Description
In order to sell or distribute goods successfully online, manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, selling agents, distributors and delivery agents—i.e. all parties in the supply chain—must all share a relevant pool of information about the purchaser, the goods purchased, payment and the delivery address at the very least.
The easiest way to do this is for such parties to use the same e-commerce system (engine or platform), rather than to try and link their existing systems which will most likely have inherent inconsistencies and incompatibilities. They can either do this the expensive way, by having a bespoke system developed for them as do most of the larger stores, retailers and suppliers or alternatively, license a ready-made system.
There are many examples of successful (ready-made) supply chain platforms that have been developed over the decades, especially in the business-to-consumer (B2C) market, three of the best known internationally are Amazon.com, founded in 1994, eBay in 1995, famous for selling any new, old, private or trade goods and services (from books to battleships) and more recently, Airbnb for facilitating the letting of accommodation worldwide (from campervans to castles). All are now multi-million dollar global businesses.
However, for those smaller companies not having the resource to expend on their own system and wishing to capture a marketshare of a global market, they can use a ready-made e-commerce platform to sell their goods and services. This Contract is written to cover this option.
Typical e-commerce systems will have the now familiar catalogue of goods with excellent search and match programming, an electronic “shopping-cart” which appears visually on screen like a supermarket shopping cart or trolley into which the purchaser “electronically” place the goods it wishes to purchase. The “shopping cart” then goes to the electronic payment checkout which offers firstly, a variety of delivery options at varying costs (from standard to express mail, to courier and overnight guaranteed next day), the order then proceeds to various secure payment options. Once payment is authorised/confirmed the goods will automatically progress to the delivery processing stage.
Such e-commerce systems will commonly include inventory management functionality, returning customer (“loyalty”) recognition programming as well as functionality to capture as much useful information about purchasers and website visitors to use for marketing, advertising and ongoing development purposes.
