A STUDY OF M- COMMERCE IN INDIA

ABSTRACT:

M-commerce is known as the next generation of E-commerce.  It provides users with online access to the internet anywhere without the need for a PC or laptop anywhere. M-commerce is the purchase and sale of goods and services through cellular telephones and wireless digital handheld devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) or tablets. It is the purchase and sale of goods and services through cellular telephones and wireless digital handheld devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) or tablets. The object of this paper is to focus on present conditions of M-commerce in India and also find out the future direction of M-commerce. The significant growth of m-commerce applications is remarkable in India. In the present situation, the number of users has added to the mobile phone and consuming a huge bandwidth of mobile internet providers. Through this paper discover the Issue for the future growth of E-commerce trend and M-commerce with its present volume transaction in India, and identify critical challenges of M-commerce would become for the present scenario in India.

KEY WORDS:

E-COMMERCE, M-COMMERCE, MOBILE PAYMENT

RESEARCH METHODLOGY:

The present study is descriptive and is based on secondary data.  This research study is in use up through the survey. Based on the scope and objective of the study, the interview, a questionnaire is prepared to collect the answer and view from mobile service users. The data has been extracted from various sources like research articles, publications from authentic magazines, various bulletins of newspapers, and some authenticated websites.

OBJECTIVEOFSTUDY:

1. To study the role of M- commerce in the present scenario
2. To study the growth of M-commerce in India
3. To study the customer fulfillment and consistency on mobile services and Issue and challenges of M-commerce

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:

1. Rupinder Kaur Sofia Singh (31 march 2016) “Mobile commerce and Indian perspective.” The purpose of the study is to analyses the significant growth of M-commerce in India.

2. Satinder Niharika (2015) “The impact of mobile commerce in India.” This paper focused on Issue and challenges and impact of mobile commerce in India. This paper identifies facts about the feasibility of m- commerce India. Today its growth and strength and opportunity weakness and threats

3. Shintaro Okazaki “New perspectives of M-Commerce research:” This paper focused on the future direction of M-commerce research and market strategies in global world.

4. Sridhar Balasubraman, Robert A. Peterson (2008) – Mobile commerce Issue and Challenges: paper focused on new trends, new market policy Issues and Challenges for Mobile Commerce.

5. Irvine Clarke, James Madision “Emerging value propositions for M-commerce” this paper focused on the value proposition that engender a productive Mobile Commerce strategy.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY:

The result of the study is based on the sample survey conducted on mobile users of   300 samples. Respondents were from Major city of India. For the sample unit, I have selected such customers that they are using some service through mobile. This includes government employees, private employees’ housewives, students and businessmen.

INTRODUCTION:

M-commerce can be defined as “any transaction having a monetary value that can be conducted through a mobile communication network or Wi-Fi network”. Businesses to consumer transactions conducted from mobile devices are also known as m-commerce.

Mobile commerce is since 1997. At first, it was limited to buying ringtones and providing service through text messages. In 1999, the first browsing-like mobile application was introduced in Japan, and the most important among them was I-Mode.

In 2003, the Dutch department store chain de Bijnkorff launched the first sales campaign via text message. Customers could register online; provide their bank account details and delivery address. In later years, browsing on mobile phones became possible. However, the screens were too small and websites were rarely optimized for small screens. As a result, the success of mobile commerce was limited.

 The real success of mobile commerce came with the introduction of the iPhone. Applications designed for mobile use made online interaction easier by using a smaller screen.

Presently mobile phones are not used for sending messages or calling but it is also used for many other sectors. It is used to buy tickets, paying an insurance premium, buying gifts, and recharging mobile accounts. All big companies in India Started using mobile for doing business, financial sector, telecom sector, Banking, and real estate one of the sectors using mobile commerce. M-commerce is rapidly overtaking E-commerce as the facto mode for online transactions. Myntra, the leading fashion retailer in India has already announced its plans to become a mobile-only market place by the end of the year. Snapdeal declared that 65% of their orders come from mobile. And by the end of the year, Flipkart is the largest e-commerce company in India. E-commerce merchants are left with no choice but to embrace mobile in India. M-commerce has several major advantages over its fixed counterparts because of its specific inbuilt characteristics such as personalization, flexibility, and distribution. Mobile commerce promises exceptional business, market potential, and greater efficiency. 

