Changing Face of E-commerce in Asia

The following sections are included:

• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Contents

In the current context, electronic commerce has transformed the retail market throughout India and the world. Initially in India, e-commerce firms took some time to get accepted and recognized by the Indian consumers due to lack of internet services, confidence and trust in e-payments. But with the increase in internet users today, every business has moved to an online platform and this has aided many manufacturers and consumers. But many of these e-commerce firms have failed to withstand the competition due to the high cost of running the business. The ones who followed the concept of economies of scale (EOS) for their business survived better in the market. The concept of economies of scale is a cost advantage gathered by the companies due to expansion in scale of operations; e-commerce has accomplished economies of scale with the increase in number of orders from customers, which in turn has lowered the cost price per unit of the product and has increased the profitability of the manufacturers. This study focuses specifically on how EOS has helped firms increase their market share, assisted medium and small-scale manufacturers to cope up in a cost-competitive business environment, and how technological advancement within these e-commerce firms helped in scaling up their operations. The study will also elaborate on the conditions when economies of scales become the diseconomies of scales.

Industry 4.0 indicates the process of administering the machines and the Industry cycles with the help of the data and with the support of innovation. The application of industrial transformation is duly recognized and empowered by the standards of Industry 4.0. The design principles on which the Industry 4.0 operates include modularity, decentralization, interoperability, real-time capability, virtualization and service orientation.

The Business Model of e-commerce enables the process of selling and buying of merchandise online along with transport coordination for pickup and conveyance. The e-commerce platforms enable the consumers to have an easy access to buying innumerable merchandise of different varieties at cost-effective prices, which at aggregate level enhances both consumption and investments exponentially.

Information is the fundamental fuel and innovation is utilized to crunch this information to discover experiences about the different subtleties of clients, be it their like or aversion for a specific item, which item is selling the most, which are its intended interest groups and so on.

Even before the pandemic, Asia was the fastest developing area of e-commerce business Pertiwi et al. (2019), representing the biggest portion of the world’s business-to-buyer internet business market. The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns have changed shopper practices — conceivably forever — driving individuals to the web. A few patterns include: a move to looking for day-to-day fundamentals on the web; increased discovery of new apps providing digital solutions; more worry value for money and wellbeing and government assistance; and a promise of contactless arrangements. The chapter discusses the major impact of both e-commerce and Industry 4.0 on the Asian market in general and the Indian market in particular.

Customer need identification has always been an important aspect of any business, e-commerce is no exception. Multiple factors affect customer’s expectations from an e-commerce platform, right from the time a customer logs in till s/he completes the purchase.

Pricing has always remained the major factor in customers’ buying decisions. E-commerce platforms have largely attracted customers with their pricing models.

Product quality along with the convenience of purchase has remained a top priority for a consumer. Like a physical store, a customer expects a wide variety of options to make informed decisions while making an online purchase. Major innovations such as mobile shopping, voice commerce, social listening, personalization, digital twin, AR and VR based shopping experience fulfill the changing needs of the customer. This study explores the above mentioned innovations with their associations with the customer needs and their effects of modifying customer behavior.

The chapter examines the growth of e-commerce and the communication strategies pertaining to e-commerce, including some of the influential global brands. It contributes to the e-branding phenomenon by offering unconventional observed perspectives, which complement the current, largely anecdotal literature on best practices. In the digital age, the way of doing marketing, advertising and branding has significantly changed. This change is the direct effect of a technological revolution and penetration of e-commerce in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities beyond the metros. This has led to a major shift in the way consumers are made aware of products and services offered by the companies in the e-commerce platform. The goods or services of various brands that are bought by the consumers through e-commerce are primarily evaluated and validated before the purchase decisions are made.

This chapter further discusses the various marketing, branding and advertising communications which are addressed to the consumer through the e-commerce websites. Tools such as digital marketing, storytelling, e-branding are instruments for enhancing e-commerce customer relationships. The discussion shows a common understanding of the significance of e-branding, building brands in e-commerce, content creation and content marketing. The chapter also considers the role of trust and e-word of mouth (WOM) in developing e-branding strategy.

