Business to Consumer (B2C) E-Commerce
Business to Consumer (B2C) E-Commerce
One of the types of e-commerce is the B2C e-commerce. It is the most developed form in the e-commerce. It refers to the applications that offer an interface from businesses to the consumers directly. The example of the application of B2C is the retail website presenting the business’s products and services that can be sold to consumers or purchase by consumers directly like www.amazom.com (Sun & Finnie, 2003).
B2C involves various elements like cataloguing, planning of orders and generation, estimation of costs and pricing, fulfillment of order and delivery, maintenance of products, category management and processing of order and credit card. Cataloguing refers to the process of presenting products from a database on the basis of classifications and sub-classifications that enables the consumers to make choices to purchase from the product catalogue. Order planning and generation starts the processing of individual orders and blocks the orders in an effective manner. In other words, order has to complete a life cycle. The status of the order provides an overview of the initiation, validation, and sending or cancellation of order (Kumar & Raheja, 2012).
Figure 1: Model of B2C E-Commerce
Source: Kumar and Raheja (2012)
In case of selling the services, five quality dimensions need to be considered by the e-commerce sites. The dimensions include tangibility, responsiveness, reliability, assurance and empathy. In e-commerce tangibility is replaced by the user interface. In addition, responsiveness is how speedily the company responses to the customers and reliability is the timely delivery of products ordered by the consumers. Moreover, assurance is related to safety of online transactions and use of personal information in confidential manner. Last but not the least, empathy is the extent to which communication channels are customized on the basis of personal needs (Singh, 2002).
Factors that influence the Adoption of B2C E-Commerce
There are various factors that influence the adoption of B2C e-commerce. One of the factors is the e-readiness that means the level of readiness of company to move to e-commerce. In addition, competitive pressure is the factor as online selling provides competitive edge to the companies in the diversified business environment. Other factors include set up and maintenance cost, the purchasing behavior of consumer, privacy and security and resistance to change. As resistance to change affect the adoption and diffusion of e-commerce (Singh, 2002).
Factors that influence the Customers to make Online Purchases
The factor that influences the customers to make online purchases includes trust as lack of trust because of security issues leads to lack of adoption of e-commerce site to shop. Reluctance in relation to usage of credit cards and barriers related to language are the issues that affect the adoption of e-commerce. However, high quality e-commerce website, relative advantage and brand image influence consumers to shop online (Singh, 2002).
Environmental Factors that influence the rate of Adoption of B2C E-Commerce
Environmental factors influence the adoption of e-commerce by businesses and consumers include ICT infrastructure, framework of online payment, legal framework, and education and awareness of B2C e-commerce. Effective ICT infrastructure contributes to high level adoption and diffusion of e-commerce and enables the consumers to shop online. In addition, effective payment system with security and confidentiality assurance and legal protection by the government to consumers and businesses lead to high level adoption and diffusion of B2C e-commerce (Singh, 2002).
Critical Success Factors in relation to B2C E-Commerce
One of the critical success factors in relation to B2C e-commerce is the alignment of e-business knowledge and value proposition. The companies are succeeded in the adoption of e-business when they focus on the development of B2C e-commerce knowledge related to key business, technology, readiness of customer and the capacity to develop and maintain operations. Another CSF is the replication of the brand run offline operations. The key to successful adoption of B2C e-commerce is the replication of offline brand. Building trust is the factor that enables the companies to be successful in B2C e-commerce and offline brand’s replication offers the support for the needed trust in customer relationship in case of turning to online selling of products/services (Dubelaar, Sohal & Savic, 2005).
One of the CSFs is the measurement of performance and delivery of value. The companies that use performance measurement with respect to strategic decision making related to online business are able to quickly response to the needs of the customers and altering market expectations. Customer Satisfaction and retention is another factor to the success of B2C e-commerce. The companies with successful implication of e-commerce give preference to customer satisfaction as well as retention by providing an effective website, fair prices, communication channels, and value propositions. Advertising campaigns and programs regarding feedback help to attract new customers and retain the current ones. Another factor critical to the success of B2C e-commerce is the monitoring of internal processes and activities of the competitors. Effective management of the internal processes of the company is key to success. In addition, activities of competitors provides an understanding of the level of competition to be successful (Dubelaar et al., 2005).
Benefits of B2C E-Commerce
The benefits of the B2C e-commerce can be linked to either customer or business. From the perspective of the customer, the benefit of the e-commerce is to have access to goods and services from the home and remote locations. In addition, the benefits of the B2C e-commerce include low cost and diversified variety of goods and services. On the other hand, from the business point of view the benefits of the B2C e-commerce are the low level of transaction costs linked to sales, accessibility to international markets and potential customers, and chances to remove intermediaries to increase profits and for the high rate of customer retention and extension. For instance, Amazon through B2C e-commerce offers different levels of functionality via website like searching options, additional information and personalization, and option to search catalogues through keyword, title, authors, and publication (Jones, Beynon-Davies & Muir, 2003).
Barriers to B2C E-Commerce
As described earlier that there are some issues linked to B2C e-commerce that affect that adoption rate. One of the issues/barriers is the lack of capital as the online business need extensive amount of capital. In addition, lack of commitment of employees, lack of infrastructure and capabilities/skills, and lack of knowledge of customers are the barriers to B2C e-commerce (Dubelaar et al. 2005).
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above discussion B2C e-commerce is the most developed type of business. It provides various benefits to businesses and consumers. For instance, knowledge of customer and market, ICT infrastructure and capital are the key critical success factors. Lower costs, convenience and variety of products and services are the major benefits to consumers. In addition, key benefits of B2C e-commerce to businesses include low transaction costs and accessibility to global market, etc.
References
AlGhamdi, R., Nguyen, A., & Jones, V. (2013). A study of influential factors in the adoption and diffusion of b2c e-commerce. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 4 (1).
Dubelaar, C., Sohal, A., & Savic, V. (2005). Benefits, impediments and critical success factors in B2C E-business adoption. Technovation, 25(11), 1251-1262.
Jones, P., Beynon-Davies, P., & Muir, E. (2003). Ebusiness barriers to growth within the SME sector. Journal of Systems and Information Technology, 7(1/2), 1-25.
Kumar, V., & Raheja, E. G. (2012). Business to business (b2b) and business to consumer (b2c) management. International Journal of Computers & Technology, 3(3), 447-551.
Singh, M. (2002). E-services and their role in B2C e-commerce. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, 12(6), 434-446.
Sun, Z., & Finnie, G. (2003). Intelligent techniques in e-commerce: a case-based reasoning approach. Innovations in Knowledge Engineering. Adelaide: Advanced Knowledge International, 245-280.
