competition, as we see, is getting stiffer and so are the technology challenges. However, too much load can make a cake collapse. Similarly, with e-tailing in India, the issues and challenges need some guidelines and sounds could make the businesses face the facts more effectively.
6. Payment and Fraud
Rising cases of fraud and hacking incidents are negatively impacting e-commerce merchants and consumers. The problem can only worsen given the sensitive and financial nature of e-commerce transactions. In light of this, e-commerce merchants need practical solutions to better secure their transactions and hard-earned revenues. The constant risk of fraud and other potential risks have made commercial entities more vulnerable to indirect and direct threats, including those from regulatory and payment source-related fraud that can severely affect operations and financial health. Cyber-attackers are also increasingly focusing on merchants who are perceived to lack the infrastructure to protect against such threats. The growing skill gaps among teams managing the digital infrastructure of businesses are not helping the situation.
E-commerce businesses have experienced exponential growth in recent years, and this trend is expected to continue. In 2015, the e-commerce industry crossed the $1 trillion mark, and experts believe that this figure will double by 2020. The success and popularity of e-commerce businesses are luring thieves and fraudsters into the sector. The increasing number of e-commerce transactions has brought with it increasing cases of cyber-attacks and e-commerce fraud. In fact, a recent report found that "e-commerce sites accounted for 25% of all cyber-attacks in 2015."
7. Technology
Some of the special problems associated with transactions, such as the need to manage ACID properties for transactions separated by thousands of miles and many intermediaries, is an area of intense R&D effort. Required system logic continues to be elusive for transaction delivery using cellular telephones, currently able to be used as a Web browsing tool. Finally, the resolution of key security and privacy issues is closely pursued in the academic, business, and government sectors as more e-commerce applications requiring credit cards or other financial instruments are accepted and used in the virtual marketplace.
The continually advancing technology for e-commerce, as well as the increasing complexity of e-business applications, presents many aspects for consideration when new e-commerce businesses are being planned, and for the management of ongoing operations. The impact of technology on e-commerce business continues to grow, particularly when it considers the growing number of enterprise business transactions conducted using the Internet, Intranets, or networks other than VANs. E-commerce applications that manage sales, marketing support, and customer service applications generally require a responsive database server, presentation code, and web server logic to deliver information in a format usable over the Web. The relational database, one capable of maintaining all of the customer's requests and vendor's product information presented on Web pages, should be close to the presentation logic for fastest page automation. Indexes on the correct database entity columns must reflect the search keys a customer might use without consuming excessive system resources or response time.
8. Inventory Management
Manufacturers or retailers' dropshipping is a business model whereby e-commerce businesses act as storefronts for the goods and products of manufacturers who are in charge of managing inventory and shipping goods to customers. This model takes away the stress of handling physical inventory by sellers, but sellers as e-commerce businesses have little or no control over their shipping process. It could cost up to $10 in-house made goods inventory for a seller to have 1 part stored. In a market where competition is cutthroat, e-commerce businesses need assistance to handle their inventory while they focus on outshining each other. While exclusivity might be the deal-breaker in normal relationships, things are quite different in business, especially e-commerce sales business. In this type of business, if suppliers are unable to support multiple companies at a go, the firms might end up losing their valuable customers to competitors who would be selling similar products.
Managing inventory is another challenge e-commerce businesses face. Inaccurate inventory counts typically happen when warehouse staff do not make records as items leave shelves or when new stock comes in. This could lead to issues in customer service since sellers become unable to offer products in stock for them to buy. Currently, e-commerce businesses have some options to help them manage inventory. There are barcode scanners, which increase the efficiency and accuracy of inventory management through scanning items as they are added. The downside is that barcode scanners are quite expensive and add up to the costs for small e-commerce businesses.
9. International Expansion
Troubles don't stop there. There's the payment and what might be the most challenging aspect: distribution. Brands might have a good and effective logistics set up in their home region, but this doesn't mean it can just be picked up and dropped in place into a new market. Underestimating the complexity of new market logistics, regulations, costs, and timing will completely throw any expansion plans in the air.
Taxes and duty are another complex hurdle, and because each country has its own rules and regulations, it is impossible to have a "one size fits all" solution. Some regions may have free trade agreements in place or de minimis amounts, and others may not. This can really complicate matters.
Language is often a big issue. Retailers must decide what languages to operate in, and even focusing on an international version of English isn't a direct translation. Directly translating content from one language to another doesn't cut it. All of the nuances of the various languages need to be accounted for in the end-user experience and can often complicate the logistics that we take for granted within a single market.
