PROJECT REPORT

(Submitted for the degree of B.com Honours in

Accounting & Finance under the University of Calcutta)

ON
E-COMMERCE AND ITS RELEVANCE
SUBMITTED BY

NAME OF THE CANDIDATE: ROHIT NIGANIA

REGISTRATION NO: 145-1121-0309-14

COLLEGE ROLL NO: 474

NAME OF THE COLLEGE: GOENKA COLLEGE OF

COMMERCE AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

NAME OF UNIVERSITY : CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY

SUPERVISED BY
NAME OF THE SUPERVISOR: MITRENDU NARYAN ROY
NAME OF THE COLLEGE: GOENKA COLLEGE OF
COMMERCE AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

MONTH AND YEAR OF SUBMISSION: JANUARY

2017

1
 ANNEXURE-IA
SUPERVISOR’S CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that Mr. ROHIT NIGANIA , a student of B.Com Honours in
ACCOUNTING & FINANCE of Goenka College of commerce and business
administration under the University of Calcutta has worked under my
supervision and guidance for his project work and prepared a project report
with the title :-
E-COMMERCE & ITS RELEVANCE
The project report, which he is submitting is his genuine and original work to
the best of my knowledge.

Signature:

Name:
Place: KOLKATA Designation:

2
 Date:
Name of college: Goenka College of commerce and
business administration

ANNEXURE-IB
Student’s DECLARATION
I hereby declare that the Project Work with the
title:-
E-COMMERCE & ITS RELEVANCE submitted by
me, for the partial fulfilment of the degree of
B.Com Honours in ACCOUNTING & FINANCE
under the University of Calcutta is my original
work and has not been submitted earlier to any
other University/ Institution for the fulfilment of
the requirement for any course of study.

I also declare that no chapter of this manuscript

in whole or in part has been incorporated in this
report from any earlier work done by others or
by me. However, extracts of any literature which
has been used for this report has been duly
acknowledged providing details of such literature
in the references.

3
 Si
gnature:

Name: ROHIT NIGANIA

Address: 1/20, Block-C, Bangur

Avenue, Kolkata-700055

Place: KOLKATA Registration

No: 145-1121-0309-14
Date:
Roll No: 474

PREFACE

Education becomes successful when it can be

applied to real life. A so called educated person
(with higher degrees and certificate with him)
will be an educated person in true sense if he
can apply his knowledge in his practice and then
only the progress of the society, progress of the
economy, progress of science and technology,
progress of human resources can take place. The
supportive factor behind this argument is the
real fact that the orgies in science and
technology, social sciences etc comes from deep
observation and analysis of real life activity, soc

4
the relation between education and practical
happening in both way, i.e., education helps to
judge practicability and practical happenings
leads to build up laws, theories.
So any branch of study, whether it is
commerce, economics, sociology, or is it
mathematics, physics and chemistry all should
contain some practical session.
The project is such a regular practical course.
The aim of the project is to provide necessary
exposure to an undergraduate (mark of
marketing specialization) student about what is
really happening in an industry. How individuals
are working in different sectors.
During this course, I had been familiar with
practical application of the oratorical knowledge
of the marketing activities of business
organization.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

5
I Take the opportunity to express my profound
gratitude and deep regards to my guide for the
exemplary guidance, monitoring and constant
encouragement throughout the course of the
project work. The blessing, help and guidance
given from the time to time shall carry me a long
way in the journey of my on which I am about to
embark.
I would like to express my special thanks of
gratitude to my teacher Prof. Mitrendu Naryan
Roy as well as our principal who gave me the
golden opportunity to do this wonderful project.
Which also helped me in doing a lot of research
and I came to know about so many things. I am
really thankful to them.

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 INDEX
CONTENTS
PAGE NO

INTRODUCTION 8-14
BACKGROUND 8
REVIEW OF LITERATURE 9-12
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 13
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 13-14
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 14
PLAN OF WORK 14
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF E-COMMERCE IN
INDIA 15-45
INTRODUCTION 15
CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW 15-35
COMPANY PROFILE: AMAZON 36-45
CONCLUSION 45
ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 46-54
INTRODUCTION 46

7
ANALYSIS OF QUESTIONNAIRE ON E-COMMERCE BASED ON
39 RESPONSES 47-53
CONCLUSION 54

CONCLUSION 55-58
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 55
RECOMMENDATIONS 55-57
AREAS OF FURTHER RESEARCH 58
CONCLUSION 58
BIBLIOGRAPHY 59
SAMPLE OF QUESTIONNAIRE 60-62

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 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT:

Electronic Commerce (E-commerce) seems to be everywhere these days. It’s nearly
impossible to read a magazine or newspaper without coming across an article about
how e-commerce is going to change and affect our lives. It is widely accepted that e-
commerce and Internet technologies can benefit an organization but still there are
very few studies about e-commerce adoption in India. In addition to that, there isn’t
any detailed recent study about of e-commerce in India incorporating latest factual
data and trends relating to its various aspects at all. So, I have proposed to study
this area to investigate the extent of India’s involvement with e-commerce
applications, its detailed conceptual framework, evolution, stories of top Indian
players in this field and find a set of guidelines or recommendations on the best
practices of e-commerce adoption which might help the Indian e-commerce firms.
We will also look into Amazon (key player of e-commerce) financial statements and
also we will look into the analysis of questionnaire based on e-commerce and its
roles.

BASIC PURPOSE:
The study is focused on achievement of following objectives are to assess the latest
trend in e-commerce globally and to check the impact of growth of e-commerce and
also to analyze the latest global scenario of e-commerce. Also it helps us to check the
impact of growth on overall economy

9
 \

1.2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Keyword search on “E-Commerce adoption in India” “e-business in India”
“E-Commerce and India” and “e-business and India” in various databases like
EBSCO, ProQuest, and Emerald Management Xtra found the following ten
E-Commerce/e-business research articles done in Indian context are :
 FROM PLACE TO SPACE:
Profitable Electronic Commerce Business :

The Internet is a powerful channel that presents new

opportunities for touching customers, enriching products
and services with information, squeezing out costs through
process automation, and redesigning internal business
processes through enhanced communication and knowledge
sharing. In most firms e-business processes are changing
the nature of the buyer seller relationship, the role of
information technology (IT), and the design of
organizational structures and roles. As firms attempt to
capitalize on their existing capabilities through the
Internet, they necessarily disrupt their embedded
processes. This process of leveraging strengths and
disrupting habits underlies the migration to e-business ? a
migration from market place to market space. This report
describes that migration using cross-case analysis of nine
firms' e business efforts.
(Ross, Jeanne W. and Vitale,
Michael R. and Weill, Peter,
November 2001)

 The Electronic Contracts Convection, the CISG, and New Sources of E-

Commerce Law:
Although no non-European Union convention focusing on

10
 international electronic commercial contracts is currently in effect, such
contracts are growing in number and importance and do not exist in a legal
vacuum. The Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods
(CISG) has been interpreted by its Advisory Council to apply to
such electronic contracts. International law, based on general principles of good
faith and equity and on customary international law, is an existing and future
source of international commercial electronic contract law. Customary
international electronic commerce law is derived from the general practices of
businesses contracting through electronic communications that are accepted as
law, and from international treaties and model laws, and their interpretations,
which have been accepted as authoritative descriptions of such practices. The
United States will decide whether or not and how to ratify the Convention on
the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts (CUECIC)
that was proposed by it to the United Nations Commission on International
Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and was drafted and approved by UNCITRAL.
CUECIC advances further than existing law the legitimacy and functionality of
international electronic commercial contracts. U.S. ratification decision makers
should recognize this advancement, reinforce the freedom of contract norms
promoted by CUECIC, and preserve the legitimacy of customary international
law as a supplement to the limited contract formation rules of CUECIC
(Martin, Charles H., Spring 2008.)

