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10 Feb 2001, India

Dear Dr. Ecommerce:

I would like to know the advantages and disadvantages of
ecommerce

Helloguy

Dear Helloguy:

It's important to bear in mind that e-commerce covers a wide range of activities, each with it's own advantages and disadvantages. In general, advantages and disadvantages for businesses are...

Advantages:

• ability to reach a wider market

• ability to source products from a wider supplier-base

• ability to automate and cut costs in repetitive processes (for example, automatically generating invoices based on forms filled out on the Internet)

• ability to give the impression you are a bigger business than you really are

• ability to respond to customer queries quickly and cheaply (this is particularly true for companies based in developing countries and selling internationally)

Disadvantages

• expense of setting up or purchasing e-commerce systems

• finding staff with appropriate Internet experience

• risk of fraud (although it is consumers who are most afraid of fraud on the Internet, it is in fact business that is most often the victim)

• inability to grow quickly if business is very successful

• marketing expense (there are millions of web sites out there - how do you ensure yours is visited?)

Good luck,

Dr. Ecommerce

Readers: do you know of any other advantages or disadvantages to e-commerce? If so, e-mail them to me and - if I agree - I'll pubish them here.