1. People won’t buy all products online:
There are certain products like high price jewels, clothes or furnishings which people might not like to buy online. They might want to, inspect it, feel the texture of the fabric etc. which are not possible in ECommerce. As the online shopping does not allow physical inspection, customers have to rely on electronic images of the products.
E-Commerce is an effective means for buying known and established services, that is, things that are being used every day. Example booking tickets, buying books, music CDs and software. It is not suitable for dealing with the new or unexpected. Traditional commerce always takes advantage when it is perishables and touch and feel products.
2. Competition and Corporate vulnerability:
Access to Global Market is an beneficial on one hand but it also come with a competition. Open Internet has paved way to all business firms to operate in the global market. Many businesses have been already facing international competition from web-enabled business opponents.
The competitors may access product details, catalogs, and other information about a business through its website and makes it vulnerable. They might then indulge in web harvesting. Web harvesting is the illegal activity of extracting business intelligence from competitor’s web pages.
3. Security:
Security remains to be a problem for E-Commerce. Customers might be reluctant to give their credit card number to the website. As lot of cyber frauds takes place in E-Commerce transactions, people generally afraid to provide their personal information. Legal issues arise when the customer’s data falls in the hands of strangers. Fraudulent activities in traditional commerce is comparatively less as there is personal interaction between the buyer and the seller.
4. Customer loyalty:
Business cannot survive long without loyal customers. The customers would like to buy from a website where they are able to get the best deal. They cannot be loyal to a particular seller.
In traditional commerce, shopkeeper would interact with the consumer “faceto-face” and gain their loyalty too. In E-Commerce, the interaction between the business and the consumer is “screen-to-face”. The customers would feel that they do not have received sufficient personal attention. Since there is no personal touch in E-Business, companies could not win over their loyalty easily.
5. Shortage of skilled employees:
Though most of the process in E-Commerce is automated, some sectors like packaging and delivery, needs manual interventions. There could be problems related to shipping delays which would need technically qualified staff with an aptitude to resolve.
E-Commerce has difficulty in recruiting, training and retaining talented people. There is a great shortage of skilled employees. Traditional organizational structures and poor work cultures in some places inhibit the growth of E-Commerce.
6. Size and value of transactions:
The delivery cost of a pen surpasses the cost of pen itself. E-Commerce is most often conducted using credit card for payments, and as a result very small and very large transactions tend not to be conducted online.