 Recommendation Networks and The Long Tail of E-Commerce:

It has been conjectured that the peer-based recommendations associated
with electronic commerce lead to a redistribution of demand from popular
products or "blockbusters" to less popular or "niche" products, and
that electronic markets will therefore be characterized by a "long tail" of
demand and revenue. We test this conjecture using the revenue distributions of
books in over 200 distinct categories on Amazon.com and detailed daily
snapshots of co-purchase recommendation networks that products of these
categories are situated in. We measure how much a product is influenced by its
position in this hyperlinked network of recommendations using a variant of
Google's PageRank measure of centrality. We then associate the average
influence of the network on each category with the inequality in the distribution

11
 of its demand and revenue, quantifying this inequality using the Gini coefficient
derived from the category's Lorenz curve. We establish that categories whose
products are influenced more by the recommendation network have
significantly flatter demand and revenue distributions, even after controlling for
variation in average category demand, category's size and price differentials.
Our empirical findings indicate that doubling the average network influence on
a category is associated with an average increase of about 50% in the relative
revenue for the least popular 20% of products, and with an average reduction of
about 15% in the relative revenue for the most popular 20% of products. We
also show that this effect is enhanced by higher assortative mixing and lower
clustering in the network, and is greater in categories whose products are more
evenly influenced by recommendations. The direction of these results persists
over time, across both demand and revenue distributions, and across both daily
and weekly demand aggregations. Our work illustrates how the microscopic
economic data revealed by online networks can be used to define and answer
new kinds of research questions, offers a fresh perspective on the influence of
networked IT artifacts on business outcomes, and provides novel empirical
evidence about the impact of visible recommendations on the long tail
of electronic commerce
( Oestreicher-Singer, Gal and
Sundararajan, Arun,
September 1, 2010)
 E-Commerce at What Price? Privacy Protection:
Customer data will be the currency that drives the growth in business-to-
consumer e-commerce over the next five years. It allows web sites to tailor
goods, services and content to the consumer and provides advertisers with the
most predictive buying patterns of current and potential customers. Consumer
fear regarding the privacy and security of their personal information however,
is preventing many consumers from either accessing the Internet or engaging
in electronic commerce. Privacy and security initiatives therefore need to be
developed by web sites to build trust with the consumer. A survey of the top 200
most accessed web sites in Australia reveals that over 90% of web sites are not
adequately informing the consumer of what personal information they are

12
 collecting, how it is to be used and what safeguards are in place to secure it. This
paper explores some of the privacy and security issues such as cookies, Spam,
credit card fraud, anonymity, data aggregation and consumer profiling that
have emerged with the Internet and e-commerce. Australia's converging
communications environment is also examined and the proposed privacy
legislation for the private sector that is to be introduced later in the year is
analysed.
(Macklin, Benjamin William, July 30, 1999)

 E-Commerce, Cyber, and Electronic Payment System Risks: Lessons from

PayPal:
By now, almost without exception, every business has an internet presence, and
is likely engaged in e-commerce. What are the major risks perceived by those
engaged in e-commerce and electronic payment systems? What potential risks,
if they become reality, may cause substantial increases in operating costs or
threaten the very survival of the enterprise?
This article utilizes the relevant annual report disclosures from eBay (parent of
PayPal), along with other eBay and PayPal documents, as a potentially powerful
teaching device. Most of the descriptive language to follow is excerpted directly
from eBay’s regulatory filings. My additions include weaving these materials
into a logical presentation and providing supplemental sources for those who
desire a deeper look (usually in my footnotes) at any particular aspect. I’ve
sought to present a roadmap with these materials that shows eBay’s struggle to
optimize its business performance while navigating through a complicated maze
of regulatory compliance concerns and issues involving governmental
jurisdictions throughout the world. First, a brief look is provided at the SEC’s
disclosure requirements. Second, a description of the eBay and PayPal history
and business models is presented. Next, is a discussion of risk factors: credit
cards; U.S. state money transmission laws; online and mobile growth; and
reliance on internet access. laws. The author estimates that PayPal’s cost of
accounting and legal fees and management time devoted to the discovery,
examination and documentation of the perceived enterprise risk associated with
e-commerce, cyber, information technology and electronic payment system risks

13
 may aggregate in the range of tens-of-millions of dollars a year. The value
proposition offered here is disarmingly simple -- at no out-of-pocket cost, the
reader has an opportunity to invest probably less than an hour to read and
reflect upon eBay and PayPal’s multiple-million-dollar research, investment and
documentation of perceived e-commerce, cyber, IT, and electronic payment
system risk. Hopefully, this will prove of value to those either interested in the
rapidly changing dynamics of (1) electronic payment systems, or (2) those
engaged in Internet site operations.
(Trautman, Lawrence J, September 3, 2016).

1.3 OBJECTIVES
 To understand the evolution of E-Commerce
 To describe the conceptual framework of E-Commerce in India;
 To analyse the present trends of E-Commerce in India;
 To examine the barriers of E-Commerce in India.

 To predict future of E-commerce E-commerce imposes itself on the companies,

projects and institutions And became significantly contribute to the economies
of the countries. Economic Unity Council of Arab League of Arab States.

 Estimates growth rate of E-commerce about 15% in Arab countries compared

to 30% globally

(www.slideshare.com, , January 2017)

1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

SEARCHING THE UNDERLYING CONCEPT

I have reviewed the academic literature to gain insight into “E-Commerce in India”.
So, various articles, journals, books, websites etc. have been used to study the
evolution, conceptual framework, definitions, key players, present trends (relating to

14
internet penetration, growth prospects, modes of payments preferred etc.), future
prospects and barriers of E-commerce.
And also the data included is secondary base and proper references have been given wherever
necessary

SAMPLING DESIGN

Initially close people were selected as respondents for knowing their views on e-
commerce. then online platform was used for knowing views of different people on e-
commerce and then on basis of that a proper and a good drafted questionnaire was
prepared and spreaded among different people (especially: teenagers) to gain their
response and make analysis basis on that.

DATA COLLECTION DESIGN

Questionnaire about e-commerce has been drawn and respondents have been asked to
fill them. all age groups of respondents were cover. it was conducted online through
Google form. target was around 50 respondents but only 39 respondents answered
them. questionnaire was typically based on e-commerce and its impact and role in the
economy.

