Assignment Sample on Management of E-Business
Introduction
E-commerce challenges are significantly growing in the modern industrial contexts through which businesses have become more proficient in dealing with their customers conveniently. Perhaps, E-commerce platforms have catered extensive benefits to both business and consumers but security is a profound challenge that has also disrupted brand values in front of their customers. This report focuses on current trends of E-commerce in the era of globalisation and its core demands for businesses to accomplish their corporate goals. Similarly, alignments of cybersecurity issues have also been articulated in this report to determine the extent to which such drawbacks can create difficulties for both brands and consumers both.
The current market in structure of online commerce
E-commerce or electronic commerce includes the application of internet-based that allow firms to sell their products to customers along with implementing financial transactions. Hudák et al. (2017) noted that through contextualising e-commerce platforms, trends of online marketing has been increased unprecedentedly by being the most effective communication tools. The UK has become the most advanced e-commerce market in the globe where revenues from such platforms contributed approximately 688.4 billion to the nation’s GDP in 2018. Online retail sales have been increased by 157.2% which is higher compared to its previous consecutive years (statista.com, (2021). In 2020, online sales are expected to grow by 19% from 11% despite having a pandemic which has reached £78.9bn uplifted by £66.3bn in 2019.
E-commerce not only provides faster buying and selling experiences but also allows businesses to cater for their serviceability in a cost-effective way. As per the view of Rahayu and Day (2017), e-commerce technology offers abundant potential advantages to businesses such as reduced cost, increased sales, higher productivity, reduced time and extended consumers loyalty baseline. For instance, Tesco is a British supermarket brand that has invested its resources heavily in e-commerce by offering a mobile application. Such efforts are intended to aid customers to make orders online and collect their groceries quickly in store. Adversely, Khan and Uwemi (2018) argued that level of adoption of e-commerce channels are comparatively low in developing countries as consumers and buyers in such places are more optimised to make face-to-face transactions.
On the other hand, security and privacy issues are one of greatest challenges often faced by firms especially SMEs while obtaining e-commerce channels. That is why Muneer et al. (2018) highlighted that perhaps e-commerce businesses have become quite popular but those firms have come into light with many privacy and security issues. For instance, Amazon is a leading e-commerce platform worldwide and found guilty for breaching personal data along with non-sensitive masked card information, mobile numbers and email ids of a subset of users. That is why e-commerce utilisation trends and practices are changing rapidly by incorporating more authentic features such as BNPL and Omnichannel options (ringcentral.co.uk, 2021). For instance, TOPSHOP is a UK-Based high-street retailer brand that uses Omnichannel as seamlessly as possible for offering trendy products via their online portal.
Core challenges associated with E-commerce platforms
Cybersecurity issues can come in many forms such as ransomware, phishing attacks and malware attacks which can cause electrical blackouts, failure of relevant equipment and breaching of confidential information. Such kind of loopholes can make computer systems or devices paralysed whereas theft of valuable and sensitive data of a business can lead them to encounter higher operational costs. In that case, e-commerce security risks are included with man-in-the-middle attacks and bad bots by online retailers which often motivate them for keeping continuity of their trades. According to Atalay (2020), cybersecurity has become a major and critical challenge for modern business due to their offerings to consumers for using internet at a higher pace.
They also incorporated that total value of stolen data in one year in US is more than $10 billion which was associated with changing, mixing or adding new things to existing information. In UK, it has been predicted that online retailers have been losing a staggering £5.9 billion due to data breaches every year depending on average costs and frequency of cyber attacks on e-commerce platforms (retailtimes.co.uk, 2020). In fact, 43% of UK businesses have experienced cybersecurity breaches every year whereas almost 90% of login attempts have been made on online retailers’ websites and selling applications.
Additionally, 1.5 million UK organisations fell victim to cybercrime in 2019 which was equated to 255 of all businesses and higher than 13% in 2015 (itgovernance.co.uk, 2020). As a result, they have lost around £13 billion in 2019 which caused them to bear extensively damaged assets, financial penalties and lost productivity. Chun (2019) alleged that utilisation of the internet has led brands and consumers to engage with e-commerce revolution explicitly as a result of network developments entailing increased connectivity and functionality. Hence, such amenities have allowed individuals or third parties to hack data from online portals so that they can use it for attaining more competitive advantages than their market rivals.
