Ecommerce in Zimbabwe
E-commerce has become an integral part of modern business
transactions, making it an intriguing way of doing business.
Advances in information technology have resulted in businesses
opening up markets and trading communities on the web.
The web itself has attracted a great deal of attention in
recent years, perhaps significantly in the influential business
world. Reporting on the web is currently fascinating to readers
and listing of web addresses is useful to customers and companies
as it is the beginning of interaction between the two parties.
What is e-commerce anyway? Electronic commerce as it is fully
known is a facility where buyers and sellers meet on a common
market and trade electronically. Driven by increased competition
in many industrial and consumer markets some corporates and
small companies have moved away from the conventional trading
markets to set up the virtual markets on the web where they
can interact with their customers worldwide.
Serious Advertising and Marketing Practitioners are now aware
that more systematic research is required to reveal the nature
of commerce on the web. This is particularly true from the
perspective of e-commerce in marketing using the web as an
advertising tool.
In the Zimbabwean scenario many companies are still to explore
electronic commerce. The financial sector is one industry,
which has made significant great strides in making the Internet
places were their clients could transact.
These are exciting advances in telecommunications and Zimbabwe
is beginning to capture the essence of the facility. The facility
is destined to expand in many sectors of the economy in line
with the globalization concept taking place world wide as
the world becomes one big market place.
E-commerce allows both consumer and industrial consumers
to access a host of products from the web using their credit
cards numbers and make payments for the products they have
acquired. Companies set up infrastructure that their customers
can use to carry out transactions on the web.
E-commerce includes a whole range of services that can be
used electronically. It includes, e banking were banking institutions
can make banking products available to their clients on the
Internet.
Customers using e-commerce for purchasing of commodities
have access to a lot of benefits. They do not have to go to
shopping malls for their shopping, they can order and transact
from the comfort of their homes. There is a wide selection
of goods available from many different suppliers so you can
choose the best and most reasonably priced product much more
easily. In addition, the transition to a cashless society
is much easier when trading on the Internet. Everyone can
be using electronic cards.
With the licence that it has been awarded Africom is in the
process of deploying a public data network. This is essentially
a platform where companies with the zeal of venturing into
e-commerce have a chance to do so. Some of the companies have
already started doing so using the Africom platform. At the
moment Africom is moving aggressively to deploy broadband
services to the market. This facility will allow companies
in every.htmlect of the economy to get networked with much
speed.
The africom broadband platform will make available a whole
range of services that a re important to make e-commerce a
reality in Zimbabwe. Africom has made investments in telecommunications
infrastructure as well as preparing a platform where everyone
everywhere can be networked and trade on the web with much
speed and reliability.
In this regard the company has realized that supplying technology
on its own is not good enough for the region but to supply
total communication solutions where e-commerce will give the
market a choice of doing business.
E-commerce will reward those industries that are customer
focused. Research has it at hand that e-commerce is only fully
practiced in North America and some parts of Western Europe.
In Africa South Africa and Egypt have made some great strides
in this regard. Zimbabwe has one of the highest number of
internet users in Africa. Reseach has shown that there is
a ready market for e-commerce services in Zimbabwe. What needs
to be done is simply for the markers to ignite the market
and be ready to share the services of e-commerce with the
rest of the world. Now it is about getting the right technologies
as efficiently as possible to drive that need of e-commerce
in the country and also to understand those markets where
e-commerce is applicable.
Zimbabwe has seen a lot of Small to Medium Scale Enterprises
coming up in the 90s. This market is said to occupy 29% of
internet users in the country. The issue with this market
is what benefits do they derive from practicing e-commerce.
Africom is already considering to enter into partnership with
some small to medium entrepreneurs and educate them on the
importance of practicing e-commerce.
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