ANALYTICAL TOOLS

Google Analytical tools like pie charts were given more emphasis and questionnaire
analysis was done by representing that on pie chart. Some bar graphs for Amazon
financial statements were also used. Google forms were used to prepare questionnaire.

1.5 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

Firstly, sample size -- Sample size was very less due to less time so data may not be that
accurate as it should be. Secondly, inadequate quantitative data as there was lack of
quantitative data , availability of theoretical data was more. Next access for Some
reports required legal access which was thus not accessible

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 1.6 PLAN OF WORK

1 INTRODUCTION

2 CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW

3 ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

4 CONCLUSION

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF
E-COMMERCE IN INDIA
2.1 INTRODUCTION
In this topic we will discuss about the importance of the study of E-COMMERCE and
its advantages and disadvantages. We will also be looking at its role and impact on
Indian economy. We will see the current barriers of E-COMMERCE and the future of
E-COMMERCE. We will also see the evolution of E-COMMERCE and its
international and national scenario. We will give emphasis on E-COMMERCE
categories and will look into that. We will see the key players of E-COMMERCE and
will analyze one key player of E-COMMERCE i.e. AMAZON. We will also be looking
at Amazon financial statement and will analyze them.

2.2 CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW

OVERVIEW OF E-COMMERCE:

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BASIC DEFINITIONS
COMMERCE

 Commerce is a division of trade or production which deals with the exchange of

goods and services from producer to final consumer

 It comprises the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services,

information, or money between two or more entities.

E-COMMERCE

 Commonly known as Electronic Marketing.

 “It consists of buying and selling goods and services over an electronic systems
Such as the internet and other computer networks.”

 “E-commerce is the purchasing, selling and exchanging goods and services over
computer networks (internet) through which transaction or terms of sale are
performed electronically.

 It facilitates new types of information based business processes for reaching and
interacting with customers like online advertising and marketing, online order
taking and online customer service. In now days E-commerce uses the WWW at
least some point in transaction lifecycle

 For developing countries like India, e-commerce offers considerable

opportunity. In India it is still in nascent stage, but even the most-pessimistic
projections indicate a boom. There has been a rise in the number of companies’
taking up e-commerce in the recent past. Major Indian portal sites have also
shifted towards e-commerce instead of depending on advertising revenue. Many
sites are now selling a diverse range of products and services from flowers,
greeting cards, and movie tickets to groceries, electronic gadgets, and
computers, etc. With stock exchanges coming online the time for true e-
commerce in India has finally arrived.

(www.scribd..com, January 2017)

IMPORATNCE OF STUDY

17
 (www.wikipedia..com, January 2017)

Today e-commerce is a byword in Indian society and it has become an integral part of
our daily life. There are websites providing any number of goods and services. Then
there are those, which provide a specific product along with its allied services.
A. Multi Product E-Commerce
Some internet portals provide almost all categories of goods and services in a single
site; hence, they are targeting buyers of every possible product/service. The most
popular examples are www.flipkart.com , www.shopclues.com, eBay. in,
www.snapdeals.com,
www.indiaplaza.com,,www.thebestofindia.com,www.homeshop18.com,
shopping.rediff.com, shopping.indiatimes.com and so on. These Indian e-commerce
portals provide goods and services in a variety of categories like:
• Apparel and Accessories for men and women
• Health and beauty products
• Books and magazines
• Computers and peripherals
• Vehicles
• Collectibles
• Software
• Consumer electronics
• Household appliances
• Jewellery
• Audio/Video entertainment goods
• Gift articles
• Real estate and services
• Business opportunities
• Employment
• Travel tickets
• Matrimony

B. Single Product E-Commerce

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Some Indian portals/websites deal in a specialized field, for example
�Automobiles:
Examples are: http://www.indiacar.com/ and http://www.automartindia.com/. On
these sites we can buy and sell four-wheelers and two-wheelers, new as well as used
Vehicles, online. Some of the services they provide are: Car research and reviews,
Online evaluation, Technical specifications, Vehicle Insurance, Vehicle Finance, Dealer
Locator, Regional Transport Office regulations, Expert speak, Message board…and
more.
�Stocks and shares and e-commerce
In India today, we can even deal in stocks and shares through e-commerce. Some of the
sites are: http://www.equitymaster.com ; http://www.5paisa.com . Some of the services
offered to registered members are Online buying/dealing of stocks and shares; , Market
analysis and research, Company information, Comparison of companies, Research on
Equity and Mutual Funds, Tracking Market Trends

�Real estate and E-commerce:

Portals like http://www.indiaproperties.com/ , www.99acres.com facilitate online
dealing in real estate. They offer either outright purchase or lease of a property
through their portal. They provide information on new properties as well as properties
for resale. One can deal directly with developers or builders or through consultants and
brokers.
Allied services: are Housing Finance ,Insurance companies• Architects & Interior
Designers, NRI services, Property Management Consultants, Packers & Movers,
Security & Maintenance Services, Vaastu or Feng Shui Consultants…and more.

�Travel & Tourism and E-commerce:

India has a rich history with cultural heritage and e-commerce is instrumental, to a
large extent, in selling India as a product, encouraging Indians as well as foreigners to
see its multifaceted culture and beauty. A major Government of India portal,
http://www.tourisminindia.com/ , has a vast variety of information for a potential
tourist. The tourist destination sites are categorized according to themes like:
Adventure - trekking, mountain climbing etc, Eco-Themes pertains to jungles, flora and

19
fauna, Beaches of India, Architectural attractions, Forts and Palaces, Buddhist
attractions, Hill resorts, Desert treks.
Allied services offered are:
1. Passport & visa
2. Travel & accommodation information
3. Weather information
4. Festival & fair dates
5. Shopping
6. Tour Operators
7. Information on Cuisine & Restaurants
8. Car rental services…and more.
There are also sites that highlight the tourist destinations of a specific region in India,
like http://www.incredibleindia.org/ , which covers North East India.

�Gifts and E-commerce:

In the bygone days, one had to plan what to gift a loved one, trudge across to your
favourite shop, and browse for hours before purchasing a gift. Today there are specific
Indian websites making the act of gifting quick and easy to suit one’s lifestyle. One
such site is http://www.indiangiftsportal.com/ .
The gifts are categorized as:
1. Collectibles like paintings and sculptures
2. Luxury items like leather goods, perfumes, jewellery boxes, etc
3. Household curios and carpets, etc
4. Toys & games
5. Chocolates
6. Flowers
7. Wood-craft & metal-craft
8. Idols for worship…and more.
Also the items can be searched by different regions of India, as every region has a
special style in making handicrafts.

�Hobbies and E-Commerce:

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The most popular hobbies from time immemorial are reading, music and films. On the
Indian website http://www.firstandsecond.com/ one can buy more than 300,000 titles of
books, cassettes, VCDs and DVDs.
The book’s cover a wide range of topics like Business, Art, Cookery, Engineering,
Children’s Stories, Health, Medicine, Biographies, Horror, Home & Garden, etc.
As for music and videos, they are available in English as well as in Indian languages to
cater to the varied tastes and the topics range from devotional songs, old-time
favourites and retro and jazz to the latest pop, rap, etc.

