THE one area in which online retail commerce seems to have been a success is eBay. Almost everyone who has made a transaction on the Internet has used the global online marketplace that trades just about everything, either for thesale itself or to compare prices.

Mr Griffith: There are still obstacles that hinder the growth of retail e-commerce. Photo/ EBAY

This is something that excites Jim Griffith, dean of eBay education. As an instructor for the training organisation known as eBay University, Mr Griffith travels the world spreading the message of how to use eBay to best advantage and ultimately generate more users of the site.

In a recent interview with EL, he spelt out some of the trends in the online world at the moment. These mirror those seen in Internet commerce here as well.

For example the observation that younger people, aged from 18 years to their mid-30s, are more inclined to buy online. It is definitely a global phenomenon, with a generation that has grown up with the Internet and is comfortable with it.

In an interesting parallel development, many people who are middle-aged or older are becoming sellers on eBay. These are typically people in their second or third careers, and they are avid students at the eBay University. They have discovered the power of selling on the Internet and are keen to use their business skills and backing to do well at it.

The exponential growth in the range of products available on the site is the other main factor that is driving growth, Mr Griffith says. 'eBay has changed so much over the past 10 years.' People's perception of the site especially has changed with the times. In the '90s, eBay was seen as a niche exchange for quirky goods like Beanie babies and other collectibles, says Mr Griffith. It is now thought of as a much wider marketplace with unmatched price-matching.

While the future holds much promise, Mr Griffith says there are still obstacles that hinder the growth of retail e-commerce. Chief among these are infrastructural weaknesses, differences in payment systems, and culturalobstacles.

The first issue is much less of a problem in Singapore where our IT and logistics infrastructure is among the best in the world. But in some places even gaining access to the Internet can be difficult and delivery systems arestill running at a pace not in line with the new economy. This affects Singapore in that paying for and receiving goods ordered in even countries as developed as the US remains a problem. Obviously the more inconvenient thebuying process is, the less likely people will be to use it.

Payment systems and cultural barriers to online commerce are the intangibles that are a little more difficult to overcome. Here, the problem is quite complicated because there does not seem to be a particular pattern even withinAsia, for example. The Internet commerce figures clearly illustrate that in certain Asian countries such as the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and India, people trust strangers enough to carry out transactions with them. But in other places, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Italy, this level of trust seems to belacking.

This is seen by the response one often gets that people here are quite happy to sell things on eBay but are rather more reluctant to buy them. Overcoming the human software issues as well as sorting out the logistics impediments on a global scale will be key to the further growth of retail Internet commerce.

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