Challenges and Opportunities of Electronic Business
Discuss about the Challenges and Opportunities of Electronic Business.
Businesses in Australia and the world over are increasingly adopting the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) as mediums of trade to carry out online transactions. The Internet and the WWW are essential for E-commerce as they allow businesses to reach new suppliers and customers enabling the firm to expand its market (Singh, 2002). The Internet and WWW are digital technologies and are used to enhance communication between suppliers and buyers. This chapter gives a detailed account of the background of the study exploring E-commerce in Australia, the challenges, and opportunities experienced by businesses that use the internet to carry out business transactions.
The issues presented indicate that e-commerce in Australia has created value for businesses, although the benefits and longterm and depend on the management and technical issues to be addressed. Because of the fast-evolving nature of technology and E-business, many businesses found the new developed to be challenging. Some of the challenges include issues with globalization and global trade such as cross-border taxation, information flow, cybersecurity and trust, authenticity and the high cost of acquiring new and emerging technologies, as well as the skilled workforce, operate and maintain the infrastructure (Mohan, 2015). Study findings also report that businesses require formal methods to evaluate the performance of e-business to realize the benefits of online investment and further expand their online venture.
The electronic business is also known as Electronic commerce, or E-business refers to doing business via the Internet. As such, E-business can be defined as the use of digital technology to improve organizational performance. Burns (2016) defines E-business as the process of buying and selling of goods and services via the internet. Some of the organizational opportunities that are available with E-business include increased market share and profitability, better customer service, and improved product delivery. E-business includes all the activities of trade, funds transfer, digital communication and interactions between businesses and between individuals. The increased adoption of E-business in Australia and globally has the changed the face of trade and finance. The digital platform has created global markets including business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) systems such as eBay.
Following the development of the Internet and the adoption of digital technologies in conducting businesses, many challenges and opportunities have emerged. It is due to these previous findings that this paper proposes to carry out research to determine the opportunities and challenges presented by online business in Australia. The research will be conducted as a case study of eBay Australia.
Project Objective and Scope
The primary objective of the research will determine the challenges and opportunities of electronic business. Other specific project objectives will include:
- To determine the background of electronic business in Australia.
- To examine the regulatory landscape of Australia.
The study will investigate the challenges and opportunities of electronic business. The research will focus on eBay Australia and will ignore the other online businesses since they are many and cannot be covered in totality within a single study. However, the study will use an appropriate method in research to guarantee generalizability of the findings, validity, reliability, and trustworthiness.
Introduction
Technology is rapidly evolving within the contemporary world of business. At the same time, the experience of consumers and suppliers is also changing. The challenges and opportunities in business affect consumer behavior which influences emerging products and services at a speed that is at times difficult for regulators and consumers to keep pace. Burns (2016)suggests the consumers within the emerging markets often have difficulties in determining effective technologies for their use. The electronic business which refers to digital commercial transactions includes various stakeholders including manufacturers, governments, marketers, service providers and the consumers.
Currently, consumers the world over can make purchases on almost everything through online transactions including electronics, groceries, textile products, jewelry, and other products (Ngai, Gunasekaran, Wamba, Akter, & Dubey, 2017). Consumers can also make use of electronic businesses to make other unspecified transactions for services such as the online purchase of tickets, purchase, and payment of insurance, professional consultations, among others. However, regulators need to determine the areas of emerging e-commerce that are most profitable for future benefits of their businesses.
The past decade has seen E-business in Australia evolve to a great extent resulting in more sophisticated supply chain creating challenging situations for online businesses like eBay as well as bringing opportunities for business expansion concomitantly (Wamba, Akter, Edwards, ChopinG, & Gnanzou, 2015). It is, therefore, essential for managers of electronic businesses to ensure that they adequately address the challenges of digitalization as they utilize the potential opportunities for the expansion of their businesses. Consequently, the current study will address the challenges and opportunities of electronic business within the backdrop of Australian eBay business.