The advent of social media, digital devices and the internet of things has made the customer more vocal in dictating what they want and how they want it. Companies today face a deluge of data, quickly changing customer practices, organizational complexity and increased competitive pressures. Innovations along with rapidly proliferating channels and platforms have created an enormously intricate competitive environment. Simultaneously, the explosion in information and digital innovations has opened up an unprecedented array of insights into client needs and practices. In keeping with the age-old mantra “Customer is King”, one of the latest trends in e-commerce is the emergence of product customization with the overarching intent being satisfying customer needs and increasing profitability. Personalization can be described as the action of designing or producing something to meet the customer’s requirements. In an e-commerce environment, it starts with the homepage as it is the front door of the online store. From adding a recently viewed section on the homepage to a personal wardrobe based on their previous visits and using the customer’s location to determine their specific needs, customization efforts are geared toward increasing the customer’s likelihood of buying those products/services. Some promotions can be done based on whether the customer is new or old, as expectations would differ significantly. The present study explores the use of product/service customization through e-mail and social media, geography, web-content design, customer account personalization and recommendations as a means to increase revenues and improve customer retention. Methods like A/B testing to determine which design, content or functionality is more successful with the site visitors have also been explored. It allows testing a variation of the page (or element on the page) that may affect the consumers’ behavior. Toward the end of this report, the use of product/service customization by two prominent e-commerce giants has been examined to shed some more light on this upcoming trend.

The advent of Industry 4.0 coupled with rapid adoption of technology has led to a fundamental change in business functions as organizations now focus on increasing their digital footprints. Traditional Business processes like logistics, designing, planning, production, sales, marketing and customer service have now gone digital, giving rise to E-business. Digital transformation in businesses have led to development of new, customer-centric, robust business models with higher efficiency and lower costs. One such innovative e-business model is the Direct-to-Consumer Model (D2C). D2C model is an e-commerce strategy that allows manufacturers and various brands to sell directly to the customer through the internet, eliminating the role of intermediaries and online retailers.

The D2C Model of e-business management is packed with advantages like business agility, increased control over customer lifecycle, competitive pricing and better customer relationship through customized product offerings. However, this can only be achieved with a deeper understanding of customer needs and demands. Customer Analytics can be pivotal in identifying crucial insights about customer behavior, which help make effective business decisions. Customer Analytics can play a significant role in optimizing business processes like marketing, sales, operations and customer service.

The tremendous growth of technology of the World Wide Web has revolutionized the way people express their opinions and feelings. People have taken to various platforms like blogs, forums, microblogging, social sites, etc., to express their opinions about companies, products, services, among other things This has resulted in the generation of massive amounts of data, which on further processing and analyzing bring in a lot of inference to aid firms’ decisions about policy reform, employee productivity, change in product or services, marketing strategy, customer engagement, etc. Our project proposes a framework which uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) Machine Learning techniques to build a recommendation system which can help companies make informed decisions about their internal and external stakeholders. Both internal stakeholders like former and current employees and external stakeholders like customers use the online platform to express their views of companies. The chapter proposes a templatized framework that can be used to fetch key insights regarding company policies and performance. Data are extracted for three e-commerce companies operating in India from Indeed.com and Glassdoor.com, which provide internal stakeholders’ review. Besides, data are extracted from official Facebook pages of these companies, which constitute external stakeholders’ review. The novelty of the chapter lies in generating a framework by considering both internal and external stakeholders’ review. The results showed us that for Amazon and Flipkart, most of the user sentiment is positive, which reiterates Amazon and Flipkart’s success in the Indian e-commerce market. It is also inferred that Snapdeal has more negative sentiments attached to the company’s pay scale and work—life balance compared to its competitors Flipkart and Amazon.

With the advent of e-commerce, India is witnessing a metamorphosis in the way business is done. With an upward trajectory, Indian e-commerce industry is poised to become the second largest market in the world by 2034. All thanks to its steady growth rate. Driving this ascent is the predominantly younger demographic profile of India, increased internet penetration and relatively better economic performance of the country, ably aided by various government policies pertaining to FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in this sector. With this rapid change in the nature of business, the aspirations and expectations of the employees are also going through a transformation, necessitating a differential approach to be adopted by the e-commerce organization as far as their HR policies and practices are concerned, calling for more agile, quirky and especially out-of-the-box measures to live up to the pace of the disruption laden environs of the e-commerce industry. Owing to its round-the-clock functioning 365 days a year, e-commerce industry has had to rethink almost all the aspects of human resources management; right from talent acquisition, development, management to retention. Automation of HR processes, gamification of various processes contributing to higher engagement and enhanced employee experience and complete digitization of HRM have found ready acceptance within the industry. Most importantly, apart from the paradigm shift in terms of process and practices, there has been a noticeable transformation in the thought process in the e-commerce industry. Which in-turn has aided the transformation of HRM in the industry.

China is the largest e-commerce market, contributing to a quarter of the global market share with some of the leading e-commerce companies headquartered here. As these businesses continue working round the clock — all year, expanding their operations across domains, regions and countries, innovation in Human Resource Management (HRM), then becomes a key enabler in ensuring that the workforce integrates and evolves along with the firm, and in parallel with the consistent changes in the industry. In retrospect, HRM practices in China have been maturing over the years as well with their increasing participation in global business networks.

