Comprehensive guide to e-commerce around the globe

WHAT do names like Alibaba, Ten Cent, Amazon, Rocket, Flipkart, Snapdeal have in common? They are all staggeringly huge and successful e-commerce platforms, covering China, America, Germany, Indonesia, South America, India,and very, very briefly, Nigeria.

Author Porter Erisman traces the history of retail from its early beginnings, when small shops sold few items to the first business run by printed catalogue.

E-commerce, in its most basic terms, is selling by massive catalogues over the internet.

Erisman, an American, was employed by Alibaba in China. Based on Amazon, chairman Jack Ma soon changed Alibaba into the giant we know today. Erisman’s experience with Ma has ensured that he is indispensable in global advice on e-commerce start-ups. Six Billion Shoppers is as entertaining as it is instructive. Erisman treats his subject as a travelogue as he takes the reader from one continent to the next, exploring and exposing e-commerce’s strengths and flaws.

In Bogota, he is mugged. In India, he watches with fascination the logistics of the dabbawallahs, the food delivery service that is a necessity because of the dietary requirements of the country’s different castes.

In Mexico, the vibrant food economy is driven by need.

Wherever he finds large markets, be they under tarpaulins or on boats, Erisman looks at the way these can be incorporated into e-commerce.

Each country has its own way of addressing the problems of retail, e-commerce and logistics.

In China, the village and the rice paddy inform social interaction and to be successful in China it is imperative to build trust within a social network.

Ma changed the Amazon model radically because of the different perceptions of trust between China and America.

Alibaba’s ecosystem deals with wholesale, international sales, variations on buying and selling services, travel, video, dining, payment, logistics, advertising and more.

Because the Chinese like to have social interaction with their buying, blogs and We Chat are an essential component to sales, so important that dating is a natural add on.

Amazon, created by Jeff Bezos in 1994, started largely as an online book store, and its American customers are more trusting than their Chinese counterparts about online payment and less demanding about social interaction.

In China, the smartphone is as universal as games. The Chinese like bright colours, sounds and interaction. This is a lesson for e-commerce. The successful virtual shopping mall is as close to the real thing with its brightly coloured stalls or shops as you can get.

Shopping for clothing and other consumer items happens in the sociable context of handling smartphones.

As smartphones gain larger and larger footholds the world over, people have a “shopping mall in their pocket”.

As the size of the smartphone increases, prices of data decrease, and it becomes easier to use e-commerce to reach all potential customers.

The increasing size of the screen also allows for the display of comprehensive images of products.

A fascinating read and essential for anyone doing any sort of business, because e-commerce is here to stay.