E-commerce and the postal department

The future of businesses is in e-commerce and most countries help online sellers to expand their business. Logistics and online payment solutions provided by the governments play a pivotal role in uplifting e-commerce.

However, Bangladesh’s postal department’s reputation is known to everyone. Private courier services dominate the market because of inefficient customer handling by the Bangladesh postal department. We believe that to promote e-commerce, the government should reform the postal and logistic sectors.

Online payment is also an issue faced by the owners of e-commerce platforms. To receive payments, most e-commerce companies of small size opt for a third party payment option that contributes little or almost nothing to the economy. If policymakers work on these suggestions the Bangladesh’s economy has all the chance to grow phenomenally.

When it comes to buying, our appetite for exciting new experiences is never fully satiated. General perception now is that consumers are increasingly opting out of the traditional means and instead, being creatures of comfort, relying on digital avenues for retail therapy. E-commerce now accounts for an estimated one-tenth of worldwide retail sales, alleges the Global Consumer Insights Survey 2018 by Pricewaterhouse Coopers. According to an estimate by eMarketer, a market research company, worldwide retail e-commerce sales touched $2.304 trillion in 2017, making a 24.8 per cent leap from 2016.

The Post and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar recently struck a positive note regarding the issue. Highlighting the enormous contribution the postal department can make in the e-commerce sector he said, “No other institution in the country has the vast nationwide infrastructure and manpower the post offices have. It has become a reliable element for product distribution of the e-commerce sector,” he said, adding that there is no alternative to the post office to deliver daily essentials, including frozen food, to the remotest areas of the country. Apart from digitising the postal system, we are digitising the post offices also, training around 45,000 employees with digital skills which hopefully will be the foundation for post-office-centric e-commerce activities,” he added.

The pandemic was like a shot in the arm for the e-commerce industry. The industry has experienced huge growth during the pandemic as cross-sections of buyers were more interested in buying essentials they need from online marketplaces, rather than going out and buy things from brick-and-mortar shops. Then again, when everything was experiencing a quick rebound, the Evaly fiasco came to the fore and everything was almost back to square one. The customers who were getting habituated to e-commerce lifestyle were once again skeptical and a question of trust hampered the whole credibility this industry earned in the previous few years. After lots of drama and scrutiny, this industry is again trying to regain the lost trust of the customers/consumers.

The first challenge is for the e-commerce industry itself as it has to get back the lost trust of the customers if the sector wants to flourish in the long run. In order to build trust, e-commerce platforms have to take initiatives to educate the customers and the sellers as well. Especially, customer-centric educative initiatives will be much more helpful. There is no denying that this is an age of fierce competition and aggressive marketing strategies. To survive in such an ecosystem, different online marketplaces come up with lucrative offers from time to time, some of which are largely impractical and unrealistic. Such offers create imbalance in the market and develop a sense of greed among the customers.

To stop such trend, e-commerce industry will have to run awareness campaigns so that the customers understand the fact that more is not necessarily the better. It is very natural that the consumers will resort to different tactics like showrooming and webrooming to get the desired products at best prices. But, it is also important to remember the incident of Evaly and other platforms that pulled the wool over buyers’ eyes by enticing them into buying things offered at very unreasonable prices. To keep people away from such marketing gambits, the industry will have to take steps to make them aware of the risk factors.