Can Bangladesh replicate it?

E-commerce is the emergent big thing. In fact, the world has already benefited from  e-commerce fostering profits, generating opportunities and mitigating costs. It involves transaction over computer-mediated networks within any geological boundaries. However, the delivery or payment does not necessarily need to be done over the wires.
From worldwide research statistics, it has been observed that over 95 per cent of e-commerce takes place in developed countries, with Africa and Latin America combined accounting for less than 1.0 per cent of the total. In coherence with the direction the world is moving in, e-commerce appears to be the universal remedy. For instance, this is the era of market globalisation, steady economic shift towards knowledge and information, growing prominence of ICT in the economy, innovations in business organisations and practice, liberalisation of the telecommunication sector and most importantly - technological innovations  such as e-mail and the World Wide Web. Setting aside the situational advantages, e-commerce massively aids in controlling business costs, connecting to markets through a greater reach, creating value, increasing productivity and establishing an advanced supply chain management and logistics. The developed countries have particularly indulged in the glory of e-commerce for B2B circumstances.
In this era of saturated business strategies and global competition, the struggle for competitive advantage would lie solely in the extent to which the potential of internet has been exploited. Being the most significant and visible manifestation of the newly-networked economy, the LDCs can now exploit e-commerce to their advantage. Although such adaptations have already begun, majority is not being able to exploit ICT's full potential. Thus, the results have not been showing dramatic surges. However, a complete shift is thought to be able to revolutionise the economies of Developing Nations. In particular, as soon as we completely adhere to the technological advancements of ICT, the manufacturing companies will stand a stronger chance of integrating with the global value chain. Nevertheless, before being able to implement such a system, the LDCs will have to create and consolidate a knowledge-based asset and construct a dynamic IT-based service sector to integrate with the knowledge-based global economy.
So far, the LDCs and TWCs have been stranded backwards from the economic perspective due to factors like their inability to raise international competitiveness, deepen links to the global market and trade network and upgrade to a significant position in the global value chain. However, this can be turned around, if e-commerce was used effectively by various sectors of the developing nations. They could manoeuvre the technology in order to leverage links with global economy, access global internet-based trading platforms, take advantage of economic globalisation and exploit the productivity enhancing benefits of e-commerce.
Such advancements will only be facilitated by a comprehensive support from the respective countries. Replication of this revolutionary system would require governments to make necessary changes in order to accommodate development. For instance, the government should maximise the efficiency dividend for the economy by eliminating obstacles to the update of e-business in the major sectors.
In addition, the inability to enrich the national IT competence and build standardised IT policies could put LDCs at risk of marginalisation from international markets and global production networks. Having said so, imposing greater access to low-cost, high-bandwidth internet connections and the use of affordable software could be an encouraging start for a developing nation's changing policies. In spite of the opportunities been discussed, there has been no such findings regarding the direct correlations of a country's internet usage and income level. Developing countries with comparable income levels have drastic variations in their internet penetration rates. Thus, factors such as awareness, vitality of the society, business and social agents mark significant implications particularly for developing nations. In both developed and developing economies, SMEs have the highest to contribute to the domestic market by employing majority of the workers in the manufacturing and service sector.
However, it highly lags behind in terms of ICT deployment in developing nations, despite having the most to gain from it. SMEs in particular miss out greatly on productivity and opportunities by not affiliating with e-commerce. Therefore, e-commerce offers to play an instrumental role in helping developing economies benefit more from trade. The only pre-requisite is a well-designed web storefront to reach out to customers and the higher profit margins would swoop in for SMEs in developing countries.
Another magnanimous opportunity for developing countries is to exploit mobile telephony in e-commerce. This has been the most popular and progressively outspreading ICT development in developing countries. Mobile telephony has not only improved effectiveness of business but has also reduced poverty gap. It is doing so by facilitating rural farmers and contemporaries to proceed with mobile money services, allowing them to open savings account, earn interest on deposits and access a variety of credit and insurance products. It would provide one of the most beneficial and versatile mediums for developing nations to make the most of this new technology. Starting from labour and transport mobilisation to micro-credit services for mobile money - this would provide the most efficient remedy. In addition, mobile technology can be utilised by SMEs operating in the agricultural and fisheries sector.
Although e-commerce now poses as the answer to development for all developing nations, it does come with a restricting baggage. It is usually entailed by restrained financial, legal and physical infrastructure. The entire probability of an e-commerce application relies on its fit in the value chain of the respective sector. Moreover, the variety of culture and tradition also limits the applicability and transferability of many developing countries of the e-commerce models brought up by developed nations. In spite of the assortment of e-commerce advantages to developing countries, particularly in the SMEs - it still poses security concerns as of yet. E-commerce relies on establishing trust and familiarity through a well-managed website - a task yet to be administered and conducted by developing nations.
In conclusion, e-commerce holds the answers to our questions, but are we yet ready to be asking them?
The writer is a final year BBA student at the Institute of Business Administration under the University of Dhaka
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