E Business A_Day 4,5_ 12DM-027

I wish laziness had an e-commerce portal where I could exchange it for sincerity. That the sheer short supply of the latter attribute would make it as precious as gold is a separate matter altogether.

With the hopes of having assuaged frayed tempers about this (very late in the day) diary entry, let me now elaborate on what went on the two sessions of our E-Business course- 23/11/2013 and 30/11/2013. The first dealt with the B2B e-commerce landscape that exists in India as of date and the second was all about how the four net giants-Google,Amazon,Apple and Facebook-have started expanding their core,so to speak, and are now officially, encroachers on each others' turf.

The B2B segment in India has not really taken off as much as one would have hoped it would be. The key reason cited for the same was that the DIY segment in India is still in its nascent stage and people prefer support to shooting themselves in the foot, in more ways than one. Buyer and supplier protection was also listed with the example of China held up which has set up an escrow facility to enable release of funds only when the goods have been verified. What was also interesting was the kind of vicious circle that develops which is a major obstacle to the growth of this space in India- that unless, the buyers demand so, the suppliers won't come online but the buyers themselves won't take the online gateway if suppliers are not present. The session ended with where we had began-why venture into this segment where so much uncertainty abounds? The answer, given by the guest speaker who was a distinguished IndiaMart employee, was simple. The market place has its own charm. Owning and operating such a market place provides one with a level of thrill that nothing can match. Amen to that.

The next session which had us scratching our heads, revolved around a Harvard case study. This case talked about the blurring of lines between what is Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon. The question raised was whether Michael Porter's famed "Core Competency" theory ( that an organisation should focus on its core competency and essentially dump everything else) was out-dated with this kind of behaviour being shown by organisations who have pretty much shaped the way we access internet today. After much discussion, we came to the conclusion that it was the core competency of each of these Goliaths that had enabled them to become what they are today. It is unlikely that anyone of these companies will abandon what they have now become famous for. But, one also has to keep in mind that a core competency remains one as long as it is a source of competitive advantage. If a thousand other me-too's flood the market, it is essential that one builds on the competency by building and adding skills around it( Google Search, Google Maps etc). Also, the consumer is someone who, each of these organisations would like to court and arrange an un-breakable marriage with. Not for any altruistic motives or because the consumer is important( though that is the purported reason given) but because with the consumer comes the ad revenue that is necessary to sustain each of the business models that these companies survive on.  A recent news item- http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-12-03/software-services/44709498_1_search-engine-twitter-search-feature- which talks about Apple buying social media analytics firm Topsy, goes well with the theme. The deliberation ended with an Innovation Ambition Matrix  that talks about core, adjacent and transformational/disruptive innovations and where the four giants would feature in such a matrix, a copy of which, is shown below. The session ended with an exercise where the groups had to hunt for a campaign that utilised only one of the social media platforms.  

With that, we came to the end of a course that was instrumental in sparking my(so far) next-to-nothing interest in the field of e-commerce. I was also rid of many notions I had nurtured in my head and I believe that's what education is for-to remove the blinkers and expand one's cognition to include what was so far,excluded.

     

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Ankita Singh

PGDM-II (Marketing)

IMT-Ghaziabad

Contact No.-07503139357

Email id- ankita.k.singh.1989@gmail.com