�Matrimony and E-commerce:

It is said that marriages are made in heaven, but in the world of E-commerce they are
made on marriage portals like http://www.jeevansathi.com/ (meaning life-partner.com
in Hindi) and http://www.shaadi.com/ (meaning marriage.com in Hindi).One can
search for a suitable match on their websites by region of residence (India or abroad),
religion or caste. Once registered with them, they have email facility and chat rooms
too, so that the couple gets to know more about each other before making the biggest
decision of their lives.
Allied services for registered members:
1. Astrological services
2. Information on Customs and Rituals
3. Legal issues
4. Health & Beauty
5. Fashion & Style nnd more..

�Employment and e-commerce:

Two major portals like www.monsterindia.com and www.naukri.com (meaning
job.com in Hindi) are instrumental in providing job seekers with suitable employment
at the click of a mouse. They have directories categorized under the headings
Employers and Job Seekers. The service for job seekers is free and for Employers they
charge a nominal fee. Jobs are available online in fields ranging from secretarial to
software development, and from real estate to education. The opportunities offered are
unlimited.

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ADVANTAGES OF E-COMMERCE
(www.slideshare.com, January 2017)

E-Commerce advantages can be broadly classified in three major

categories:

 Advantages to Organizations

 Advantages to Consumers

 Advantages to Society

Advantages to Organizations

 Using E-Commerce, organization can expand their market to national and

international markets with minimum capital investment. An organization can
easily locate more customers, best suppliers and suitable business partners
across the globe.

 E-Commerce helps organization to reduce the cost to create process, distribute,

retrieves and manages the paper based information by digitizing the
information.

 E-commerce improves the brand image of the company.

 E-commerce helps organization to provide better customer services.

 E-Commerce helps to simplify the business processes and make them faster and
efficient.

Advantages to Customers

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  24x7 supports. Customer can do transactions for the product or enquiry about
any product/services provided by a company any time, anywhere from any
location. Here 24x7 refers to 24 hours of each seven days of a week.

 E-Commerce application provides user more options and quicker delivery of

products.

 E-Commerce application provides user more options to compare and select the
cheaper and better option.

 A customer can put review comments about a product and can see what others
are buying or see the review comments of other customers before making a final
buy.

Advantages to Society

 Customers need not to travel to shop a product thus less traffic on road and low
air pollution.

 E-Commerce helps reducing cost of products so less affluent people can also
afford the products.

 E-Commerce has enabled access to services and products to rural areas as well
which are otherwise not available to them.

 E-Commerce helps government to deliver public services like health care,

education, social services at reduced cost and in improved way.

DISADVANTAGES OF E-COMMERCE
(www.wikipedia.com, January 2017)

E-Commerce disadvantages can be broadly classified in two major categories:

 Technical disadvantages

 Non-Technical disadvantages

23
Technical Disadvantages

 There can be lack of system security, reliability or standards owing to poor

implementation of e-Commerce.

 Software development industry is still evolving and keeps changing rapidly.

 In many countries, network bandwidth might cause an issue as there is

insufficient telecommunication bandwidth available.

 Special types of web server or other software might be required by the vendor
setting the e-commerce environment apart from network servers.

Non-Technical Disadvantages

 Initial cost: The cost of creating / building E-Commerce application in-house

may be very high. There could be delay in launching the E-Commerce
application due to mistakes, lack of experience.

 User resistance: User may not trust the site being unknown faceless seller. Such
mistrust makes it difficult to make user switch from physical stores to
online/virtual stores.

 Security/ Privacy: Difficult to ensure security or privacy on online transactions.

 E-Commerce applications are still evolving and changing rapidly.

HISTORY OF E-COMMERCE
1970s: Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)

 Used by the banking industry to exchange account information over

secured networks

 Late 1970s and early 1980s: Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for e-
commerce within companies

1990s: the World Wide Web on the Internet provides easy-to-use technology for
information publishing and dissemination

 Enable diverse business activities (economies of scope)

(www.wikepedia.com, January 2017)

24
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The use of e-commerce websites can lead to accepting and satisfying intentions and
then influence customer satisfaction behaviour towards an e-commerce website.
Customer satisfaction is how satisfied a customer is with the supplied product or
service. It is closely related to interpersonal trust , it is expected that a higher level of
customer satisfaction will lead to greater loyalty. However, the impact of satisfaction on
customer loyalty is rather complex. Fisher (2001) believes that customer satisfaction
accounts for only part of why people change product or service providers.

(www.wikipedia.com, January 2017)

EVOLUTION OF E-COMMERCE

In the last twenty years, e-commerce has entirely revolutionized retail. It went from
being an essentially non-existent business model to becoming a potential threat to the
traditional mall as we know it. Jeff Bezos shipped Amazon’s first ever online book sale

25
in 1995 and we consumers have never looked back. Data released last February by the
U.S. Commerce Department indicates that Americans spent $304.91 billion online in
2014 alone.

In true modern-industry fashion, e-commerce hasn’t just grown exponentially. It has

evolved and transformed over time to meet the ever changing whims and needs of the
modern day consumer. In its early days, e-commerce was fairly limited. You saw
something you liked and you bought it. Simple. Customization wasn’t an option. Today,
not only can you customize a product online and have it made to order (take
NikeIDs for example), but you can even design it yourself from scratch – and then sell
it without having to lift a finger.

(www.wikipedia.com, January 2017)

NATIONAL SCENARIO
Increasing internet and mobile penetration, growing acceptability of online payments
and favourable demographics has provided the e-commerce sector in India the unique
opportunity to companies connect with their customers, it said. There would be over a
five to seven fold increase in revenue generated through e-commerce as compared to
last year with all branded apparel, accessories, jewellery, gifts, footwear are available
at a cheaper rates and delivered at the doorstep, it added. It noted that the the buying
trends during 2016 witness a significant upward movement due to aggressive online
discounts, rising fuel price and wider and abundant choice hit the e-commerce industry
in 2016. It observed mobile commerce (m-commerce) is growing rapidly as a stable and
secure supplement to the e-commerce industry.
"Shopping online through smart phones is proving to be a game changer, and industry
leaders believe that m-commerce could contribute up to 70 per cent of their total
revenues," the statement added. In India roughly 60-65 per cent of the total e-
commerce sales are being generated by mobile devices and tablets, increased by 50 per
cent than the last year and also likely to continue upwards, it added.
It noted that the browsing trends, which have broadly shifted from the desktop to
mobile devices in India, online shopping is also expected to follow suit, as one out of
three customers currently makes transactions through mobiles in tier-1 and tier-2
cities. In 2016, around 80 per cent of shopping queries were made through mobile