On the other hand, it has been also criticised that during the lockdown in 2020, cybercrimes were increased by 20% which was faced by multiple UK businesses (itpro.co.uk, 2021). During the period, UK businesses faced 686,961 attempts on average in breaching their systems online whereas, in 2019, 576,575 attempts were made on average. eBay is a global e-commerce platform that connects buyers and sellers and in 2014, they went through massive investigations over data breaching on an extreme level (bbc.com, 2014). Based on the data, it can be stated that cybersecurity threats can unlatch a door of disarray for e-commerce businesses that can cause firms to produce low-quality products or services.
On another side, Durowoju et al. (2020) argued that impacts of cyber-security disruptions on e-commerce platforms are still uncertain whereas Information Security Breaches (ISB) is poorly understood by firms. In that case, SMEs often seeks to use such portals for high ISB remediation instead of denoting a high frequency of ISB occurrence. Adversely, Yu et al. (2018) criticised the redundant usage of e-commerce platforms by modern businesses as such systems may produce serious problems including violation of transactional properties and losses of user funds. For instance, Shopify is a well-recognised Canadian e-commerce brand that faced cybersecurity threats and occurrence of data breaching where two “rogue” support team employees accessed and stole customer transactional records.
As a result, Shopify lost a huge number of customers as approximately 4,900 data of them were accused during that phase without their consent. In order to mitigate that, Shopify’s teams have been in close communication with affected merchants so that they can navigate such problems efficiently by embedding zero-tolerance platforms (community.shopify.com, 2020). Hence, it can be viewed that cybersecurity issues in e-commerce platforms not only cause harm and degradation of a reputation for respective businesses but also prevent them from generating expected revenues. Currently, such issues are growing because of the inclination of utilisation of modern technology and the internets for consolidating their connectivity with other users as well as preferable brands.
Waithaka and Mnkandla (2017) alleged ever-evolving wireless technology has given a push to modern businesses for implementing new ways to generate profits whereas e-commerce platforms are a result of such efforts. That is why brands are developing different mobile applications to provide more tailor-finished and performance-specific services to customers. In that similar context, Liao et al. (2020) explained that such mobile applications and their functionality play an important role in IoT management where system vulnerability can easily be compromised. The authors added that IoT mobile applications can be used to disintegrate such vulnerabilities whereas development of those applications can entail cybersecurity risks.
On the other hand, IoT requires strong security needs due to the rapid rise of cyber attacks as it can easily damage such device functionalities by defaulting software configuration. For instance, Argos is a UK-based e-commerce retailer that has been accused of using default email security rules. One of Argos’ customers found that his entire credit card number and security code could be viewed easily within HTML code while confirming order mails on “View Source” (retailtechnology.co.uk, 2021). That encrypted mail source code included his entire personal detail along with a three-digit CVV security code which could have been intercepted by a cyber-criminal.
Such circumstances led Argos to embed PCI DSS standards as this firm aimed to filter inbound and outbound mails both in order to protect their customer information against malware. Kuruwitaarachchi et al. (2019) articulated that if forms are unable to tackle their e-commerce platforms in market then they are required to carry out a systematic review of security issues for discovering strategic frameworks. In this way, firms can easily revamp their market position along with core business values by addressing and mitigating such issues from both customer and organisational viewpoints. Apart from that, cybersecurity is coming in different forms which can impact e-commerce platforms for not only breaching data but also to access company profiles for damaging their intellectual properties.
Ransomware is one of the greatest concerns for e-commerce business in 2021 which can encrypt required and confidential files from a company’s online portals. Besides that, a method like a distributed denial of service (DDoS) may influence hackers to take down a company’s most crucial systems or entire network by accessing their e-commerce sites. Jideani et al. (2018) argued that cybercrimes may increase in future more in order to affect trades or even target a specific commodity in general on the entire sector instead of a single company. In fact, service providers and customers of e-commerce platforms can be attacked for stealing their data to commit phishing and impersonation.