Background of Electronic Business
Research reveals that electronic business helps organizations to grow their market share profitability and improve customer service while helping businesses to deliver products and services more conveniently and promptly. Otoo, Li, Acheampong, and Otoo, (2017) indicate that there are four fundamental types of E-business relationships, namely: business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), government to business (A2B), and government to consumer (G2C). Nonetheless, several studies report that within the electronic marketplace, the B2B system is five times more profitable than the B2C system (Chaffey, 2015; Mohan, 2015; Singh, 2018).
Literature Review
The B2B business has been in the Australian economy since 1970, and many companies have adopted this system of the business relationship as it covers a wide range of varieties including production, sales marketing (Otto et al., 2017). Since then, employees have been able to evolve with eh evolving technology, and now consumers can also make various transactions using diversified technologies. For instance, the NGC technology allows individuals to use radio communication to send information between devices facilitating business transactions (Akter & Wamba, 2016). Moreover, previous research indicates that approximately 88% of all internet users in Australia actively use electronic systems for activities such as online banking, online purchases of goods and services, sourcing government services, and participating in online auctions, as well as trading (Otto et al., 2017).
Figure 1: Adoption of e-commerce by Australian household internet users in six months
The figure shows the various activities of E-commerce which Australians frequently engage. According to Aguiar and Schneider (2016), 26 % of all Australian internet users have performed between one and three activities while nearly 50% have performed more than four electronic operations and 18% had conducted more than 700 activities within six months.
Regulatory Landscape in Australia
According to Hajkowicz, Reeson, Rudd, Bratanova, Hodgers, et al. (2016) Mason the Australian government and regulatory authorities recently released a regulatory model to develop the best practice for Australian E-commerce and considers some contemporary issues for dealing with e-commerce transactions, such as:
- Issues with the disclosure of information associated with the technological constraints.
- Child protecting concerns associated with advertising, over-consumption, and privacy
- Security and privacy concerns
- Dispute resolutions
Challenges of Electronic Business
There are several challenges to Australia’s E-business. First the population in Australia which is comparatively smaller than the UK and USA populations, therefore, posing a challenge to businesses like eBay that seek to expand their customer base. Grewal et al. (2015) indicate that organizations are looking to expand territories abroad as has been the trend in trade in recent times. Second, there are regional players in the market, but there are also big international players who are eager to capture the continuously evolving Australian market.
Third, the data from the latest survey has indicated that the young generations of Australia are spending more on the global online retailers than the regional ones. This also becomes a major challenge for the regional players as they are most of the times left out in the market. (Mendling et al., 2018). It has also seen that amongst the top five e-commerce websites in Australia, four of them are international marketers (Mendling et al., 2018). In fact, after its entrance into the Australian market, Amazon has soon made it to the top five lists after it overtook few of the Australian owned and made retail websites.
Background of Electronic Business
Fourth, the companies in the Australian market are also struggling with their implementation of reliable and fast delivery timings, consumer-friendly interface, free shipping and having competitive prices in the market. (Valos et al., 2015).In addition to that, one major challenge that creates a hindrance for the electronic business is the lack of innovation in their online sales strategy(Ma et al., 2015). Lastly, another challenge for the electronic business is the geographical position of the country. Australia is poorly positioned geographically compared to its any other competitors. Therefore it leaves it to reflect a much higher cost of running their businesses with more complex compliances, higher wages and a complicated tax structure (Weber, 2015).
Opportunities in Electronic Business
The electronic business market in Australia should take advantage of the upcoming opportunities to make their business expand (Sakr, 2014). Through E-business organizations in Australia are capable of personalizing their promotional activities by the past order history of an individual customer (Madden & Ahmad, 2015). Furthermore, the organization can use this data and make the digital strategies more personalized which can help them to gain more business within the market.