26
devices, compared to 46 per cent in 2013. In 2016, the highest growth rate was seen in
the apparel segment almost 69.5 per cent over last year, followed by electronic items by
62 percent, baby care products at 53 per cent, beauty and personal care products at 52
per cent and home furnishings at 49 per cent
On the mode of payment, almost 45 per cent of online shoppers reportedly preferred
cash on delivery mode of payment over credit cards (16 per cent) and debit cards (21
per cent). Only 10 per cent opted for internet banking and a scanty 7 per cent
preferred cash cards, mobile wallets, and other such modes of payment, it said. Among
the above age segments, 18-25 years of age group has been the fastest growing age
segment online with user growth being contributed by both male and female segments.
The survey revealed that 38 per cent of regular shoppers are in 18-25 age group, 52 per
cent in 26-35, 8 per cent in 36-45 and 2 per cent in the age group of 45-60. Almost 65
per cent of online shoppers are male as against 35 per cent female
(www.wikipedia.com, January 2017)

INTERNATIONAL SCENARIO
In the global scenario, China is fast emerging as the biggest player in e-commerce.
According to an e-commerce report, by 2016, it may well surpass the U.S. In an
astonishing illustration of its online growth rate, China has added the equivalent of the
entire population of France in internet users in each of the last four years. It will add
the equivalent of the entire population of Canada as e-shoppers in each of the next four
years. China is projected to rise from 145 million e-shoppers today to 329 million by
2015. The sheer potential and scope of e-commerce has made it feasible and more
attractive than any other business channel in the economy today. From a mere click of
a button and a host of payment choices; consumers can purchase virtually anything
under the sun with more and more companies offering free shipping.

(www.slideshare.com, January 2017)

27
E-COMMERCE CATEGORIES
(www.wikipedia.com, January 2017)
E-Commerce or Electronics Commerce business models can generally categorized in
following categories.

 Business - to - Business (B2B)

 Business - to - Consumer (B2C)

 Consumer - to - Consumer (C2C)

 Consumer - to - Business (C2B)

 Business - to - Government (B2G)

28
  Government - to - Business (G2B)

 Government - to - Citizen (G2C)

Business - to - Business (B2B)

Website following B2B business model sells its product to an intermediate buyer who
then sells the product to the final customer. As an example, a wholesaler places an
order from a company's website and after receiving the consignment, sells the end
product to final customer who comes to buy the product at wholesaler's retail outlet.

Business - to - Consumer (B2C)

Website following B2C business model sells its product directly to a customer. A
customer can view products shown on the website of business organization. The
customer can choose a product and order the same. Website will send a notification to
the business organization via email and organization will dispatch the product/goods to
the customer.

29
Consumer - to - Business (C2B)

In this model, a consumer approaches website showing multiple business organizations

for a particular service. Consumer places an estimate of amount he/she wants to spend
for a particular service. For example, comparison of interest rates of personal loan/ car
loan provided by various banks via website. Business organization that fulfills the
consumer's requirement within specified budget approaches the customer and provides

its service s.

30
Business - to - Government (B2G)

B2G model is a variant of B2B model. Such websites are used by government to trade
and exchange information with various business organizations. Such websites are
accredited by the government and provide a medium to businesses to submit
application forms to the government.

Government - to - Business (G2B)

Government uses B2G model website to approach business organizations. Such

websites support auctions, tenders and application submission functionalities.

Government - to - Citizen (G2C)

Government uses G2C model website to approach citizen in general. Such websites
support auctions of vehicles, machinery or any other material. Such website also

31
provides services like registration for birth, marriage or death certificates.

KEY PLAYERS OF E-COMMERCE

(www.wikipedia.com, January 2017)
 Flipkart.com is an e-commerce website founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny
Bansal in 2007. Both are from IIT Delhi Alumni and also worked in
Amazon.com. Flipkart.com ranks #502 in world according to Alexa traffic
rankings. In Google page it ranks #6. It forms advertising revenue of $4.8
million. It receives 2.2 million page views in a day and generates $6,574 in
advertising revenue every day. Moreover it has certain losses 0.60% in traffic
ranking. Loading time of an average page is 2.1 sec as it is much faster than
29% of sites around the world. The mode of payments include Credit card,
Debit card, net banking, e-gift vouchers, cash on delivery.

 EBay is an online shopping website a consumer to consumer

corporation which helps the people and businessman to buy and
sell products worldwide. It is operated to almost 30 countries.
EBay ranks #544 among Alexa traffic ranking. In Google it has
page rank #6. The advertising revenue inculcated was about $4.4
Million. Moreover it receives 2 million page views per day which
generates $6,066 in the advertisement revenue. Recently it has
shown 15.13% growth in traffic rank. The page loading time is
upto 2 sec which is likely faster than 24% sites across the world.

 Snapdeal deals with online marketing of products including

32
 Mobiles, Electronics, Fashion accessories, Apparel, Footwear, Kids,
Home and Kitchen, Sports, Books; and services like Restaurants,
Spas & Entertainment. It was launched by Kunal Bahl, a Wharton
graduate and Rohit Bansal, alumnus of IIT Delhi, in February
2010. It ranks #576 in the world as per Alexa traffic ranking. It
ranks # 5 in Google Page Rank. The advertising revenue is about
$4.2 million. It receives 1.9 million page views in a day and
generates $5,729 in advertising revenue. It has suffered loss of 4.16
% in traffic ranking. The loading time of an average page is 1.6 sec
which is faster than 46% of sites across the world.

 Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American-

based multinational electronic commerce company America's largest online
retailer. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and launched it online In
1995. It started as an online bookstore. With 2.5 million titles, it became the
“Earth’s Biggest Bookstore”.

 Jabong is a fashion and lifestyle e-commerce owned by Rocket internet. Jabong
retails apparel, footwear, accessories, beauty products, fragrances, home
accessories and other fashion and lifestyle products. Jabong.com has a Google
page rank #3. The advertising revenue is about $2.4 Million. It receives 1.1
million page views per day generating $3,310 in advertising revenue. It shows
7.69% growth rate in traffic rank. The page loading time is 1 sec and is faster
than 56%sites around the world.

33
EFFECTS OF E-COMMERCE ON INDIAN ECONOMY
(www.wikipedia.com, January 2017)
E-Commerce is a growing sector in India. Just like the growth of IT industry in India
through the 1990s, the 2010s will be remembered for the growth in the E-Commerce
industry. In its present state the contribution of E-Commerce to GDP is around 0.2%
which is expected to grow 15 times to around 2.5% by 2030.The impact is so huge that
the present wave of de-monetisation could have not been thought if E-Commerce did
not exist. E-Commerce to a large extent helped absorb its shock as well as gained the
maximum out of it as well. By 2030 the contribution to GDP by E-Commerce is
expected to reach to around 30 Billion Dollars which is around 20 Billion Dollars in its
present state.

E-COMMERCE CONTRIBUTION TO GDP

34
ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON E-COMMERCE
(www.wikipedia.com, January 2017)
In this day and age, social media has a HUGE impact on ecommerce. Social media has
its metaphorical hand in a lot of different stages of ecommerce. Starting from how a
customer first interacts with a brand, to the checkout stage, to post-checkout, social
media is a driving force. We’ll break down what we like to call the Shopper Journey to
give you better insight.

To set up the example let’s bring in a hypothetical shopper -- we’ll call him ROHIT. As
ROHIT goes through his shopper journey we’ll show how he interacts with social
media at different touch points.