The initial challenge for online retailers is making sure they are getting it right in their home market before they start targeting other countries. If they're not up to scratch in their home market, then efforts to roll that out to other countries become much harder. In addition, the time, cost, and expertise to begin reaching new customer groups become even harder to convince the board of the worth of.
International expansion is typically one of the more coveted goals for online retailers, but it tends to remain elusive. Brands might have cross-border sales as a result of their international marketing DMA or might indeed focus on English-speaking countries, but few retailers are truly international. International expansion isn't without its many challenges.
10. Legal and Regulatory
A working platform requires the establishment of an efficient system for managing information, processing, and transmitting data among parties, such as businesses, organizations, and operational, administrative and statistical authorities (Logistics, customs, banks, e-commerce platform operators). At the same time, the creation of supply chain management infrastructure and intra-logistics chain to create an essential surveillance system and space nationwide, information on green channels, information bank, and commercial transaction digitization to ensure data sharing between management authorities, thus speeding up processing time and customs clearance procedures. Identify, assess and understand the institutional, infrastructural and organizational needs of Vietnamese e-commerce operators such as payment, data protection, security and data sovereignty infrastructure and server system (cloud or local), etc. Measures to accrue the advantages, opportunities and challenges of economic integration (FTAs) and Industrial Revolution.
One of the key costs that makes many e-commerce businesses unprofitable is customer acquisition cost, the price you pay to acquire each new customer. If this number is too high, you will never be able to make a profit and become a successful business. The e-commerce market is in rapid development, where businesses must continuously develop and apply rapid changes. The customer is the center of any business. Any commercial organization has the goal of satisfying the customers and earning as much profit as possible. E-commerce is not an exception in this direction. There are legal and regulatory challenges and infrastructural and organizational challenges in carrying out e-commerce outflows. The main legal regulations require businesses to comply with customs procedures, including declaring business activities, submitting business plans, and receiving an "e-commerce registration certificate".
11. Customer Service
E-commerce call centers have battled with satisfying multiple channels. Every interaction, irrespective of its location, should encapsulate the customer's past communication scene and the context of the transaction at hand. That sounds very rich and unique to each heavy consumer or a person with bad schedule problems. Agents who answer these customers should be provided with a new rich desktop application. They should be trained in cross-channel and cross-device knowledge. Web chat, email, social media answers, and solutions when not designed well will have little to no effect on the organization's overall add-on and their ability to convert standard average consumer calls into sales provided they are serviced quickly.
Providing a seamless customer experience in all duty payment channels is where an organization can offer their customers genuine added value. That, however, is a lot easier said than done because consumers do not use a large amount of channels and do not buy using them in a linear way. They gather all information from the different channels during diverse steps in the consumer's decision-making process. As stated in one of the recent blogs, the customer journey has become a "messy journey" and meeting the customer's dynamic needs during this "messy" shopping trip we call omni/multichannel is really a difficult quest, which particularly in the current economic situation and restricted IT budgets, is a huge challenge. Helping organizations to offer channels meeting future customer needs in complex markets by realizing long-term added value using integrated innovative capabilities.
12. Website Performance
The key to understanding infrastructure performance is to remember that planet-scale infrastructure is different than traditional site-centered architecture. It’s no wonder that websites bombard you with advertisements, notifications, and obtrusive cookies. Many of the bandwidth constraints in older network hardware have been removed (such as Ethernet switches with small port sizes), so that resources no longer come home on a single line and can overload processors and consume memory throughout the pool.
A change in site performance can have a dramatic impact because of these delays. There are also several differences for mobile users. 3G connections take rich application space and require longer latency on mobile networks. Keeping these issues in mind, you can watch on latencies in the countries in which you operate, work with a CDN to cache and protect your website, and if your website needs too much time to load, scale your website to additional buildings.
One of the most important factors influencing website performance is latency, the time data takes to travel a round trip from the end user to your site and back again. It’s generally slower than you may think, as the speed of light must be taken into consideration.
Your website’s performance is crucial to business success. A minor delay in page-load time can reduce customer satisfaction and page views, while a dramatic lag can result in many users abandoning your website. Both of these scenarios can impact your bottom line. So, what can you understand in terms of infrastructure and website performance, and what can you do to prepare?
