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IMPORT & EXPORT AND
ECOMMERCE
Ecommerce or electronic
commerce means selling and buying
services and goods online for global
sourcing and domestic purposes. The
payment processing technologies are also
included here. The technologies which
make ecommerce transactions safe and
secure such as SSL and AVS are also part
of ecommerce. SSL or secure socket layer
is the most advanced security technology
available today. Companies operating
Import Export businesses were very
cautious to this new form of
international trade in the beginning.
Concerns of the
International Trade over Global Sourcing
and E – Commerce
The international
community of traders were extremely
sceptic about this new form of business
called ecommerce, let alone using this
for global sourcing and import export.
You cannot say that they were completely
wrong because ecommerce had several
critical security issues and these were
even more exaggerated because of lack of
awareness. It was assumed that ecommerce
was just about credit card processing
and transferring of money over the
internet, which is completely wrong.
Today, ecommerce allows online shopping,
electronic filling of important
documents, enquiries and invoicing prior
to spending your first dollar. All these
are the same activities that are
involved in import export industries. If
you want to these in the traditional
offline mode then you will have to spend
lots of labour and time.
Furthermore, the security
holes in ecommerce are plugged for
private businesses and money transfers
with technologies such as firewalls and
SSL. These security technologies are
easily available to any body.
Limitations of electronic
commerce in Import Export
The limitations of
electronic commerce are not due to
technical issues but they exist because
of inadequacies in the conduct of the
international trade such as import
export and global sourcing. Any
ecommerce portal which fails to convey
the value of the proposition of such a
sound product will not succeed.
Wrong estimates of
timeframe and sequencing and of
resources are very common in an
automatic export import industry that is
supported by global sourcing and
ecommerce. Even though you put in a lot
of effort and time, your products may
not be able to reach the import export
traders unless you follow it up with
direct marketing.
Electronic commerce firms
doing international trade have to
constantly innovate to succeed in their
business. There are few companies which
not only do global sourcing but also
export and import products by using
ecommerce backed ground operations. The
best examples for such companies are
BizRate and Amazon. The huge success of
commodities and stock trading and
banking can be attributed to ecommerce.
Nothing would have been possible if
there was no robust ecommerce. Export &
Import together with the international
laws for trade have been amended
accordingly to make sure that ecommerce
is secure.
Small businessmen are
able to do import & export as well as
global sourcing every day due to
ecommerce technologies. This is how
ecommerce has changed the way people do
business and more so how people import
and export goods and services. |