E-COMMERCE:

E-commerce is also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce. It is a process of buying and selling products or services transfer of money, and electronic means i.e. exchanging data over the Internet. This network allows people to trade without distance and time constraints.

In this way, the sale and purchase of services and goods through the Internet are called e-commerce. It involves electronically transferring data or money between two or more parties. Simply put, this is online shopping. Currently, e-commerce is one of the most important aspects of the Internet. Ecommerce allows consumers to electronically exchange goods and services with no constraints of time or distance. Buying and selling goods on the Internet is one of the most popular examples of e-commerce. It started in the 1960s. Although there are many e-commerce websites, here we will tell about 10 e-commerce sites which are as follows- Amazon India, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Alibaba, ebayJabong, Quikr, Myntra, Homeshop18, and Pepperfry.

ADVANTAGES OF M-COMMERCE

M-commerce has various key advantages over its permanent counterpart because of its precise inbuilt characteristics such as personalization, elasticity, and distribution. Mobile commerce promises exceptional business, market, and greater competence. 

Device vendors target younger generations who use mobile phones more than any other age group. To promote the progress from e-commerce to m-commerce, online sellers are encouraged to collaborate with big names in the telecom industry to enable users to shop online from their phones. Most of these advances are accomplished through sophisticated application designs that are continuously developed. One of the features of the m-commerce site is the customization of websites so that they can be easily used with smaller screen sizes. Some advantages of M-Commerce are-

1. It provides a convenient, secure, and easy communication and distribution network.
2. It provides wide reach as most people use cell phones.
3. This enables the business to target customers effectively based on location, service provider, devices, etc.
4. This reduces transaction and order processing costs.
5. This encourages competitive price determination. It simplifies all business processes.
6. It provides easier inventory management

DISADVANTAGES OF M-COMMERCE

1. The low acceptance rate of new devices, applications, and technology among people.
2. Lack of support for infrastructure, professionals, and technology in developing countries.
3. Issues of security and privacy. Consumers fear for their confidentiality.
4. Expensive, 3G, 4G plans.
5. It offers a lack of individual contact.
6. It requires the app or website to be working.
7. It requires the faith in product.

CHALLENGES:

M-commerce is a breaking up of E-commerce. It also faces some challenges like India has an unbanked population, lack of networking problems in rural areas. The challenges of M-commerce in India are listed below:

1. Language barrier: Mostly people do not know the English language. Language becomes one of the most major factors to purchase, hire, and sell a particular product or service.
2. High-speed bandwidth of internet connection is not available to most customers at an affordable rate.
3. The major challenge for m-commerce in India has been that the users need to link one of their banking instruments such as the credit card, debit card, bank account to their online commerce accounts. The users have not been willing to share such information on the phone as there is a fear that the sensitive information may be comprised

DIGITAL PAYMENT:

1. The learning trend is changing and transferring from computers to mobile phones. According to McKinsey, India is one of the fastest-growing and largest markets with 560 million internet subscribers in 2018, It reported that Indians have 1.2 billion mobile phone subscriptions and downloaded around 12.3 billion apps in 2018. The growing penetration of mobile phones in the country and rapid growth of digitization in urban and rural areas is fueling the trend of anytime anywhere learning according to their convenience. During the time of demonetization, lack of cash forced people to use mobile banking or digital payment which seemed to be a better choice for them. Our country is moving to a cashless economic system. Inspired by Government’s mission Banks are also adapting safe and easy methods for costumers. Internet banking, mobile banking, and many other major initiatives to develop banking in India have an enormous response from the consumer’s end. Mobile has become the need of the people today. People like to do their work with mobile. That’s why most people nowadays use mobile banking more. Mobile banking is a system through which people can avail of all types of banking facilities such as transfer funds etc. through their smartphones. In the coming times, mobile banking will be more convenient and easy. 

 

 

 

The Survey of mobile banking was conducted from different groups through survey methods in which businesses, housewives, private employees, govt. employees and groups of students were surveyed whether they use online banking, do they use mobile banking, are they satisfied with the banking process through mobile and what kind of banking behavior are they doing? Whether they are satisfied or not, the survey concluded that about 31.9% private employees, 24.3 % of students, and 27.8% govt. employees and others are all using mobile banking. Most people have agreed that mobile banking serves 24 hours service and 30.8% have agreed that it is convenient. 71.5% of people have agreed that it is simple and they fully trust it while using it. The most popular apps are Phone Pay and Paytm. Also were dissatisfied with the point of safety. 14.6% of people are facing some challenges in Online Banking.