13. Marketing and Advertising
The e-commerce dynamic, internet, and transactions through this environment are the true vanguard of an extensive process that involves the total interaction of both society and economy in several dimensions through the generation of real economic effects that can be interpreted and measured in financial aspects. Due to the environment of constant and rapid technological changes in which we are in, e-commerce already represents a net index of the global economy's transformation. E-commerce, with countless participations and expressions, reveals itself as a pointer and element of the new times of the real economy. The index has been constituted and consolidated slowly.
One of the primary challenges facing those involved with e-commerce ventures involves marketing and advertising because the virtual medium has no access to physical storefronts for a potential audience to notice. As a result, the need arises for an understanding and effective use of search engines and keywords, search engine optimization, positioning, webrings, site traffic analysis, online communities, newsgroups, newsletters, direct e-mail and other important activities through which the target audience can be reached. Despite all problems, e-commerce not being exclusive to the virtual or internet environment, is seen as a physical sphere or territory.
14. Supply Chain
For example, consider supplier interruptions resulting from natural or man-made disasters. Manufacturers often operate in a just-in-time environment where they hold little inventory, and any disruption from their supplier can have a major impact. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, in fact, shuttered 5,000 manufacturers around the Tokyo area and was one of the significant factors in continued global supply chain disruption. Numerous business and network planners are working in their organizations to build multi-sourcing and distributed sourcing capabilities to address these risks. and others have advanced technology to enhance visibility in procurement operations. Papers by have shown how technology can be employed to integrate contracts to address disruptions, and and have used game theory to design order-quantity-sharing agreements to dampen the ripple effect of frequent disruptions in an automobile firm's supply chain.
There are many types of supply chain risk, and internet technology is changing our understanding of how supply chain risk is incurred. Some common types of supply chain risk include supplier interruption risk, transportation chain quality or reliability risk, geographic disruption risk, quality outage or severity risk, and production or delivery risk, among others. These types of supply chain risks are changing as the nature of competition in the economy evolves. ICT and the internet of things (IoT) are changing how businesses respond to these new challenges, setting the stage for a new generation of business competition.
15. Data Privacy
Compliance and GDPR come along to attempt addressing the problem, setting guidelines companies can follow to keep data safe. But e-commerce owners know that GDPR and other regulations are not enough alone for protecting the data. Authorization and access are a must to keep data management secure, and perhaps help e-commerce owners avoid unintended capture in the first place. Proper security will ensure that customer resentment does not arise, and the owner also reduces the likelihood of being walloped with large fines due to a data breach. A good e-commerce business will align its data privacy position with compliance standards and increase its defense against any unintended capturing by understanding and implementing authorization and access controls.
In the age of big data, data privacy worries are only increasing for owners and consumers alike. The consumer data on e-commerce customers is the foundation of an e-commerce business. E-commerce owners use data to create highly tailored advertisements to potential consumers based on their consumer history, generating leads, and to deliver e-commerce products to their customers faster than traditional retailers typically can. They are able to do so largely through the use of data. Subsequently, e-commerce data breaches are almost inevitable to happen because of the large amount of data getting accessed by unauthorized groups. Not only has there been an increase in the frequency of breaches, but the breaches are breaching even more data: names, social security numbers, and other personally identifiable information in vast stores.
16. Returns and Refunds
You can also encounter difficulties while dealing with returns and refunds. Sometimes they can stress your business financially, this happens when you are running on a tight budget. Even if this is your first order, you have to make sure that every item is perfect and that none of them should get lost in the sea of other orders. To survive in e-commerce, your business has to be airtight. Your website has to be designed from the perspective of the customer. There are things that you can keep in mind when you are starting your online business. The user interface is a first experience for the customer when they arrive on your website. You don't want the customer to face a cluster of graphics floating all around the screen of your website.
Some fraudsters use the items and decide that they don't want it, while some use it with the expectation that they will return it. If you sell items that can be used for a short period then returned, you should especially watch for this kind of e-commerce fraud. In some places, you are legally required to add a refund policy. But the most common practice is to table the refund terms for your customers and not to put it out there for everyone to see. It is advisable that you keep the terms of the return policy hidden on your store to reduce fraudulent returns.
A profitable business is impossible without happy customers. In every e-commerce business, there is a system that makes it possible for customers to return orders. If there is a little problem with the order or the customer simply doesn't like the item, they can send it back to the business for a return. Return fraud happens in e-commerce business. Many e-commerce fraudsters try to game the system and use this system to return the items that they have stolen from the store.
