Going along with the publication today of an article in El País on online outlets, I would like to reflect on the opportunities of online Electronic Commerce and the reason, from the way I see it, it is still in diapers. In reality, as much as you see online, with a sound exception for Amazon, is traditional commerce using the Internet to better reach new clients more efficiently. For me, e-commerce of the future has to be something else and to reinvent the way we do business.
2.0 concepts applied to business are still in diapers, the role of social networks in online sales of traditional products is still in the beginning stages and, in general, few invent anything that isn’t virtual. It is all well and good to generate virtual worlds and sell virtual products and services, but the great power of the net can change traditional commerce if we just apply ourselves.
In reality, exaggerating a little, someone could design a piano that behaves like a traditional upright piano, make use of Chinese factories to make it cheap, and sell it on the net, personalizing it according to the use the owner would give it and the size of the flat they have available to use. Another provider will do the same with special acoustic capsules to be able to play it in any building without bothering the neighbors and they will all form part of a social network on Tuenti or Facebook to exchange experiences in both environments. With all this, the basic material for fabrication would be a tree that is only grown in Tanzania and that, thanks to this business, can be replanted and create thousands of long-term job positions for several villages around it.
The Internet should serve to reinvent a better world, more friendly, more of a friend to natural resources and, overall, more efficient with all that it does. Meanwhile, we try more of the same, simply easier and more efficiently than before.
Translated by Babelic.com