 

STATUS OF M-COMMERCE IN INDIA:

Mobile commerce adoption has increased extensively in the country due to multiple factors such as improved 3G and 4G penetration and accessibility of affordable smartphones. India is expected to have close to 600 million mobile Internet users by June 2020, up from 82.1 million in December 2017 as more people are accessing the web through mobile devices and tablets. It is being said that in the next three years mobile commerce will constitute more than 52percent of the total traffic in e-retailing. Mobile Commerce market in India to grow at a pace of 78.06% over the period 2018-2020.

After China, India is the biggest market in the world. At present, the no. of internet users has grown drastically in India up to 564.5 million.

Year	No. of Internet users in India (in Millions)
2017	437.5
2018	483
2019	525.3
2020	564.5

Today, whether rural or urban, everyone is using the Internet. Whether it is E-mail, financial, academic, entertainment, business, banking, the usage of E-commerce, M-commerce has increased. M-commerce has overtaken E-commerce. 65% of the transaction is being done by M-commerce. According to the report of IMAI, we can see that 99% of Internet access is done through mobile. Between 2015-2020 there has been a huge increase in sales of smartphones has increased from 160.1 to798.5 million. The area of retail has also increased drastically from 2015-2020.  Where online purchasers have increased, online buying capacity has increased as well. Because due to M-commerce customers are getting products cheaply and easily. Mobile retail e-commerce sales in India were estimated to be valued at nearly 38 billion US. Dollars by 2020. This was a significant growth since 2015 with the drastic growth in the number of mobile internet users since the inception of digital India and the rise of Reliance Jio. FLIPKART one of the India leading online seller in close computation with AMAZON and MYNTRA.

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Future growth of M-COMMERCE

In India, the mobile internet move now outweighs personal computer traffic. With increasing infiltration of smartphones, India is all set to be a huge market for m-commerce. Reports suggest that 75% of e-commerce sales with soon come from the mobile which is way higher than the global average. Major companies like Snapdeal, Flipkart understand this and ramped up their mobile commerce marketing. More and more small businesses are slowly optimizing their business daily to support mobile platforms and the future looks all mobile.It is the most upcoming sector for growth in retail and banking. Compared to PCs, access to mobile phones and smartphones in India is much larger and is growing at an accelerated pace. People in rural areas also have access to the Internet and it is only a matter of time when every household will have broadband connectivity! For instance, by 2021 it is estimated that more than half (54%) of all e-commerce sales are going to happen on mobile devices! That means billions of dollars of online transactions occurring through mobile commerce alone. Currently, M-commerce in India is offering exciting and renewed services to the existing mobile users like pocket finder of Air cell, SMS based home appliances handling (ONIDA AC, FM), Projector within the mobile device. Social networking sites like Facebook, twitter are also available on mobile. But it has been limited primarily to basic banking transactions, purchase of travel tickets and payment of some utility bills, is finally taking off with banks, cellular operators and payment service providers coming together to find solutions that comply with regulatory guidelines. Security, a prime concern with banking regulators, has been an obstacle to the growth of M-commerce services such as the so-called mobile wallet, which helps make payments at retail outlets through text messages or Internet-enabled phones. The Reserve Bank of India had issued guidelines against the creation of the mobile wallet, a derivative of a phone firm’s master bank account, from which millions of subscribers can be served on their mobile phones. Mobile will become another instrument of payment and it won’t be surprising if they get phone banking licenses in the future. The increasing number of mobile wallets and m-wallet providers are emerging as mini banking institutions. IMPS, UPI, Prepaid cards are just a few features that are changing the face of transactions in the Indian digital payment sector.

Conclusion:

M-commerce is the latest trend of wireless tools to make bigger its various services for mobile device users. The approval rate of mobile devices is increasing day by day and mobile financial services have started to raise attention at a marginal pace toward users. Mobile technology, mobile Internet access, and M-commerce are growing fast on the global stage; however, increase rates vary widely across economic regions. M-commerce can be a huge success for the Indian market but this requires a complete ecosystem, partners must be synchronized so that the best benefits go to consumers and their confidence is assured. Even during the era of Covid-19, digital payment became the maximum priority of people, hence there was a drastic increase in E-Commerce. Although the m-commerce market in India is in the emerging stage, M-payment and M-banking segments have shown significant growth over the last few years.

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