WHAT FORCES ARE FUELING E-COMMERCE?

There are as a minimum three main forces fuelling e-commerce- i.e. marketing and customer

Interaction forces, economic forces and technology, particularly multimedia convergence.

Economic forces-One of the most marked profit of e-commerce is economic effectiveness resulting from the decline in communications costs, low-cost technological infrastructure, speedier and more economic electronic transactions with suppliers, lower global information advertising and sharing costs, and cheaper customer service alternatives.

Economic incorporation is either internal or external. Internal integration is the networking of the variety of departments within a corporation, and of processes and business operations. This allows significant business information to be stored in a digital form that can be retrieved instantly and transmitted electronically. Internal integration is best exemplified by corporate intranets. Among the companies with proficient corporate intranets are Procter and Gamble, IBM, Nestle and Intel. External integration on the other hand, refers to the electronic networking of suppliers, corporations, clients/customers, and independent contractors into one community communicating in a virtual environment (with the Internet as medium).

1.10 sesami.net: LINKING ASIAN MARKETS THROUGH B2B HUBS 

sesami.NET is Asia's biggest B2B e-hub, a fundamental exchange integrating and connecting businesses (small, medium or large) to trading partners, e-marketplaces and internal enterprise systems for the intention of sourcing out supplies, buying and selling services and goods online in real time. The e-hub serves as the heart for management of content and the processing of business transactions with support services such as information services and financial clearance.

It is dynamically and strategically linked to the Global Trading Web (GTW), the world's leading network of trading communities on the Internet. Because of this very significant link, sesame.net reaches a widespread network of vertical, regional and industry-specific interoperable B2B e-markets across the globe.

Market forces- Corporations are encouraged to use e-commerce in promotion to capture international markets and marketing, both small and big. The Internet is similarly used as a means for improved customer support and service. It is a lot easier for organizations to offer their objective consumers with more comprehensive product and service information using the Internet.

Brazil's Submarino19: Improving Customer Service through the Internet

Brazil's Submarino is a classic instance of unbeaten use of the Internet for enhanced customer service and support. From being a local Sao Paulo B2C e-commerce company selling books, DVDs, CDs, toys, video cassettes, computer and  electronic products in Brazil, it extended to become the leading company of its type in Argentina, Mexico, Portugal and Spain. Close to a third of the 1.4 million Internet users in Brazil have made purchases through this site. To improve customer service, Submarino has diversified into offering technological and logistical infrastructure to other retailers, which includes expertise and experience in credit analysis, tracking orders and product comparison systems.

Technology forces- The improvement of ICT is a main issue in the development of e-commerce. For example, compression, technological advances in digitizing content and the promotion of open systems technology have lined the way for the convergence of communication services into one single platform. This in turn has made communication faster, easier, efficient, and more economical as the necessitate to set up separate networks for television broadcast, cable television,  telephone services, and Internet access is eliminated. From the point of view of businesses /firms and consumers, having only one information supplier means lower communications costs.

Moreover, the standard of universal access can be made more achievable with convergence. At the present time the high costs of installing landlines in meagerly occupied rural areas is a disincentive to telecommunications companies to install telephones in these areas. Installing landlines in rural areas can grow to be more attractive to the private sector if revenues from these landlines are not restricted to local and long distance telephone charges, but also include Internet charges and cable TV. This growth will ensure affordable access to information even by those in rural areas and will spare the government the trouble and cost of installing expensive landlines.