At
this very beginning of the new decade, it can be easily said that Facebook commerce or f-commerce has made a deep impact on the
purchasing behavior of Bangladeshi consumers.
According to the E-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-cab), there are more than 8,000 Facebook-based businesses all over the country. Today in Bangladesh, from multinational to a single person e-commerce business can't even imagine their operation without a Facebook page. These f-commerce businesses are delivering thousands of orders, even to the remote areas of the country.
However, the journey till now for the f-commerce entrepreneurs was not “Bed of roses”. They have come a long way, but even today they are facing several challenges. Let's check out, what are the top 5 challenges of these f-commerce entrepreneurs are facing currently in Bangladesh.
According to the E-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-cab), there are more than 8,000 Facebook-based businesses all over the country. Today in Bangladesh, from multinational to a single person e-commerce business can't even imagine their operation without a Facebook page. These f-commerce businesses are delivering thousands of orders, even to the remote areas of the country.
However, the journey till now for the f-commerce entrepreneurs was not “Bed of roses”. They have come a long way, but even today they are facing several challenges. Let's check out, what are the top 5 challenges of these f-commerce entrepreneurs are facing currently in Bangladesh.
Like any other start-up, investment is the biggest issue for f-commerce businesses. Almost all f-commerce entrepreneurs don't maintain solid records of their everyday transactions. They just calculate their overall monthly profit, by subtracting the purchase price from the buying or manufacturing cost.
Lack of proper bookkeeping makes it quite difficult for banks or any other investors to understand the business in-depth. Besides, this issue, banks & other traditional financing companies generally don't trust virtual businesses for some misconceptions & lack of knowledge about these types of businesses.
In this condition, Shop-Up is doing
something appreciable, they have started a loan facility for these
entrepreneurs. Though only Shop-Up is not enough in this huge field,
it's nice to see that someone is trying to make a difference.
[2] Lack
of customer retention:
Most of
the f-commerce businesses are not aware of customer retention. The
majority of them just try to “boost” their page or product using
Facebook promotion and get some sales. For this tendency, they have
very few recurring customer base. I have found many consumers, who
are satisfied with the product & service of a specific Facebook
page, but they can't remember the name of the page, even to reorder
the same product.
This
also hurt many f-commerce entrepreneurs last year, when Facebook
brought some changes in the news feed algorithm.
[3] Payment
issue: As
f-commerce businesses don't have their own website in most cases,
they have to rely mainly on Cash On Delivery (COD) & Mobile
Financial Services (MFS) for payment.
A good number of f-commerce
businesses complain about receiving late payment of Cash On Delivery
(COD) payments from the logistics service provider. Besides COD,
Mobile Financial
Services are the secondary payment channel, but here comes another
issue, the verification process for the merchant account is
relatively long & sometimes tiring also.
Moreover, major MFS
providers don't get interested to enlist any business as their
merchant, most cases they lose their interest if the monthly
transactions over the MFS channel are lower than 4-5 lacs BDT per
month.
[4] Delivery
to remote areas: Though some
logistics like E-Courier, Pathao, Paperfly, etc. are trying their
best to ensure last-mile delivery to every corner of the country, it
is not yet a reality to deliver
any type of product to anywhere
in Bangladesh within a minimum cost. Some products like furniture,
electronics, automobiles take the huge cost to deliver, even
sometimes the delivery cost could be almost 50% of the cost of the
product itself.
[5] Fraudulent
Order: A comment or message is
enough for placing an order at f-commerce, naturally the rate
of fraudulent orders
are relatively higher than the mainstream e-commerce. There is no
single word remedy for this challenge, entrepreneurs can verify the
customer in several ways to keep the number of fraudulent
orders at a minimum
level.
Before starting any f-commerce business, you should consider all the measures on how you can face the challenges above!
Before starting any f-commerce business, you should consider all the measures on how you can face the challenges above!
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