Alibaba, the world’s largest retailer and e-commerce company, employs over 117,600 people across multiple geographical locations. A Chinese homegrown company, Alibaba has not only captured the local market share but has also consolidated its position in the top ranks of the global race. Its company culture is arguably one of the most peculiar as it seamlessly blends the best of Chinese culture and the Silicon Valley spirit. This case study aims to explore such innovations and more in HRM practices at Alibaba, along with highlighting and identifying crucial challenges faced by the company in this domain and how they tackled it as they kept scaling and expanding their operations.

The present study intends to create knowledge about complex organizational structures in Chinese businesses to further add on to the overall management knowledge base. It will also contribute toward the growing foundation, on which further research can be based.

An efficient supply chain is the one which fastens the e-commerce processes to meet customers’ needs and expectations. Managing supply chains in e-commerce involves materials procurement, manufacturing and distribution of the required products to the customers in a timely manner. This process also includes warehousing, inventory tracking, demand and supply management, order entry and order management.

A well-structured and sustainable supply chain can enhance the productivity of e-commerce processes. This chapter presents an approach on how e-commerce is influencing supply chains and logistics. Also it discusses how analytics can be leveraged to improve the last mile delivery in e-commerce platforms.

E-commerce, which is also referred to as Electronic Commerce, means buying and selling products and services over the internet. Although this industry has been wholeheartedly welcomed by different organizations, firms, and individuals, some inherent challenges still need to be overcome. Some of the issues confronting this sector include logistics, improper infrastructure, and high return rates. The logistics in e-commerce is an amalgamation of forward and reverse logistic processes. Forward logistics manages the transaction of goods, products, and services downstream in the supply chain from suppliers to customers. Still, as the demand for e-commerce increases, there is a proportionate surge in the returns of the goods. Thus, it was imperative to develop similar reverse logistics to cope with the challenge. Therefore, reverse logistics was conceptualized to manage the flow of goods upstream in the supply chain, i.e., from customers to suppliers. These goods are then returned to the inventory, stocked again, and listed or returned to sellers. This report will see how continuously evolving business demand is reshaping the forward and reverse logistics for the e-commerce sector.

The act of purchase and sales has been made quick and easy due to the flourishing e-commerce sector. However, the comfort and the choice being provided to the sellers and consumers comes at a cost for e-commerce firms and their logistics suppliers. The supply chain processes are under constant pressure to deliver efficiently and effectively to be able to meet this unprecedented growth in demand, that too within a stipulated time-frame and cost. The traditional warehouses are generally not suited for these changing times. Thus, has evolved the need for automated warehouses applying cutting-edge technologies and lean processes. In our study, we describe the significance of warehousing and facility location in today’s world dominated by the e-commerce industry. We explore the traditional warehousing types and techniques and the reason for their growing redundancies. We also provide an overview of the warehousing systems, which are most suited to facilitating e-commerce operations. The chapter also explores different technologies being leveraged in the warehousing domain ranging from the use of shelf-moving robots, advanced picking bays, picking assisted by AGV, etc. The chapter also characterizes the needs of the e-commerce sector and also highlights the warehouse space market representatives and how prepared are they to support e-commerce companies. The study looks into the different factors that need to be considered for selecting the facility location for different types of warehouses. A comprehensive case study of a major e-commerce giant Flipkart and its warehousing and location facilities is also presented. From the above study, key findings are derived and highlighted which could prove beneficial for today’s Business to Consumer (B2C) World. The study is concluded with our interpretation of future research needs and scope as warehousing systems and some of the mentioned processes in the study still have plenty of demand for future research.

Product quality is an integral part of the e-commerce industry and every company in this industry puts a lot effort to ensure that the product delivered to the customer is correct and undamaged. Still, the companies face a lot of returns from the customers due to incorrect or damaged products being delivered. This chapter presents how artificial intelligence is used to reduce the problem of delivery of incorrect products to the customer. Computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence that trains the computers to interpret the visual data. Computer vision can be used to check the dimensions of the product in terms of structure, size and color. It can be used to check with the expected data to confirm if the product is correct or not. The present study proposes the use of computer vision cameras at the product packaging site in the warehouse in order to identify the type and color of the product being packed and comparing it with ordered product details before the packing is done, due to which object inside the warehouse can be detected using OpenCV object detection algorithm based on Convolution Neural Network. This process will guarantee that the correct product along with the correct color variant is packed. Along with this, computer vision camera can also be used to detect if there is any physical damage on the product. This ensures that only the correct product is packed, decreasing the chances of an incorrect product being packed and delivered. Thus, it helps in improving the productivity and efficiency of the process.