17. Mobile Commerce
According to Susanto, capital is not a factor that is rather disadvantageous for small businesses compared to cramming the middle or large capital. Many small business enterprises do not have access to funding in accordance with the wishes, goals, and management of the proposed business. Access to capital is an indispensable requirement facing the growing challenges posed by the increasingly complex business activities. The factor of financing a small business turns out to be a problem that is often not realized enough by the entrepreneur, thus facing financial difficulties. A study in data from Bank Indonesia on 209 small and medium business units indicates that issues related to financing these small businesses are very complex. It is medium-sized businesses that two-thirds of small businesses experience financial difficulties. Sigit, Damardjati Putradi marked credit facility to banks in Indonesia for small and medium business enterprises (SMEs) is still relatively difficult to obtain. Not all banks give the same loan limits as loans to corporations or big industries because of the less favorable risks. This policy of bank lending weighs heavily on SMEs in much need of nurturing and improvement in order to avoid financial problems.
In recent years, the development of the internet has enabled applications for e-commerce transactions to evolve gradually. Along with the rapid development of mobile communication technology, this internet application has evolved and made transactions in business for e-commerce. E-commerce can then be divided into mobile computing terms such as mobile commerce or m-commerce. There are a lot of advantages in e-commerce. Many of the advantages of e-commerce for businesses today have been mentioned before, but aside from these positive things, e-commerce business also has many disadvantages that risk the continuity of the business. This report will explore various challenges faced by managers in managing e-commerce businesses, found in Kelontong Muslim from Human Resources, user, TIK system to the outside of the business.
18. Pricing and Discounting
A lower cost investment in the distribution and search infrastructure could not only help attract lower fare clients, which are proportionally more profitable, but also increase the overall feedback, which turns the system self-efficient in terms of relevance. Furthermore, client activities in the long tails surpass the activities in different individual e-commerce website categories. The information covered in long tails represents 30%, on average, of the web searches, with less than 20% being new. About 50% of e-commerce revenue is made up of long tail products. Whether the space is larger or smaller, the notion of long tail helps us understand the importance of the massive publications and the issues that were dealt with, but still not eradicated. The reason is probably the additional problem related to the need to surprise the user with seldom relevant items.
Bringing discounting to the e-commerce platform is a huge challenge because of the long tail effect. According to Dr. Chris Anderson, who refers to it in some business models, it shows a power-law distribution that illustrates a convenient metaphor explaining that long-term interests can drive a targeting strategy very valuable for exploratory product areas. That means guiding customer attention to a set of rows. Anderson explains a phenomenon where best sellers represent only 20% of the items. Meanwhile, inventory and search reductions contribute to an increase in efficiency and cost saving.
19. Product Quality and Authenticity
According to the Central Statistic Agency (BPS), the top 3 busiest e-commerce sites in Indonesia are Tokopedia, Shopee, and Bukalapak. However, in February 2019, Shopee overtook Tokopedia from its top position in long-tailed traffic share. Its rapid growth is the fastest compared to any other sites in the fashion, health, travel, and beauty workflow.
The Indonesian government and all of us must take part in maintaining the authenticity of our nation's fashion products. Our economy has been greatly affected by foreign products with low prices but high quality and style. Not to mention the counterfeit products that are damaging our economy and culture. We must provide a main medium for non-mainstream products and give them a channel to connect with the public.
Product authenticity is mandatory for every e-commerce business, especially in the fashion industry. There are indeed many lovable Indonesian products. Yet, the challenge is to prove that our Indonesian fashion products are authentic, have high quality, and are able to bring their wearers to an international level. We cannot be stuck with the calming idea of nationalism. In reality, we cannot prevent buyers from fulfilling their desire to buy international brands, especially when these brands are conveniently available through e-commerce. This is why the most challenging part of working with e-commerce platforms is how to show the true quality of our products, how to stand out among brands from all around the world, and how to deal with the increasing counterfeit goods.
20. User Experience
Many customers have reported that they have shopped from an individual e-commerce merchant for the first time and go on for future purchases only if they like the overall sense of shopping after the very first experience. That means the very first-time user experience will automatically convert your visitors into your loyal customers, which will again go for the word of mouth marketing effects for your business. Moreover, if we make the online activities very complex by adding advanced-level authentication or security checks, then in India, especially people will go for the traditional form of purchasing because of the best suitable security and privacy assurance. In short, if you are an Indian merchant, then you should not just focus on only pre-sales, i.e., attracting visitors to your website, but the post-sales customer retention is also very important. For this, delivery on time, non-delay in communication, and providing the best possible user interface and superior user experience should be one of the top priorities.
