Unit

Section 1.3
1 E-commerce 2021:
Business,
Technology, Society.
Econ. Enrique Ponce Cornejo., MBA, Ed.D
leponce@ecotec.edu.ec
Unique technology
characteristics of e-commerce
There are 8 unique characteristics that we find in e-
commerce technology: Ubiquity, Global reach, Universal
Standards, Richness, Interactivity, Information Density,
Personalization and Customization, and Social
technology.
Ubiquity:

• In traditional commerce, a marketplace is a physical place that one visits to

proceed with a financial transaction. Radio, TV, and printed press motivate a
client to go to a physical place to conduct such transaction.
• E-commerce, on the other hand, is characterized by its ubiquity, it is available
all the time, and everywhere. You can buy from your computer, laptop, tablet
or phone anytime and from any part of the world.
• This is known as marketspace, an expanded space from traditional limits, and
without time and space restrictions.
Global reach:
• E-commerce allows us to conduct commercial transactions to cross-cultural,
regional, and national boundaries far more conveniently and cost-
effectively than is true in traditional commerce.
• The potential market size for e-commerce merchants is roughly equal to the
size of the world´s online population (estimated in 4 billion in 2020).
• The internet makes it more easier for startup e-commerce merchants
within a single country to achieve a national audience that was ever
possible in the past.
• The total number of users or customers an e-commerce business can obtain
is a measure of its reach (Evans and Wurster, 1997).
Universal Standards:
• One strikingly unusual feature of e-commerce technologies is that the
technical standards for comducting e-commerce, are universal standards -
they are all shared by all nations around the world.
• This reduces the barriers of entry costs – the costs merchants must pay
just to bring their goods to market.
• At the same time, for consumers, universal standards reduce search costs
– the effort required to find suitable products.
Richness:
• Information richness refers to the complexity and content of a message
(Evans y Wurster, 1999).
• Prior to the development of the web, there was a trade-off between richness
and reach: the larger the audience reached, the less rich the message.
• E-commerce technologies have the potential for offering considerably more
information richness than traditional media such as printing presses, radio
and television. Because they are interactive and can adjust the message to
individual users.
Interactivity:
• This interactivity allows two-way communication between merchant and
consumer.
• Traditional tv and radio cannot ask consumer questions or enter into
conversations with them, or request that consumer information be
entered into a form.
• The “like” and “share” buttons all enable consumers to actively interact
with merchants and other users.
Information Density:
• E-commerce technologies vastly increase information density – the total
amount and quality of information available to all market participants,
consumers and merchants.
• E-commerce technologies reduce information collection, storage, processing
and communication costs. At the same time, these technologies greatly
increase the currency, accuracy, and timeliness of information – making
information more useful and important as ever.
• One of the shifts e-commerce is bringing about is the reduction in information
asymmetry among market participants; Prices and costs become more
transparent.
Personalization and Customization:
• E-commerce technologies permit personalization: merchants can target
their marketing messages to specific individuals by adjusting the message
to a person´s name, interests, and past purchases.
• Today this is achieved in a few miliseconds and followed by an
advertisement based on the consumer’s profile.
• The technology also permits customization – changing the delivered
product or service based on a user’s preferences or prior behavior.
Social technology:
• E-commerce has evolved to be much more social by allowing users to create and share content
with a worldwide community.
• Using these forms of communication, users are able to create new social networks and
strengthen existing ones.
• All previous mass media in modern history, including the printing press, used a broadcast model
(one-to-many): content is created in a central location by experts (professional writers, editors,
directors, actors, and producers) and audiences are concentrated in huge aggregates to consume
a standardized product.
• E-commerce has the potential to invert this standard media model by giving users the power to
program their own content consumption. E-commerce technologies provide a unique many-to-
many model of mass communication.
THANKS.