Application of Theory of Change in e-business contexts
Theory of change is a strategic model which can be implemented further in an organisational context by developing multiple policies, laws, strategies or projects. By incorporating their theoretical practices into the place of an e-commerce business, brands would be able to make assumptions for creating a range of explicit conditions. Biggs et al. (2017) determined that theory of change has been used widely in international development due to its effectiveness in constituting strategic frameworks for planning required activities. In case of e-commerce brands, it would be beneficial for them to align their theoretical assistance with their current managerial practices through which they can measure desired outcomes and their impact.
In fact, e-commerce brands can enable stronger technological and data-based algorithms which would be unavailable for cyber-criminals for attempting their illegal accessibility. On the other hand, Rippon and South (2017) explained that theory of change incorporates an orientation phase that provides an opportunity to set out rationale and intention of asset-based activities. By understanding core attributes of this theory, e-commerce would become efficient in making required changes in their action plans and strategies after scrutinising its consequences on their existing business values. They would be more proactive in deciding the pros and cons of each of their course of action for enabling data security mechanisms on respective channels so that consumers can optimise lower impacts. In this way, they would measure not only their profitable scopes after generating user-friendly contexts on e-portals but also determine how it can leverage consumers instead of getting hacked.
Recommendations for further development and consolidation of E-commerce platforms
Accommodation of customer assurance
It would be a prime duty of an e-commerce brand to ensure that their customer receives full invoices or details while purchasing products on incline channels. They can develop a call-blocking team to allow them for resisting spam calls or can empower them to access their own details for gaining better visibility about brand approaches. A call-blocking team of an e-commerce brand would be responsible to make calls directly to their potential customers for making them aware of not attending unauthorised calls. Such calls are increasing in UK day-by-day from call centres across the world where people introduce themselves as representatives of actual brands though they are not.
The call blocking team would be assigned for giving a small brief about such junk mails or calls to customers so that they can resist such attempts for protecting their details on brand profiles. For instance, Voonik is an Indian fashion retail e-commerce company that uses Truecaller application for connecting with smartphone users with strong ease of delivery to on-board users safely (economictimes.indiatimes.com, 2017). In that case, they collaborated with Truecaller which is the largest directory and able to show customers full details of brands before they receive it for their data protection assurance.
Implementation of blockchain technology
Blockchain technology would be an effective way to create a decentralised peer-to-peer network through which firms can implement and consolidate secured platforms. Ma et al. (2020) explained that blockchain technology can allow firms to make trustful transactions in untrustworthy environments after measuring and contextualising the value transfer network. Uber is an American e-commerce brand that offers food delivery, ride-hailing and rise sharing services also use blockchain technology for enabling direct connection between drivers and riders. In that case, they use P2P protocol for sharing details of each other over large distances quickly and safely at a lower cost.
On contrary, Wang et al. (2017) argued that due to being in the early stages, blockchain technology is still integrated with multiple challenges such as latency, size and bandwidth. Therefore, e-commerce brands would be required to provide sufficient training and development sessions to their employees so that they can deal with such platforms flexibly and transparently without disrupting operational procedures. Based on the theory of change, these identified strategies can be obtained by e-commerce brands in order to rescue customers’ data and their intellectual properties. By optimising the benefits of respective recommendations, e-commerce platforms can make changes in their existing business strategies for revamping their goodwill instead of only embracing profitable scopes.
Conclusion
E-commerce platforms are growing because of the extensive demand and preferences of consumers as such portals offer the ultimate convenience in selling and buying products effectively. As opposed to that, cybersecurity threats or risks are also increasing due to the inclination of internet use and growth of more disruptive technologies. Such contradictory upliftments have created challenges for not only e-brands but also for consumers to surge their trust, agreeableness and loyalty towards certain businesses. Both developed and developing countries are redundantly facing such challenges which are directly related to their system by causing occurrences like confidential data breaching.
It can be expected that in future, difficulties or concerns towards cybersecurity would increase as the equivalently, demand for e-commerce platforms would increase. Such kinds of situations would cause dilemmas for brands and their customers rather than giving them potential options to overcome certain phenomena. This report concludes cybersecurity generates more tensions regarding financial fraud, phishing, spamming, creating system sores and exploitation of informational vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is extremely important for e-commerce brands to make changes in their technological and managerial infrastructure so that they can not only provide profound but also secured solutions and services. According to the above arguments of different authors and evidence in respect of their findings, it can be stated that “cybersecurity issues present an increasing challenge for e-commerce”.
Reference List
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