User experience needs to be the prime concern for every e-commerce site. However, if we talk about India, then except for the tech-savvy people, many Indian merchants are not providing a better user experience. As we all know, India is known as the second largest country after China, which is well-known for its large pool of talented resources. Due to fast-growing mobile penetration and emerging information technology infrastructure, as per the statistics and studies in India, you cannot ignore each shopper who is utilizing the online platform to make purchasing decisions. And for every online platform, user experience is the first thing that can take your business to its next level or can give you the slow poisoning.
21. Inventory Forecasting
21. Inventory Forecasting Challenges
Knowing how to allocate resources to fulfill demand is hard, especially if that demand is uncertain. GG Eppen (1984) says an erratic demand and supply make the inventory management challenging. Both experimentation and analytical models are needed to address the demand and supply variability so that firms can improve both the efficiency and responsiveness of their operations. The question of how much inventory to store comes down to forecasting demand and calculating the cost, both explicit and implicit, of not having enough of an item in stock when customers ask for it. Much of the e-commerce innovation has been in the sales and marketing space and much obliviousness in the supply chain and inventory aspects of a business, as the saying goes, 'What gets managed gets measured' and the lack of attention can be seen in the lack of research in the supply chain question in general and inventory forecasting in particular. DV Miklavcic (1983) shows how using sales forecasts is only a beginning and a significant amount of research is needed to judge the accuracy and statistical efficiency of such sales forecasts for actual inventory management. DV Miklavcic (1983) says that traditional forecasting models are inappropriate for the problem of offline sales.
Once a front-end, consumer business exists providing access to the markets, the opportunity to do much more through that consumer relationship presents itself and a new era of digitally native consumer brands emerge, creating and selling their own products and advertising to complement their business models. But other aspects of the demand side problem remain unsolved; a whole suite of supply side problems continue to be ignored and unaddressed. With the rise of e-commerce, a whole set of businesses sprung up that solved some of these demands and created and captured value. For one, storing and handling inventory for the seller and the return logistics for products that did not sell, present in the world of bricks and mortar, may not have been a challenge retailers had to confront a great deal.
The early e-commerce business leaders, such as Amazon, were essentially just retailers. They had customers, bought products from manufacturers and suppliers, and used their logistical infrastructure to deliver those products to customers. They didn't involve themselves in the manufacturing or production of the goods they sold. But once you have that customer relationship, it is really hard not to assume that it opens up the potential to do much more - like using that information to optimize the performance of the business. The ultimate end state for e-commerce businesses is to use the customer and business insights that they have to confront the fundamental demand-fulfillment problem optimally and manage costs efficiently. The first response to this challenge will have to be to create front-end, consumer-facing businesses that go beyond retail sales, introducing service offerings like subscription services and stores.
22. Social Media Challenges
If your social media support strategy is running through the average customer satisfaction score, remember issues beyond the immediate interaction. Twitter users especially are quick to return for blood if the support resolution disappears into the void. Online customers thrive on engaging with your brand's presence on social or within the content of their online activities, but they'll also jump on whatever bandwagon validates their anger. Avoid lasting public relations bruises by setting clear and realistic expectations. The Adobe Digital Index and Lithium Technologies found that unrealistic customer expectations damage the potential of any industry leader's social media presence. Setting realistic expectations starts with a response time, but the issue doesn't end there. To set the finish line after recognizing where your reps are losing time, add the proper social media support software to save both reps and your customers' time.
Building an online customer support strategy should include over-the-phone, email, chat, text, and social media touchpoints. Your digital customer support strategy should drive the best possible social media engagement, but it will be hard to keep track of everything in a DIY content calendar. Great customer support ranks highly with online customers, but measuring the performance of your social media support reveals a few vulnerabilities: the same customers who love interacting with your brand on social media expect your reps to treat their customer support requests professionally. Customers also tend to have unrealistic expectations for the amount of time they'll receive a response. "The customer is always right" is king for social media, but other customers empowered by social media are a contentious bunch. Some frequent themes of bad Twitter attention-grabbers include unsolicited advice, misplaced brand affiliations, and the more insidious trolling.
23. Cross-border Trade
A whitepaper was also released to give a comprehensive overview of all challenges e-commerce merchants face. We found 33 unique yet interconnected challenges in cross-border trade. These issues fall into 5 categories: Regulation and government policies gap, Complexity of the procedures, Supplier and E-commerce, Business complexity, Security and Trust. These 33 challenges were compiled from diverse problems and opportunities revealed during our conversations with a broad set of stakeholders, namely customs and courier agency representatives, local economic trade associations, e-commerce merchants, 3rd party logistic providers, as well as industry experts. While challenges exist, we also discovered 4 enabling solutions for e-commerce merchants. Overcoming these challenges will be the future roadmap for all e-commerce merchants who are striving to capture the cross-border trade opportunity.