1. Awareness: Rohit’s flipping through his Instagram feed and sees a picture
of his friend at the gym. “Wow, Rahul’s making me look bad,” he thinks to
himself. “I didn’t know Add Pants (sorry guys, not a real company) has a line
of athletic wear. Summer is on the horizon, maybe a fresh set of workout gear

35
 is just the motivation I needs to get to the gym.” Rohit clicks through to the
Randhir’s Instagram account, then on to the Randhir’s website.
2. Interest: He’s greeted by a targeted message just for Instagram users that
lets him know Randhir is having a sale on athletic wear this week.
a. Behavioural Targeting is implemented at this point in the shopper
journey by feeding off of social media and using it as a data point for
personalization.
3. Consideration: He notices that if he shares with his friends that he’ll get an
instant coupon directly on the website. Usually he has to search multiple
websites for active coupons, so this is a real time saver.
a. This is Social Rewards at work. This incentivizes your potential
customers to share our your brand in order to get a small reward. With this
campaign in place, you can get your brand out in multiple networks without
having to do the work yourself.
4. Purchase: After adding the sweatpants to his cart, he reaches the checkout
page and notices that he can login using his existing Facebook account. He
doesn’t have to fill in any more info so checkout is a breeze.
a. Here goes social media once again, making life simpler (round of
applause). Social Login gets customers through to checkout faster, reducing
your cart abandon rate, which does wonders for your conversion rates. PLUS
Social Login gives you awesome actionable data that you can use for future
marketing endeavors (name, email, age, birthday, gender, etc).
5. Retention and Advocacy: 3 weeks after his order, AddPants sends Rohit an
email telling him that for every friend he refers he’ll earn $20 off his next
order and his friends will save $20 each as well.
a. Social media back at it again. Setting up a campaign like this
through Refer-a-Friend is a foolproof way for your customers to do the
legwork of “word of mouth” online marketing. Customers like Rohit can send
these referrals to his friends via social media networks, or, through email.
The power of social media is mind-blowing. It’s a marketer's best friend and a
customer haven for a seamless shopping experience

FUTURE OF E-COMMERCE

36
 (www.scribd.com, January 2017)
The online shopping has been increased at a huge amount. People find it much easier to
shop online rather purchasing it from local store. The revenue of online shopping
websites has been increased up to 30% from the last few years. People has got huge
convenience in shopping from online websites as it helps the customers to shop easily
without losing the comfort of their home. The market of ecommerce in India has wide
spread in almost all parts of India as it easiness and attractiveness helps the online
shoppers to purchase their desired product at a much cheaper rate than others. That's
why in upcoming years the sales of ecommerce is going to view as a boom for the
ecommerce market.

FIGURE IN USD BILLION

BARRIERS OF E-COMMERCE

(www.slideshare.com, January 2017)

Some of the infrastructural barriers responsible for slow growth of ecommerce in India
are as follows. Some of these even present new business opportunities.
Lack of IT policies and effective cyber laws
Lack of trust among customers: You have to deliver the product, safe and secure, in
the hands of the right guy in right time frame. Regular post doesn’t offer an acceptable
service level. Couriers have high charges and limited reach. Initially, you might have to
take insurance for high value shipped articles increasing the cost.
Indian people (especially females) have tendency to bargain the products, which is not
feasible in Ecommerce.

37
Different local languages and cultural factors
Lack of awareness and understanding of the value of e-commerce
Continuous change in technologies, emerging new technologies
Not sure of product quality
Need to wait for delivery once product is ordered since widely spread regions
No significant discounts on the products area to purchase
Shipping costs are high due to big geographical
Security - Ensuring security of payments and privacy of online transactions is key to
the widespread acceptance and adoption of e-commerce.
Internet costs: to depend on speed, bandwidth of internet (Approximately around 1.6
million households connected to the Internet)
Financial costs – for storing information, continuous change of technologies,
processing orders
Taxations: Octroi, entry tax, VAT and lots of state specific forms which accompany
them. This can be confusing at times.

2.3 COMPANY PROFILE AMAZON

(www.google.com, www.scribblie.com ,
www.economictimes.com, ,www.annualreports.com , January 2017)
COMPANY OVERVIEW

 Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American-

based multinational electronic commerce company.
 Headquartered ---Seattle, Washington.
 America's largest online retailer.
 Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and launched it online in 1995. It
started as an online bookstore.
 With 2.5 million titles, it became the “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore”.

38
PRODUCTS

 Books

 Movie, Music and Games

 Digital Download

 Kindle

 Computer And Office

 Electronics

 Home and garden

 Grocery, Health and beauty

 Toys, kids and baby

 Clothing, Shoes and jewelry

 Sports and outdoors

BUSINESS MODEL

 Amazon-to-Buyer Sale Approach

 Multi level E-Commerce

39
 • Customer Tracking

 It operates 7 websites that support their business operation globally and offers
20 million items for sale.

AMAZON TECHNOLOGY

 It has world’s largest Linux Database, with a total capacity of 7.8 terabytes, 18.5
TB and 24.7 TB respectively.

 The Central Amazon Data warehouse is made up of 28 Hewelett Packard

servers, with four CPUs per node, running Oracle 9i database software.

 The architecture handles millions of back-end operations and third party seller
queries.

AMAZON GROWTH

Amazon has grown a tremendous amount over the years. Amazon's annual revenue in
2010 was $34 billion. As of 2016, that grew to $107 billion. The number of employees
has also grown tremendously from 33,700 workers in 2010 to 268,900 as of June. Gene
Munster, an internet industry analyst at Piper Jeffray, told Bloomberg that Amazon is
expected to sell 7.2 billion items this year. By 2020, that number is expected to grow to
12.6 billion items.. Amazon spent $11.5 billion on shipping in 2016 - that's twice what
the company spent two years ago. In 2008, Amazon leased more than 20 jets from Atlas
Air. In March, the company leased 20 Boeing 767s from cargo company Air Transport
Services Group. The company has also acquired 4,000 truck trailers, and opened more
than 28 sorting centers and 59 delivery stations. Amazon has also dipped into actual
ships. The company's subsidiary in China has obtained a license that allows Amazon to
sell space on container ships traveling between Asia and the US and Europe. Deutsche
Bank released a report in June predicting that Amazon will have a shipping operation
that consists of self-driving trucks and drones in addition to the 767s and container

40
ships. In fact, some are even predicting that Amazon will turn its investment in
shipping into a whole new business, challenging companies like FedEx with its logistics
supply chain.

“WORK HARD, HAVE FUN AND

MAKE HISTORY”
(slogan of Amazon)

41
AMAZON FINANCIAL STATEMENTS 2016

(www.slideshare.com, www.annualreports.com, January 2017)

42
43
44
45
46
47
COMMENT ON FINANCIAL STATEMENT
For the nine months ended 30 September 2016, Amazon.com, Inc. revenues increased
29% to $92.25B. Net income increased from $114M to $1.62B. Revenues reflect North
America segment increase of 27% to $53.54B, International segment increase of 27%
to $30.02B, Online Sales-NA increase of 27% to $53.54B. Net income benefited from
AWS segment income increase from $1.18B to $2.6B, North America segment income
increase of 59% to $2.78B.

