How Companies Use Their Website to Gain and Sustain Competitive Advantage

E-business has been a growing segment of the retail and wholesale markets since the proliferation of the internet in households began in the early 1990’s. E-business has become an important business model for both new businesses as well as traditional brick and mortar stores to understand in order to reach a growing segment of the population that comparison shops online. Evogear is an excellent illustration of the e-business model and will generate sales for the company for years to

The Internet is still developing and e-commerce is on its advance. More and more computers get connected to the Internet, wireless devices and networks are booming and sooner or later, nearly every electronic device may have its own IP address. The complexity of networks is increasing,the software on devices gets more complicated as well as user friendly.

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. (Seybold, 2001)

According to Dave Chaffey (2006), E-Commerce is often thought simply to refer to buying and selling through internet. People immediately think of consumer retail purchases from companies such as Amazon. But E-commerce involves much more than electronically mediated financial transactions between organizations and customers. More commentators refer to e-commerce as all electronically mediated transactions between an organizations and third party that deals with. By this definition, non- financial transactions such as customer requests for further information would also be considered to be part of e-commerce.

During the last decades the world has seen an unprecedented considerable growth in information and communication technology, in fact thanks to internet, most of the countries in the world are linked together via satellite and servers networks, and it keeps growing at an exponential rate. This revolutionary change has impacted the behavior of people in doing business and which had risen e-commerce.

Over the past years internet and web technologies have reshape the business world. Electronic Commerce change the way businesses conduct business; how its process is implemented, and complemented to achieve the structures of an altered industry shifting the power of corporation, suppliers, and customers. Throughout the industry companies have to evaluate opportunities and threats that are present, even though there are many companies in existence that were created before the e-business explosion. Large and mature corporation found it difficult to adopt to the e-business trend.

The e-commerce in many industries added more pressure to the physical distributors and dealers of goods and services since it became more user friendly and convenient to order these goods and services online from various resources while comparing the prices at the same time.

In 1969, Internet began life in the US and mainly used by government and its departments, researchers and scientists. In 1990s, the World Wide Web came into existence and that is when e-commerce was coined. From then until today, e-commerce has seen both success as well as failures (Turban, King, McKay, Marshall, & Viehland, 2008). The failure was mainly because the e-commerce field was going through consolidations and organizations were trying different models and structures (Turban, King, McKay, Marshall, & Viehland, 2008). The other reason was giants like Amazon were working on expanding their operations and generating increased sales. However, the future looks bright for e-commerce and the usefulness is starting to materialize. As e-commerce expands, these benefits will increase significantly. E-Commerce offers benefits to business organizations, individuals and the society (Turban, King, McKay, Marshall, & Viehland, 2008).

Salvatore (2013) defines electronic commerce or e-commerce stating, “E-commerce refers to the production, advertising, sale, and distribution of products and services from business to business and from business to consumer through the internet” (p. 150). These activities can take place in many environments between businesses and consumers. E-commerce has changed the way goods and services are exchanged and have given light to businesses and consumers to exist on a global scale without an established brand. With e-commerce defined, let us look at its origin.

Commonly referred to as e-commerce, internet based marketing uses technology in enhancing the use of electronic money transfer, internet marketing, management of inventory and mobile commerce among others. With the growth of technology, e-commerce has expanded to applications in online shopping as well as tracking orders, social networking, shopping cart software, online banking, document automation in logistics and supply chain and mobile business among others (D 'Anna, 2016: 1).

Electronic commerce (or e-commerce) consists of the repurchasing of different services and products, utilized by the internet. This includes business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), and consumer-to-consumer(C2C) transactions. These transferable activities include, but are not limited to, online retail sales, online bill paying, supplier purchases, and Web-based auctions. Electronic commerce implements and utilizes several different types of technologies including transactions of funds, electronic data interchange, credit cards, and e-mail (Reference for Business, Encyclopedia of Management, 2008). The term e-commerce is often used interchangeably with Electronic business (e-business). E-business refers to the use of digital technology and the Internet to execute the major business processes in the enterprise. E-business includes activities for the internal management of the firm and for coordination with suppliers and other business partners (Laudon, K., 12th ed., p. 55). E-commerce facilitates the growth of online business. It is categorized as follows; Online marketing, online advertising, online sales, product delivery, product deliver,

The phenomenal growth of the internet since the mid- 1990s is an unprecedented event in the history of information and communications technology (Chircu et al, 2000). The internet has already fundamentally changed the way many organizations think about and perform their work. The last few years have shown us the revolution of e-commerce in all over the world; so many organizations take this opportunity in our dynamic environment and adapt themselves in order to take the benefits of this new business model. To improve profits and achieve strategic sustainability in a rapidly changing competitive environment, many Websites have been repackaging themselves by targeting new markets, expanding into the offline world, forming alliances, licensing software, and adjusting their core offering to focus on the most profitable products and customers (Chircu et al, 2000). It’s also important to recognize that ecommerce applications are business in itself rather than only supporting it. E-commerce is defined as “the exchange of money, information, services, and products between economic entities over the internet, networks, and other digital technologies” (laudon & laudon, 2004). E-commerce involves any business transaction executed electronically between parties such as companies “B2B” business-tobusiness, companies and consumer “B2C” (business-to-consumer), participant individuals with one serving as a buyer and the other as a seller “C2C” (consumer-toconsumer),

The future of e-commerce looks bright from most perspectives ranging from corporations to the average consumer. Sales from online stores have increased by many

Electronic commerce (e-Commerce) describes the process of buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging products, services, and/or information through computer networks, principally the Internet (Turban et al., 2004). It is also refers to the process by which commerce is carried out using electronic means to conduct transaction between businesses, customers, individuals etc.

Because of e-commerce, the world stands at the threshold of a new revolution. Currently, regulatory structures in many countries limit market access by infrastructure providers. But with the transformations coming around