If you are doing e-commerce, you are no longer limited to selling within your local market. The growth of cross-border trade hit a new record in 2017, covering 45% of total e-commerce worldwide. In 2018, the growth continued by rising 31% year-on-year. If we put it into context, it will roughly reach $2.86 trillion worth in 2018. As impressive as it may sound to a business owner, the road it takes to capture the cross-border trade opportunity is even more challenging and uncertain. There are many challenges revealed as the cross-border trade environment grows mature. In our research, we engage with many stakeholders from express delivery service, customs and courier agencies, e-commerce merchants, and trade associations. Their perspectives are completely invaluable in solving this cross-border trade riddle.
24. Brand Reputation
Gaining the trust of a shopper from another outlet is much more complex than another walk-in. In a real-world e-commerce platform, a retail outlet is easy to find and walk, while in the online world brands are often concealed behind email forms and checkouts. Your website is just a reflection of you. While we can easily find endless testimonials that relate to how engaging and enjoyable a good facility is, this cannot be achieved with a one-dimensional chart. Without earlier customers engaging with the site, new shoppers will continue to have uncertainty and suspicion about your store becoming their favorites and may refuse to engage at all, even if they have gone through consumer feedback and have validated the products with strong interest.
When a new customer first interacts with an e-commerce store, they have little to no understanding of your brand's reputation. This lack of expertise will lead to further questions and reservations, and eventually many customers will prefer to do business with an unknown local business rather than being mixed up with an unrecognized but large brand. Customers these days are bombarded with ads, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine which brands are genuinely trustworthy. Customers today in many e-commerce verticals depend on social signs to understand if a brand has a good reputation. These are often members on social media, connections to certain content, interactions, or signs of user feedback. As a successful e-commerce seller, you will want to think about how you can use these social signs to create a reputation that will contribute to customer trust. There are also back-end solutions that you can use to maximize the use of this practice using micro-data and eventually getting trusted certifications.
25. Customer Acquisition
One of the best sources for customer acquisition in the Asoebi niche is social media platforms. Social media should always feature in the plans for communicating with the audiences of those platforms. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter remain very prominent. They lead to sales. They can be enhanced using paid campaigns, especially on Facebook. But the use of influencers can also be used to boost posts. Some platforms are growing in relevance. Pinterest, although not as prominent as Instagram and Facebook, is also driving traffic. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are useful for pushing sales more. For our retired brides/customers, we make use of emails from time to time. We have found it to be useful in recapturing their attention.
You can be doing everything else right in running your e-commerce business, but if you can't acquire customers, it will be hard to make progress fast enough. Acquisition for e-commerce businesses is the equivalent of moving into a new shop and a congregation of people every. E-commerce businesses need to understand the cost of customer acquisition (COCA). While startups in general are awash a lot of times with funding to spend on bringing in users without generating revenue, that is not the case in the Asoebi niche. If you use your capital only in acquiring, you will burn through your cash very fast without acquiring revenue. You need to understand how much money it costs to acquire a customer. While watching the actual spending should also be closely monitored because it affects cash flow.
26. Intellectual Property
Copyrights provide the most extensively used IPR in the creative sphere. Patents are one of the most powerful proactive tools and creating countries increasingly offering designers. Trademarks are useful in the advertisement business to secure brand identity and unique characteristics from being emulated. Industrial designs, which are identified as necessary for turning things aesthetically appeal to the users, are the least familiar IPR in the field of technical IP, but undoubtedly they will play a significant role in advertising in general. Use of IPRs within and outside the business domain is anticipated to offer security to innovators and companies considering their creations and operations. With the purpose of building awareness and educating policymakers, ITU has developed assistance tools. The ITU Technology Watch Report titled "inter-relationships" highlights various vital issues, such as the development of applications of the network (network features), with specific emphasis on human creativity and AI inventions, the relationship between creativity networking, including activity domains with non-technical interests (marketing), the addition and review of findings considering business competitors (such as start-ups), public policy growth in the era of digital appearance solutions, as well as the contribution of AI to a more effective management of intellectual assets and review the international regulatory framework investigation of National Adaptations.
