No End 2 E-Commerce!
According to Linux Insider's Jennifer LeClaire:
"A stroll down memory lane reminds us of terms like 'stickiness,' 'eyeballs' and 'personalization' that once captured the essence of articles about what it takes to be successful on the Web. However, even as we look back at 10 years of growth, many analysts have one eye on the future and they are saying, we've got a long way to go."
I agree that we'll see a lot of change and innovation in the e-commerce domain, but I disagree with the feeling that there is a long way to go.
LeClaire notes how Forrester research has figured on-line sales account for about 12 percent of retail sales. Whether that number is cozy for those people purveying via the popular domain of yesteryear's phreaks is one thing. I'll bet they believe there is always room for improvement. Why mention phreaks*? This is about the evolution of e-commerce, we ought to start at the genesis. Remember the days when a kid in Holland could make a free phone call to order himself a shiny new laptop computer with a borrowed credit card number? And have it delivered? Where did he get credit card number?... a BBS**! Back then, the BBSes couldn't help much for customer relationship management, nor could they support much in the way of predictive customer behaviours, but they offered a personalization feature or two (like personalized colors, usernames/handles, and e-mail). Reflect on that.
The on-line experience has evolved but saying it has a long way to go, implies its going somewhere, it has an end. I don't mean an end to buying on-line but an end to the evolution of the on-line experience. Could it be that this experience can reach a saturation point in terms of ease-of-use, availability, accessibility, and effectiveness? Forrester's predictions for on-line retail extend to 2010, is that our end-point?
In fact, let's make a full circle back to the phone arena (our phreaking friends I mentioned above), Ms. LeClaire points out the rapidly expanding cell phone consumption services that hook in with our Web-based e-commerce. The "E" is for electronic after all and all that is electronic will be inter-netted. So forget about feeling like there is an evolutionary end, that's not the question on which we should be inquiring... Instead think about what will happen in the e-commerce expansion as we move into access points and methodologies currently unheard of.
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* phreak (n): computer freak, computer whiz; nickname for a person who illegally breaks into telephone or computer networks while bypassing security measures in order to use the lines or steal information.
** BBS: Bulletin Board System. A computerized meeting and announcement system that allows people to carry on discussions, upload and download files, and make announcements without the people being connected to the computer at the same time. There are many of BBS's around the world, most are very small, running on a single IBM clone PC with 1 or 2 phone lines. Some are very large and the line between a BBS and a system like CompuServe gets crossed at some point, but it is not clearly drawn.
I kind of agree with your criticism on LeClair's article. Her article is too general and written in a very 'journalistic' way (couldn't find a better term), using phrases like "Analysts said..." and "there's a long way to go..." without specifying exactly the details.
wifi internet accessibility, increasing popularity of wifi-capable handheld devices, and affordable high bandwidths will push e-commerce into domains it didn't cover before: instant order-and-delivery of content and services.
I'm curious to know what effects has affordable broadband had in east asia. in the UK on average you get a 1-2 Mbps broadband service for £20 a month. According to Bill Thompson, for the same money you get 100 Mbps broadband in Japan and 70 Mbps broadband in South Korea. Has anyone studied the difference between e-Consumer behaviour in Europe and Japan?
(at April 4, 2005 07:50 PM)
I agree with you too. Let's look at phones for example. These days many people are not using the phones to their full potential. It is not just about making a simple phone call and accessing the Internet from your phone via WAP/GPRS. These days we are experimenting new ideas like Location-Based Services for instance, which allows the mobile operator (and so the consumer/merchants) to locate the mobile phone with a relatively good accuracy. This can be used to navigate to a restaurant, to be used to locate you on a side road when your car is broken down or when someone has had an accident. So new stuff are coming out everyday even when we look back at what we have got already and it is pretty hard to define an end for it as you mentioned.
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