In this article, we will try to outline the main benefits enjoyed by participants in e-business. These benefits can generally be grouped into benefits for merchants, for customers and for society as a whole.
Benefits for Merchants
- Through e-commerce, with minimal investment, an organization can expand its market both nationally and internationally. Quite easily, an organization can reach more customers, better suppliers and more suitable business partners worldwide.
- Through digitalization, e-commerce helps organizations reduce the costs of setting up processes and of distributing, retrieving and managing information.
- E-commerce improves the overall image of a company and its brands.
- Through e-commerce, an organization provides better service to its customers.
- E-commerce helps simplify business processes, making them faster and more efficient.
- E-commerce drastically reduces paperwork.
- E-commerce increases the organization’s productivity. It supports better procurement management in line with customer needs.
Benefits for Customers
- Support and availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Customers can make a purchase or get information about a product/service at any time of the day or night, wherever they happen to be.
- With e-commerce, customers usually get more options and faster product delivery.
- E-commerce offers more options for comparing products and choosing a cheaper or better one.
- Customers can leave their own reviews or read other customers’ reviews of individual products before deciding to buy.
- Access to information. In just a few seconds, customers can find detailed, relevant product information instead of waiting days or weeks for it.
- E-commerce increases competition among merchants, which results in merchants offering significant discounts to online shoppers.
Benefits for Society
- Customers no longer need to travel to find and buy a product, which results in less traffic congestion and air pollution.
- E-commerce helps lower product prices, so less affluent customers can obtain products more easily.
- E-commerce makes products and services more accessible to customers in rural areas, who often cannot obtain them where they live.
- E-commerce helps the government sector deliver better services and reduce the cost of services in public health, education, etc.