E-commerce Initiative by Competing Firms Term Paper

E-commerce Initiative by Competing Firms - Term Paper Example The researcher states that commerce is often a basic economic activity that mostly involves trading or the buying and selling of goods and services. During the early days, businesses were mostly conducted face to face for example a customer would enter a bookshop, examines the books, and pays for them. In order to fulfill the customer requirements, the bookshop needs to carry out other transactions and business functions such as to process the payment. However, with the advancement in technology whose aim is to cover a larger market segment, the question is whether the commercial transactions and business functions can be carried out electronically in a more successful manner. E-commerce is therefore an important activity a firm can venture into if it wants to be successful. Thus in E-commerce there is no paperwork or personal contact. In order for a firm to be successful, it must look back to what used to be done to the traditional business, how management used to operate in those t imes and the information technology that was applied. Moreover, the company needs to evaluate its business environment and other factors such as corporate strategies, her business structure, and the resources available for the business. Ecommerce has lately changed the economy and affecting most companies on how they transact their business. Today, it is clear that no company can ignore ecommerce as it has been a more effective method of doing business and more convenient to even customers. Business strategy is a long term plan on how a given company will get enough profit to keep it in operation. However, this can be possible if the given company if the given ecommerce strategy would be able to implement the given activity in the most efficient way. Ritesh believes that for a successful ecommerce strategy, the company must consider their relationship with the consumer. Most often, the business owners neglect their relationship with the buyer and in so doing, they would be losing cu stomers. Therefore, good customer service online goes hand in hand to retaining customers as the sole aim of a business is to make a profit that depends on retaining and acquiring new customers. Moreover, supply chain management is also essential in a successful online business as it ensures good communication between the business and the consumer (98). The four companies use ecommerce which has made them take advantage of tools and techniques being provided in the ecommerce websites such as the shopping cart, use of video that are more cost effective and easier to implement by the organization. However, they have adopted in the use of business strategies due to the much competition amongst themselves. Safaricom, Zain, Orange, and Yu mobile service providers have come up with different strategies in order to gain a competitive edge over the other. 1.1 Costs The four firms located in the same environment have mostly been successful in Kenya where they have looked for ways to gain a c ompetitive advantage over them. This strategy aims at a firm becoming the lowest production company in a given industry. However, it is never an easy way so it calls for nice planning on how to do it. In the past companies often had to deal with the issue of competition with either increasing their sales or by decreasing cost in order to