The unprecedented COVID-19 epidemic has disrupted the e-commerce (e-com) ecosystem. During the COVID-19 era, e-com industries across the globe faced operational challenges. They have been forced to choose flexible operations to deliver business continuity to customers without compromising on performance or delivery speed. The aim of this chapter is to identify, analyze and categorize the major enablers affecting e-com operations during COVID-19 era in India, using Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM) approach. The study adopted the TISM approach to analyze the interrelationships among the enablers. Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) analysis was applied to rank the enablers and classify them on the basis of the driving power and dependence into dependent, autonomous, independent and linkage enablers. The results indicate that the efficiency of last-mile delivery and fear of COVID-19 are the critical enablers. Also, waiting time and trust are the key enablers. This is the first attempt made to analyze the interrelationship among e-com operational changing enablers using TISM approach in India. This study will be useful for e-com industry managers and practitioners to understand the interactions of enablers and to identify critical/key enablers of e-com operational challenges in the COVID-19 era.

It is no secret that the e-commerce industry is changing every year. Earlier, before the invention of the internet, the “brick-and-mortar” business model was used where customers needed to visit a physical outlet to purchase goods, but this is not the scenario nowadays. People now have the luxury of buying items from the convenience of their own homes online, and they are now taking advantage of it. In this 21st century with the ever-increasing number of people participating in electronic commerce, it is necessary to have advanced information technology to handle this e-commerce ecosystem. In 2018 alone, mobile conversions have increased by 55% and are expected to reach $175.4 billion in USD sales. Any business, store, or person who actively sells products online is considered part of this e-commerce system. To serve the customer with a better experience and streamline their various processes, e-commerce retailers often implement a database to strategically capture vital information. A database is a collection of data that stores organized information.

The retail business completely depends on databases 24 × 7 for order processing, transactions, inventory, order shipping, etc. With the existence of a database management system, each organization can attempt to be a lot competitive to skyrocket the decision-making process, increasing organizational performance in achieving targeted goals.

In an e-commerce application, the main purpose of a database is to store information for retrieving the product details, customer information, track transactions, and further, maintain the inventory. One of the biggest benefits of using a database for e-commerce is structuring vast amounts of shop data. When the data is organized in a proper format, it can be accessed more efficiently by e-commerce applications.

Database plays a very critical and important role in the e-commerce industry, in today’s scenario the reason behind the success of an e-commerce firm is how much it has optimized its database. Because today’s consumers rely heavily on technology, e-commerce firms must use it to their advantage.

The evolution of e-commerce has seen rapid strides in terms of innovation and convenience of buying products online due to the constant shift in technologies, enabling e-commerce to establish the channel of trust with consumers reducing the significance of traditional brick and mortar retailers. Big Data Analytics has played a major role in shifting the way how e-commerce industries manage their work. With abundant availability of data, firms have been cashing in on big-data analytics to revamp their business models, provide customized experiences, optimizing supply- chain costs, demand forecasting, pricing, marketing strategies, fraud detection and prevention in customer transactions. The chapter presents how data analytics is being used by e-commerce It also includes the Market analysis of e-commerce industry in India and other Asian countries. The chapter also encompasses the critical analysis of the advantages and limitations faced due to the extensive use of big-data analytics in the e-commerce sector.

In recent times, e-commerce has changed the way businesses work. And to strive and thrive in this extremely competing world, organizations need to leverage the power of Big Data and the latest technologies to cut costs and increase profits by optimizing resource utilization and improving operational efficiencies. Cloud computing and data mining are, without a doubt, two of the most important technologies that deliver powerful results in this context. Data mining is the process of extracting valuable information from large datasets. The integration of data mining methods in cloud computing provides a flexible and scalable architecture that can be used for efficient mining of huge amounts of data from virtually integrated data sources to produce useful insights for decision-making. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the concepts of cloud computing and data mining, their benefits and challenges and analyze their impact on e-commerce businesses.

Lockdowns, restrictions, and widespread hysteria during Covid-19 have led to major shock to business operations and severely impacted the economy and society. The resulting labour shortages, supply chain issues and collapse in offline shopping forced companies to take immediate decisions and devise new strategies to respond and recover with minimum damage. Coupled with a digital eco-system, the e-commerce technology and its value networks have played an important role in alleviating the damage caused by sudden disruptions, mitigate risks, maintain business continuity, and ensure that businesses can economically and socially sustain through the uncertainties. While e-commerce was increasingly being used by Asian consumers for convenience, low price and variety, its role has now become essential for survival in countries like India, China and Singapore during the lockdown.

Therefore, it is useful to understand the way the business processes were impacted, how the business decision-makers responded and the role of e-commerce technology and services in Asia during Covid-19. This chapter tries to throw light on the above aspects, understand how e-commerce was affected and how it has helped in crisis response and recovery for businesses and consumers. It will also look at whether and how advanced technology such as data analytics, intelligent systems, cloud and blockchain have played an important role in accelerating the reach and impact of e-commerce in Asia.

The following section is included:

• Index