E-Commerce Industry : Challenges & Strategies for Innovation

Business and e- business both have become major contributors of national economy in today’s time. Excellence in operational activities, financial mastery and technological expertise have become pre-requisite not only for becoming winner in the race but also to compete. While a hard-headed business mind is necessary to cope with the rising pressure of globalized competition, it is creativity, in the form of innovation and the ability to implement it rapidly that is becoming the most required competitive asset. Companies today need to innovate fast yet in a relevant manner in order to remain competitive and develop the game changers that will permit them to remain competitive in the future.
E- business and Digital technology has transformed the economy to a great extent in present time. The process of value creation for customers has is shifting its focus from the physical good to an economy that favors service, information and intelligence as the primary source of the value creation. At the centre of this economy transformation is e-commerce.
The e- commerce environment or the electronic marketplace presents an extraordinarily challenging environment for entrepreneurs and their organizations. The fast acceleration and availability of technology is shaping a new economy, with different forms of distribution, marketing, selling and arranging work becoming observable. Attributes of this economy include collapsing boundaries between firms, suppliers, customers and competitors. Today’s e-commerce operates in a highly competitive marketplace where imperishable competitive advantage is almost impossible as there are minimum barriers to new entrants and competitors in the marketplace. Innovation tactics faces constant challenges of imitation and erosion. A general belief in e-commerce world is that it is safer and cheaper to copy the first mover in the electronic marketplace, where there is higher level of technical uncertainty and a fast rate of technological innovation. Likewise there lies many more such challenges in e- commerce environment for which strong and prompt strategies are required to tackle with.
As the challenges are large and big so are the strategies in e-commerce environment. e- commerce firms that emphasize innovation and rapid response to change may be best positioned for recognizing and identifying new opportunities and ideas for their business. Identifying new opportunities can be critical in starting innovation. In order to create influential strategies, companies must be able to spot trends as soon as possible. Entrepreneurs are required to learn trend spotting and to take advantage of the discontinuous change the future necessarily brings and the resulting alarming shifts arriving on an uncertain schedule.