Week 3.4 E-Commerce and Communication

From page 365 in Chapter 12 authors talk about e-commerce and e-business. I would like share my views on buying online. I make most of my non-routine purchases online.

Most of the electronic items I bought over the last five years are online. I feel this gives me a better chance with making the correct decision.

If we go to a store to purchase and talk to the sales person, I feel that we are talking to someone who has a vested interest in making a sale and might try to make the product sound more impressive than it is. Even though there is a direct (Synchronous) communication here the information might not be complete and is dependent on the sales person's knowledge. The time we get with the sales person depends on how busy the store is.

If we do the same thing online, we get a chance to visit multiple sites and read customer & expert reviews, rating etc., Also we do not need to have a fixed idea on what we need to buy and can try researching various products available before narrowing down our choices. This is not so easy to do in a store as no single store will have same range of products as we have online.

Also, I am more comfortable with pricing online as we get to compare them at various sites and also check easily for deals in sites like deals2buy.com etc., and make the purchase when we are comfortable with pricing.

Internet & e-commerce makes transmission of information like peoples experience with the products etc., available to us easily. Even though there is no guarantee that the information is accurate, i think its better than having no information or views of people already using them.