Author : Rumana Reza
Here, I have tried to focus on some external and internal factors
that are barriers for Bangladesh to contribute more in e-commerce sector.
In Bangladesh, most of the application of e-commerce is
export business. It’s hard to import products from outside of the country. The
whole process is too lengthy and expensive also. Some sites like amazon.com
labeled Bangladesh on the country bar, but the true picture is not that easy.
Buyers from Bangladesh can’t order for products directly. They need via to collect
it. International Credit Card Exchange like Pay Pal still not valid in the
country. Therefore, clients have to pay through the local bank accounts.
Companies like FedEx charges so high to ship any product to Bangladesh. For
this reason, importers are being deprived to get their desired world class
products. On the other hand, exporters are losing a big bazaar.
E-commerce of Bangladesh is not developed much yet due to
its infrastructure also. Road communications, management system of courier
services are not well enough. Therefore, clients can’t get their products in
time. Moreover, instead of home delivery, often they ask for self service to its
recipients. So, consumers can’t enjoy the true benefit of e-commerce.
Another obstacle for e-commerce in Bangladesh is denying code
of ethics. It makes consumers more suspicious on this sector. In real life,
people often don’t get pure, fresh foods at super shops. Moreover, chemicals are
applied on for long time. If the real scenario is like that then it’s hard to
keep faith on virtual world. In addition to on e-shopping sites, colors of the
products are not as same as the real one mostly. Exchanges of second hand electronic
products through some local online shopping sites like olx.com.bd, bikroy.com etc
is making some clients losers. All these sites have no accountability to assure
the product’s quality. People are now
more concern on product quality. According to ‘Pricing-to-Market: Price
Discrimination or Product Differentiation? ‘, prepared by Nathalie Lavoie and Qihong
Liu,
consumers
know also that it was “examined
the bias in PTM results when unit values aggregate vertically differentiated products.”
[[http://www.aae.wisc.edu/fsrg/web/FSRG%20papers/20%20Lavoie%20Liu.pdf ] , page-14] And that’s make them more
suspicious on imported products. Therefore, people losing their interests
on e-commerce.
Problem of developing web sites is one of the barriers to
grow e-commerce up in Bangladesh. Cyber crime like hacking is a big threat
now. Some online store developers offer
10 to 20 thousands taka only to develop a site. It costs less because those
developers doing piracy through using others template without permission. These
templates are full of BUGs that couldn’t be identified. It makes the victim
site down and could be hacked easily. Entrepreneurs have to face difficulties
to maintain their domain and hosting also. In Bangladesh, there are some IT
companies, freelancers arisen now who purchase domain and hosting using their
own accounts. Then they keep it locked. They don’t want to give the control
panel to their clients. They do so
because of forcing the clients to renew their domain and hosting next year.
To expand e-commerce in Bangladesh, proper mentors are
needed to guide online entrepreneurs. Though there are some communities for
entrepreneurs, they can’t play important role on customer services, user
interfaces, public relations, user experience, and customer awareness yet. Whatever,
nothing is easy. If consumers get assurance that they could receive pure
products at the right time with right price, they might not count all the
difficulties. This may help Bangladesh to emerge as an important factor in
e-commerce sector and the country may contribute on global economy more.
