What is Etail, Ecommerce and m-Commerce?

What is Etail, Ecommerce and m-Commerce?

E-commerce or E-tailing is referred to electronic way of doing commerce or retailing whereby physical store location cost is eliminated. m-Commerce is short form of Mobile commerce which happens via a mobile.

Although the percentage of e-commerce is very little today but with Covid situation and people sitting and working from home gave lot of impetus to home deliveries rather than in-store shopping; so this gained traction to double digit growth which is hovering around 10-15% from a mere 1-2% depending on the location. 

This is quite beneficial for people who do not wish to invest in high cost retail areas and their product is already in demand; also for those who are just starting up.

Lot of online marketplaces just like the high street have popped up; of most prominent among those are Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra etc. etc.

Marketplaces like these provide the sellers lot of stuff which comes quite costly if procured solely for one business such as:

1. Ready Consumers
2. Integrated Technology on fingertips
3. Listing and Display of all products
4. Some even offer photography of product items
5. Warehousing space
6. Packing, Distribution, Delivery, Returns
7. Automated Financial Accounting including Payments and Reconciliation  

These marketplaces have several different models to earn from the sellers. Some of the known ones are:

• Commission from each product sold
• Warehousing rent
• Listing Fees
• Server Cost
• Advertising
• Distribution
• Packing

The beauty of the marketplaces is that their cost is limited to technology and storing and maintaining of data; all other costs are of the seller.

And on the other side, it is super beneficial for the seller to get on-boarded in super quick time on tested applications with real consumers on clearly defined supply chain arrangements. This can reduce the time to market by more than 99% as compared to finding talent and creating and then testing and maintaining your own portal.

With Whatsapp and instagram and google also jumping in fray, social commerce has reared its head and looks that it will lead in future.

But, whatever is the case maybe, in-STORE buying will never go out of fashion but will stay as a complimentary service for marketplace owners as nothing provides as much visibility or purchasing power as the in-STORE channel.  

Keep in mind that India is home to approximately 50 million retailers.   

The author is the Managing Director of an omni channel retailing startup lapalap.com and the views are his own.

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