2.4 CONCLUSION
We have seen how E-COMMERCE usage for multi products and single products. We
have also seen that in the last twenty years, e-commerce has entirely revolutionized
retail. We saw that increasing internet and mobile penetration has provided the e-
commerce sector in INDIA the unique opportunity to companies connect with their
customers. In global scenario, we saw china is fast emerging as the biggest player in e-
commerce. We also saw many barriers of e-commerce like lack of trust among
customers, internet costs etc. Next we move on to future of e-commerce and we
analyzed that market of e-commerce in India has wide spread in almost all parts of
India as it easiness and attractiveness helps the customers to purchase online. Next we
saw key players of e-commerce and found Amazon to be successful one and thus
analysed the financial statements of Amazon .

48
 ANALYSIS AND
FINDINGS

3.1 INTRODUCTION
We have looked into financial statements of Amazon in previous chapter and also saw
the barriers and future of e-commerce . we also looked into the impact of e-commerce
on Indian economy.

In this chapter we will analyze the questionnaire prepared and asked the respondents
on the topic e-commerce and its role. We will be seeing on e-commerce is playing role
on its users and what the customers think about it. On basis of that we will be
preparing pie-charts so as to get represent the data diagrammatically. I will be
providing suggestions to overcome the barriers and problems relating to e-commerce
being faced by respondents.

49
3.2 ANALYSIS OF QUESTIONNAIRE ON E-
COMMERCE BASED ON 39 RESPONSES
Figure 1

COMMENT: BY ANALYSING THIS WE CAN SAY,

MAJORITY NUMBER OF PEOPLE USING E-COMMERCE
ARE FROM PAST 5 YEARS

50
 Figure 2

COMMENT: BY
ANALYSING THIS
WE CAN SAY, MAJORITY
NUMBER OF PEOPLE THINK
E COMMERCE
HELPS N BROADEN
CONSUMER’S CHOICE. SECONDLY, WE FOUND MAJORITY
THINK IN RECENT TRENDS E-OMMERCE HAS EMERGED MORE.

51
 Figure 3

FOR WHAT PURPOSE YOU USE E-COMMERCE?

COMMENT: BY ANALYSING THIS WE SEE POPULATION

OF PEOPLE PURPOSE IN E-COMMERCE IS PERSONAL
RATHER THAN BUSINESS. SECONDLY, WE SEE PRICE
FACTOR PLAYS THE MAIN ROLE IN E-COMMERCE
AMONG CONSUMERS FOR CHOSING IT AS A MEDIUM.

52
 Figure 4

COMMENT: BY ANALYSING IT WE FOUND FLIPKART TO

BE BEST PREFERABLE WEBSITE IN E-COMMERCE
FIELD. SECONDLY . WE ALSO FOUND THAT
GOVERNANCE INTERFERENCE OR RULES IN RELATED
TO E-COMMERCE FIELD IS WELL UPTO TO THE MARK
AND SATISFACTORY.

53
 Figure 5

COMMENT: BY ANALYSING IT WE FOUND , E-

COMMERCE IS AN ACCEPTABLEAND COMPLIMETARY
CHANNEL OF MARKET. SECONDLY, WE FOUND THAT
CONSUMERS ARE STILL NOT SURE WHAT THE FUTURE
OF E-COMMERCE WLL BE , BUT THEY THINK IT WILL
GOOD BUT MAY NOT BE SUPERFINE.

54
 Figure 6

COMMENT: PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT OPINIONS

REGARDING CHANGING THE CURRENT PREVAILING E-
CMMERE SCENARIO. BUT MOST OF THEM WANT TO
BLOCK OR DISCONTINUE THE FRAUDLENT PRACTICE.

55
 Figure 7

COMMENT: PEOPLE PARTICIPATING AND GIVING

REPONSES ON THIS QUESTIONAIRRE WERE
GENERALLY OF AGE 20-25.

NOTE : THIS QUESTIONAIRRE WAS CONDUCTED

THROUGH GOOGLE DOC (FORUM) AMONG 39
PEOPLE(PEOPLE OF INDIA)) AND RESPONSES WERE
GATHERED AND PIE CHARTS WERE PREPARED ON
BASIS OF THAT. AND IS BASED ON TRUE FACTS.

56
3.3 CONCLUSION

We have analyzed the answers being respondent of age group especially 2-25 by users
of e-commerce and plotted it in pie chart. Seeing the pie chart we can say since past 5
years most the people are using e-commerce. We see many people thinks e-commerce
has broaden consumer’s choice in recent years and has emerged more. We see most of
the users of e-commerce use for personal purpose rather than business purpose. We
also saw recent flipkart is most preferable. We also saw that government role n e-

commerce is up to the mark and satisfactory.

57
 CONCLUSION
4.1 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
E-COMMERCE is developing and spreading day by day in Indian economy especially.
We also saw e-commerce is overcoming its current barriers and making prosper.. We
have seen how E-COMMERCE usage for multi products and single products. We have
also seen that in the last twenty years, e-commerce has entirely revolutionized retail.
We saw that increasing internet and mobile penetration has provided the e-commerce
sector in INDIA the unique opportunity to companies connect with their customers. In
global scenario, we saw china is fast emerging as the biggest player in e-commerce. We
also saw many barriers of e-commerce like lack of trust among customers, internet
costs etc. Next we move on to future of e-commerce and we analyzed that market of e-
commerce in India has wide spread in almost all parts of India as it easiness and
attractiveness helps the customers to purchase online. Next we saw key players of e-
commerce and found Amazon to be successful one and thus analysed the financial
statements of Amazon .

We have analyzed the answers being respondent of age group especially 2-25 by users
of e-commerce and plotted it in pie chart. Seeing the pie chart we can say since past 5
years most the people are using e-commerce. We see many people thinks e-commerce
has broaden consumer’s choice in recent years and has emerged more. We see most of
the users of e-commerce use for personal purpose rather than business purpose. We
also saw recent flipkart is most preferable. We also saw that government role n e-
commerce is up to the mark and satisfactory

4.2 RECOMMENDATIONS
The most important factor that is necessary in growing e Commerce in India – Trust. If
we look at the Indian context, I feel that there is a general lack of trust between
retailers and customers. Consumers don’t trust the retailers because they feel that they
are either being over charged or that they wouldn’t be able to get appropriate level of
customer service once the sale is complete. Retailers don’t trust the customers because
they feel that the customers will take every opportunity to misuse the return or

58
exchange policies. It is my opinion that this general lack of trust is the primary barrier
that is impeding the growth of e Commerce within India. Here are some of the
practical techniques that online retailers can employ to improve this level of trust and
build an environment where customers feel safe in clicking that “Proceed to Checkout”
button.