E-businesses can take advantage of the multiple channels provided by digitalization to reach and interact with a wide age of consumers, including Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, bricks and mortar stores (Hajkowicz et al., 2016). Moreover, E-businesses can use new paradigms such as transaction based payments, collaborative services, sharing information, and space to influence business functions (Golder & Macy, 2014). Further, the integrated approach of business employing new technologies, infrastructure and information help e-businesses to use specific infrastructure and data to particular services thereby saving more on the cost of transacting business (Goggin et al., 2017).
Justification
Further, the consumers of Australia have a great preference for shopping online. A recent survey indicates that on an average four individuals out of ten tend to buy goods from the online store minimum of once in a month. Therefore the market of Australia has been quite used to buying things online, and a large section of consumers prefer online shopping that the traditional shopping experience (Sakr, 2014). Also with a strong economy and a high GDP, the Australian population is having a disposable income and higher purchasing power. This and the findings of the current research will be helpful to Australian E-businesses and other businesses that are looking to enter the Australian E-commerce industry. Other beneficiaries will include scholars interested in a related topic as well as policymakers, and regulators.
Regulatory Landscape in Australia
The following research questions will guide the project:
Primary Question
- What are the challenges and opportunities of electronic business?.
Secondary Questions
- What is the background of electronic business in Australia?
- How is the regulatory landscape of Australia?
This section of the study highlights the framework of the project. The researcher will employ a survey design to examine the challenges and opportunities of electronic business in Australia. The study will utilize an inductive approach to develop explanations. The project will use both the qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis to meet the research objectives. Qualitative methodologies will be crucial in the collection of secondary data to answer the research questions. The Quantitative methodologies will help to retrieve statistical data on the challenges and opportunities of electronic business (Bryman & Bell, 2015). Consequently, various databases will be used in the collection of relevant information Such as Google books and Google Scholar.
Sampling and Sample Size
The Researcher will utilize a stratified random sampling technique in selecting a sample size from the general population of workers in electronic business organizations in Australia. The project will use a sample size of 30 people divided into three distinct strata based on the levels of occupation from both the SMEs and larger enterprises (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2015).
Data Collection and Analysis
The Study will make use of face-to-face interviews. Data will be recorded in a notebook and on audio which will then be transcribed verbatim. Data stored will be retrieved for analysis using content analysis (Bryman & Bell, 2015). Stored data will first be coded for the identification of themes which will then be interpreted to inform the findings of the study.
Reliability and Validity
According to Saunders et al. (2015), it is not necessary to test the reliability and validity of interviews a tool for data collection. However, the researcher can ask several friends to detect any ambiguities and inconsistencies in the interview questions.
There is a limitation in the number of studies recent studies that have been conducted to examine the challenges and opportunities of electronic business. Moreover, locating organizations with an online business and convince them to carry out the study in their company may be challenging and travel to the site may consume more time and resources.
The project will be subdivided into five milestones that are projected to last for a period of three months as presented in the Gantt chart in the Appendix.
Conclusion
Businesses in Australia and the world over are increasingly adopting the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) as mediums of trade to carry out online transactions. The Internet and the WWW are important for E-commerce as the allow businesses to reach new suppliers and customers enabling the electronic businesses to expand its market. The electronic business is also known as Electronic commerce, or E-business refers to doing business via the Internet. There are four fundamental types of E-business relationships, namely: business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), government to business (A2B), and government to consumer (G2C). Nonetheless, several studies report that within the electronic marketplace, the B2B system is five times more profitable than the B2C system.
The Australian government and regulatory authorities recently released a regulatory model to develop the best practice for Australian E-commerce and consider some contemporary issues for dealing with e-commerce transactions. There are several challenges to Australia’s E-business, but there are opportunities as well. This paper proposes to determine the challenges and opportunities of E-business in Australia. As such, the study proposes to use a survey design while employing a deductive approach. Both qualitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis will be utilized. Both primary and secondary data will be collected using interviews and a desktop study respectively. Data collected from interviews will be stored in notes and audio for transcription verbatim and subsequent analysis. Content analysis will be employed in the analysis of data. Ithemes will be identified and interpreted for discussion. The project is projected to last for approximately three months. See the appendix for the timescale.
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