The internet is a great leveler. It democratizes knowledge, trade, and society. eCommerce represents the way business is done today. As it introduces business to a larger population without any geographical limitations, it is inevitably bound to intellectual property laws. Intellectual property creates original works, which might be artistic, technical, or literary, being protected by statute and/or common laws. The term intellectual property reflects a chain of right tools to individuals, businesses, or other entities to protect their creative and associational endeavors. The works protected could be anything from massage parlour jingles to heavy-lift engines, novel contents, pharma formulas to fireworks structures. The work of protection involves copyrights, patents, trademarks, and designs. Patents, copyright, trademarks, and design laws are providing exclusive rights.
26.1 Introduction
27. Order Fulfillment
Order fulfillment is particularly important in e-commerce because, for most e-commerce companies, setting up physical operations is not their core competency. They focus on website development, search engine optimization, marketing, and the supply chain execution systems that manage transportation and warehousing operations. Because it is not a core competence, many e-commerce companies have kept things simple by outsourcing their order fulfillment operations to third-party logistics companies. In other cases, companies have set up in-house operations that are also relatively simple. Companies need regulatory compliance and green supply chain programs. Industrial markets require labels and barcode solutions, since they use bins and conveyors for their supply chains. E-commerce retailers may expect more high-tech DTC services. Industrial markets, particularly chemical, consumer products, high-tech, and pharmaceuticals, are performing well in the automation portion of warehouse operations. Some of these trends apply to e-commerce retailing. DTC services may also include labor in the warehouse.
For most e-commerce companies, basic order management processes are what's necessary. Larger installations might benefit from more sophisticated approaches to fulfillment, including print and apply, conveyors, and sorting and picking technologies. The systems used for order management, warehouse management, and transportation management are important and can be part of a larger enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or consist of stand-alone solutions. Stand-alone systems are often preferred by e-commerce players, particularly when they have a focused approach to supply chain operations.
Order fulfillment is a critical part of e-commerce. For many companies, it involves taking an order from a website or other sales channel and then shipping the product to the customer. However the actual operation requires a lot of detailed steps and processes. Order fulfillment is comprised of labor and technology. Once you have a physical facility, you need systems that can manage the data coming in and shipments going out. Of course, the most popular order fulfillment strategy today is to use a 3PL to handle these operations on your behalf.
28. Cybersecurity
Integrating security data with system data, resetting passwords, and monitoring rogue management sensors and risky technology are great ways to ensure that the disaster recovery system is consistent with cybersecurity. Every professional has been warned to control access. Installation of information is required as it can be a synchronization point of operations for most of the system. Recovering system data from production with smart backup can create looping logic that allows stakeholders to recover quickly from security incidents. Challengers constantly push system developers to integrate detection, prevention, and recovery support needs. With the steps above, the production complexity will disappear, and everything will be synchronized with production data, monitoring stored credentials being constantly modified. In essence, cryptocurrencies, changing and speeding up Bitcoin tasks, ransomware-like compliance, and healthcare capitulation platforms will greatly increase the capabilities of businesses to adopt robust digital technologies. The complexity of the digital business alone, without interactions with data secured in hidden compliance mode, system counter-security plans are already a highly capable weapon for fast and costly counter-security support.
The internet has been a curse as well as a boon to businesses. E-commerce has been increasing at a rapid rate in the past decade. With the increased use of e-commerce applications, many problems arise. Reverse marketing, better known as e-commerce, also produces great development in technologies that seem to offer a responsible recovery system. However, the same broad scope for growth also provides opportunities for bad actors. As seen in the recent British Airways and Thomas Cook Airways attacks, the emphasis is on the use of robust cybersecurity for business. A global loss of $1.5 to $2 trillion has been observed today. Over the next 5 years, it will be $5 trillion. The increased complexity of digital business is making things difficult for cybersecurity professionals. The digital solution is becoming a compelling factor. With the advancement of digital technologies, the increase in recovery capability is also constantly increasing.
29. Scalability
Under-scaling is the other side of the scalability coin. Over-provisioning of a complex system can either become economically unsustainable for the provider, or its topology may become extremely unpredictable in terms of service reliability. This is exactly what happened to the original Akamai "Static Page" network. When private servers started to deploy internal-time based keep-alive messages (to meet sync assumptions of 3rd generation web), the massive amount of external TCP sessions oriented to our nodes caused such an imbalance among nodes that the network collapsed in terms of response time, and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) was in days. It is ironic to notice that excessive replication contributed to increasing the probability of similar outcomes, as nodes used the same "top" parent servers, reducing the entropy introduced in the "traversal path". A heavily size-constrained system is a cold gas effect waiting to happen; the expansion over uncharted territories will expose users to every possible temperature-dependent effect.
