Advantages and Disadvantages of E-commerce

Advantages according to Lutkevich (2023)

1. Lower cost of maintenance, and this is due to the fact that there is no physical location of the sale in which you have to employ workers. 
2. Quick access, we do not have to leave home and thanks to high-speed Internet we are able to load the page and find the product we are looking for in a very short time. Moreover, we are not limited by queues and cashiers.  
3. Accessibility, pages can be loaded and purchases can be made at any time of day and from any location.
4. A large range of products, e-commerce allows businesses to locate a wide variety of goods on their sites. They are not limited to one warehouse or store, goods sold on the site can be stored in many warehouses from which they will be shipped to the customer. This allows e-commerce to provide a wider choice of goods.
5. Reach, as I mentioned in the third point customer can purchase the product from wherever they are at the moment. This is a great convenience, allowing you to make international purchases from your desk. 

Disadvantages according to Lutkevich (2023)

1. Customer service, everything here depends on the website and the policy of the organization that runs the website. We may encounter poor customer service that comes down to email exchanges that can last up to several days; even with the simplest question. Businesses try to come out ahead and introduce frequently asked questions (FAQs) or live chats. However, this does not compare to the service we can experience in a stationary store, where we can ask an employee, cashier or ask the store manager if the problem demands it.
2. Lack of accurate insight into the product we buy, which means that we can buy the wrong size, or even a color that looked greener in the pictures in reality looks yellow. The quality of the product can also vary, as we are not able to examine with our own senses whether it suits us.
3. No guarantee of security, ranging from bogus sales pages that were created to imitate the authentic ones. From scammers who send products other than those in the pictures and finally real sites that you like so much that you have saved your shipping and credit card information. But what if the site gets hacked and your data leaks out? 

References

Lutkevich, B. (2023) e-commerce. Available at: https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/e-commerce (Accessed: 14 January 2023).