1. Customer Reviews - Today’s customers are putting less trust on website

marketing messages and becoming more influenced by recommendations from
other people. Customer’s trust for an online retailer will increase if the retailer
offers an ability to let customers share their positive as well as negative reviews
about products or vendors. The key is to not “moderate” the negative reviews
because by allowing customers to post negative reviews, it will actually enhance
the credibility of the retailer as well as other reviews. Obviously, any foul
language needs to be moderated but any genuine issues with the products or
vendors must be posted along with the positive reviews.
2. Clear shipping and delivery commitment- At the time of setting up products for
sale, clear shipping and handling time must be associated with the product. This
information should be displayed consistently on all product pages so that
customer’s expectations around shipping timeline can be clearly set.
3. Analytics & Personalization-Although personalized product recommendations
and content do not directly increase customer’s trust, they do demonstrate to
the customer that the online retailer is making a good effort in understanding
the customer’s individual needs and is acting upon them. This implicitly
improves the comfort level that the retailer is not just looking to sell products
but is making an honest attempt in building relationship with the customer.
4. Operational Reporting & Dashboards-Online retailers must invest in strong
operational reports that provide alerts and metrics on orders that have a risk of
missing the service level that was promised to the customers. If you have
recently implemented an e Commerce platform, chances are that at times orders
will get “stuck” in various states. Therefore, it is important to establish
thresholds around how long should orders stay in various states (such as
“Processing for Payment”, “Preparing for Shipment” etc.) and then build
automated alerts when orders exceed these thresholds.

59
5. Vendor Penalties-In the Indian context, majority of the e Commerce sites work
in a “drop-ship” model. This implies that the online retailer doesn’t physically
stock the goods, and instead relies on external vendors to directly ship the
merchandise to customer’s home. In this case, it is extremely critical to set clear
SLA’s on how long will it take the vendors to ship the orders. There should be
financial penalties built into the contracts if the vendors miss the service levels.
Also, there should be penalties if the vendors receive excessive negative reviews
from customers.
6. Price Match Guarantee-A Price Match Guarantee (PMG) is a store policy which
entitles a customer to a refund of the difference between the store’s asking price
and a competitor’s price. It can not only help build trust with the customer, it
can also help reduce price competition across online retailers. This may sound
counter intuitive but it is one of the most discussed examples in “Game Theory”
and it has actually helped retailers in US to avoid direct price wars.
7. Well trained call centre-I recently called Airtel customer service to add
Blackberry service to my cell phone. There was an issue with their automated
messaging system that was directing me to a wrong group within Airtel. After
calling 9 times, I gave up because every agent that I spoke to had the same
scripted response that I should call back again and press option 2. The point I
am making is that although it is important to train the call centre agents around
specific customer service issues, what is even more important is that the call
centre agents be trained to have good problem solving skills, and they should be
empowered to own the problem resolution from end to end.
8. Fraud Protection - Not only should an online retailer ensure that the
appropriate security certificates are setup to handle checkout related
transactions, the sensitive customer and payment information should be stored
in an encrypted format. The messaging on the site should clearly indicate that
the checkout process is completely secure. In addition, there are third party
Fraud detection services available that help flag potentially fraudulent
transaction based upon credit card usage velocity and other parameters

60
4.2 AREAS OF FURTHER RESEARCH
If more time is given then number of respondents can be covered more which will give
more accurate information and also a thorough and deep analysis of quantitative
information on e-commerce can be provided which will give information in numerical
figures .

We can also compare different key players of e-commerce data and make an
comprehensive analysis between them

We can also overcome the limitations:

 Sample size
 Access
 Inadequate quantitative data

4.4 CONCLUSION
Several important phenomena are associated with e-commerce. E-Commerce has
unleashed yet another revolution, which is changing the way businesses buy and sell
products and services. New methodologies have evolved. The role of geographic
distances in forming business relationships is reduced. E-Commerce is the future of
shopping. With the deployment of 3G and 4G wireless communication technologies, the
internet economy will continue to grow robustly. In the next 3 to 5 years, India will
have 300 to 400 million internet users which will equal, if not surpass, many of the
developed countries. Internet economy will then become more meaningful in India.
With the rapid expansion of internet, E-commerce is set to play a very important role
in the 21st century, the new opportunities that will be thrown open, will be accessible to
both large corporations and small companies. The role of government is to provide a legal
framework for E-Commerce so that while domestic and international trade are allowed to
expand their horizons, basic rights such as privacy, intellectual property, prevention of
fraud, consumer protection etc. are all taken care of.

61
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
 www.google.com

 www.ssrn.com

 www.amazon.com

 www.annualreports.com

 www.wikipedia.com

 www.googlescholar .com

 www.slideshare.com

 www.economictimes.com

 www.scribd.com

 www.googleform.com

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 SAMPLE
QUESTIONS:
 "FOR HOW LONG YOU ARE USING E-COMMERCE?",

 "HOW IS E-COMMERCE HELPFUL TO THE CONSUMER IN THE E-BUSINESS

DOMAIN?"
 "DO YOU THINK APPLICATION OF E-COMMERCE HAS INCREASED OVER THE
YEARS IN INDIA?"
 "FOR WHAT PURPOSE YOU USE E-COMMERCE?","WHAT FACTORS PLAYS AN
IMPORTANT ROLE IN SHAPING YOUR DECISION FOR CHOOSING E-COMMERCE?"
 "DO YOU THINK GOVERNMENT ROLE IN E-COMMERCE IS
SATISFACTORY?","BEST E-COMMERCE WEBSITE?”
 "DO YOU AGREE THAT E-COMMERCE CAN PROVIDE AN ALTERNATIVE MARKET
CHANNEL BY ELIMINATING MIDDLEMEN?"
 “WHAT ACCORDING TO YOU IS THE FUTURE OF E-COMMERCE IN INDIA?"
 "IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE SOMETHING IN E-COMMERCE, WHAT WILL YOU
DO?"
 "YOUR AGE?”
ANSWERS:
1. More than five year”, “Encourages price
transparency","Yes","For personal
use","Discounts","No","Amazon","Yes","Average","Faster
Delivery with assured quality.","20-25"
2. "Between one year to five year","Fastens business
process","Yes","For personal use","Easy
access","Yes","Flipkart","Yes","Very good","","25-40"
3. "Between one year to five year","Broadens consumer's
choice","Yes","For personal
use","Discounts","No","Myntra","Yes","Good","Nope! They're
doing pretty well till now!","20-25"
4. "Between one year to five year","Fastens business
process","Yes","For both business and personal
purpose","Easy access","Maybe","Amazon","Yes","Very
good","","20-25"
5. "Between one year to five year","Broadens consumer's
choice","Yes","For personal use","Easy
access","Maybe","Amazon","Yes","Very good","The quality of
some local brands especially Indian Brands should be
improved also more and more Indian Brands should be
introduced and put forward in the e-commerce market ","20-
25"
6. "Between one year to five year","Broadens consumer's
choice","Yes","For personal
use","Discounts","No","Myntra","Yes","Good","Nope! They're
doing pretty well till now!","20-25"
7. "Between one year to five year","Broadens consumer's
choice","Yes","For personal
use","Price","Yes","Amazon","Yes","Very good","More
discounts","20-25"
8. "Between one year to five year","Fastens business
process","No","For personal
use","Price","Yes","Flipkart","No","Average","","20-25"

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THE END

THANK
YOU

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