Amazon & E-Commerce, Essay Example

What are the advantages and disadvantages of selling books and goods over the internet?

Advantages

One of most advantage of selling books and goods over the internet is wide rage market. Internet is everywhere in the global and majority of customers have the access to it. What a dealer is required to is just to create awareness to the consumer about your website and provide details why they should consider purchasing his/her product over the site. Also, internet operates 24hrs a day, 7 days a week. If for example I want to purchase a book and I cannot access it at local shops due to unavoidable circumstances such as holidays, at night etc; through internet am able to purchase and download the book on time. This means that, purchasing through internet is time saving, is fast and convenient since you don’t need to travel. Moreover, in case of any update, it’s much easier since you will update your consumers through emails.

Disadvantages

Internet marketing isn’t free. You need to update your site regularly, software, wed site design, hardware and online distribution. All of this has its own costs and they are necessity to an investor who wants to trade over the internet. Also, some products are expensive to consumer. For example, if you purchase a book over the internet, it consumes a lot of megabytes and time for it to be completely downloaded. This will almost cost a double price to the customer. Moreover, a lot of customer when purchasing a product, they usually prefers a live interaction. Also, purchasing books and goods over the internet will only be applicable for customer who knows how to read and write. Lastly but not the list, is the security issues. Internet is full of frauds and the consumers have to be guarantee of your site if it’s genuine.

If books can be downloaded online, how will Amazon’s business change?

Amazon’s business market will definitely increase, since consumers will ease to download the books lather than going all over looking for books at bookshops or waiting for them to be delivered by couriers.

What do traditional stores have to gain from setting up an e-commerce side to complement their retail stores?

By doing this, the traditional stores will now have a wide market and the demand for their product will have to rise since e-commerce is global wide. Also, they will experience the flow of market to their goods since the market have expanded.

Reference

Marcial, G. (2007) Business Week, New York: Iss. 4056; pg. 112.

Stone, B. (2007) New York Times, Late edition (East Cost) New York: Pg. C. 3.