It was only a few years back that all the shopping one could do was from his or her friendly neighborhood retailer. After this chains of retail stores utilizing managed supply chains emerged. A very large retail market was captured by them. For a while situation remained the same. Only the market share of such retail chains increased. After that invent of commercial internet happened. Sphere of its applications was revolutionized and eventually it came into retailing business. E-commerce was invented. It provided the luxury of browsing through a large number of products and choosing the most suitable. With the advent of some great websites like eBay the domain was revolutionised.

Some advantages it provided over conventional market which has increased its dominance are as following-

1. E-commerce website has a great number of product on its display. Far more than a neighborhood retailer can ever stock. This is because it need not to stock the actual product with it. The website displays all the required information and pictures and thus buyer takes informed decision.

2. It saves the customer from having to search the relevant retailer and actually go out. The product is shipped right at the doorsteps.

3. More often than not the feedback mechanism is more strong with online e-commerce retailers. Here your feedback actually matters and affects the future sells of the store. It is this reason that the online retailers are found more responsive to customer satisfaction and needs. A conventional shopkeeper often passes on the responsibility over to the manufacturer. 4. In most cases online ordering saves a customer from handling cash. The customer only need to authorize the payment and it is handled by specialized companies.

5. E-commerce is cost effective. It saves on transportation cost as well as on the cost of maintaining the physical stores. In many cases these costs are a large percentage of product cost. This way quite a lot of product cost is reduced. This saving is passed on to the customer to a great extent in most cases.

6. Offline retailers favor some products and tend to push over a particular product to the customer. Most often it is not the best product available but the product which is benefitting te retailer the most or giving the salesman most commission. In such case the customer ends up with a inefficient purchase. However there are no pushers on online platform. Customer takes a more inform decision there.

7. In a offline store there is usually a time limit after which salesman and customer both may start feeling uncomfortable. This often results in undesired purchases. There is no such time limit on an online platform.

There is no limit on range of product that can be bought on an online platform. From needle to aeroplane, everything is available on E-commerce platform. A customer is today more informed and more empowered. More competition is pushing the market to provide more benefits to its customers.