Scalability is more than just "Can we handle the next peak? Should we speed up shipments or is the platform going to crash during the Super Bowl?" Scalability is also about the ability to engage in a massive amount of deteriorated transactions or to cope with high-volatility periods. The previous point requires a high level of configurability in terms of the routing process, latency SLAs, and power/frequency calibration thresholds that guarantee reliability in non-Worse Case Scenarios (WCS) and good delivery success rates, even during WCS. In addition, it would also require a highly efficient routing and edge rounding mechanism that is able to absorb the impact of the problem and, as soon as possible, "flatten" the load curve to mitigate the effect of the previously affected region.
30. Data Analytics
E-commerce data is a very specific type of data that includes multimedia data (images, videos, audio), as well as stock data and time series, text, mixed multimedia, social network data, and other forms. Users need fast real-time capture, processing, and display for in-store and offline experiences, as well as online access. Enterprises that operate in this sector should be able to establish solutions that can provide real-time access, resource selection, in-store detection, and response for the big data set. Reflecting big data characteristics is dynamically obtained with functional, security, and protection requirements. E-commerce can provide a shopping experience ranging from customers shopping in physical stores to sharing images, video clips, and exchanging other experiences from these visits with family, friends, or shopping communities. This process is monitored and analyzed, and results are obtained and used at the same time, and feedback is given to businesses. In other words, major challenges for e-commerce data analytics solutions include real-time processing requirements.
2. Real-Time Processing and Data Analytics for E-commerce Applications
There is a large amount of data in e-commerce systems. Many data are generated in a very short time, requiring a system that can process data quickly and respond to user requests. Data with very different velocities and dimensions are referred to as big data. E-commerce systems must be able to process not only attributes such as product price, customer names, and product descriptions, but also the behaviors of users or consumers, as well as image files and video files. User behavior data in e-commerce, consisting of click streams, cart activities, purchase history, payment data, and search queries, is considered typical of big data characteristics. The content of customers, whose dimensions are big and growing steadily over time, is another typical data characteristic of e-commerce.
1. Dealing with E-commerce Big Data
31. Consumer Behavior
reported substantial opportunity, convenience, and cost savings benefits of electronic retailing. He attributed the widespread use of tele-shopping and e-shopping to the fact that it allows consumers to purchase things "anytime and anywhere" via the Internet. stated that "electronic retailing gives consumers the power and flexibility to manage their time better". Consumer behavior in the Internet context requires more attention too, given the novelty of the related technology. Generally, the Internet has done away with many traditional shopping assumptions. The makers of the Internet itself never actually envisioned the e-commerce boom. The functionalities of the Internet include the ability to search, receive and send information through email, meet new persons, listen to online music, and many more, in addition to the more popular forms of commerce, such as electronic purchasing and trading in financial securities.
Consumer behavior is central to most parts of marketing. Through changes in their behavior, consumers are changing both the structure of the market for goods and services and the way in which firms communicate with current and potential customers. For retailers, consumer behavior is more central than ever for several reasons: the shift towards a predominantly service-based economy; the increased ability of customers to perform all aspects of the purchase process across times and places; and the accelerating scope of online retailing. The contemporary understanding of consumer behavior includes the study of how consumers acquire marketing information, evaluate alternatives, make purchasing decisions—either in-store or at a distance—and use and evaluate goods and services.
32. Conclusion
Despite the market power of firms that currently dominate internet industries, this does not specify the actual choices or chances that are faced by small businesses. It is the endeavor of small businesses to face the difficulties and, if possible, to also reach the advantages. The e-commerce industry has gained much attention over the last decade. The process of online shopping and managing business transactions using the internet is called e-commerce. Managers in small businesses in the shipping industry were surveyed for the study. This study analyzed the challenges that businesses face and the technologies that managers believe the shipping industry will face in the future.
E-commerce refers to the process of buying or selling products and services over the Internet. Online shopping is increasingly popular because of its speed and ease. E-commerce business owners face a variety of challenges, some of which are current problems but could become even more important problems in the future. For example, many smaller e-commerce firms have a limited capacity to protect the security of their online systems and transactions. There is a substantial middle ground (which is probably the worst place to be) between innovative small firms and durable firms that can protect their innovations. The disaggregated industry structure enables a range of focuses for policy efforts, including networks, infrastructure design and performance, public goods, and research at the technology frontier.