CellBazaar, a mobile-based e marketplace: Success factors and potential for expansion
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In emerging economies, access to accurate market information can be limited by poor, underdeveloped or even absent infrastructure. Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is the conduct of commercial transactions over electronic networks. It has been seen as a way of reducing friction in the marketplace, allowing larger volumes of transactions to take place and effectively expanding markets. It also offers a way of opening up entirely new markets, allowing smaller and larger marketers to exploit the ‘long tail’ of demand for goods or services.
In developed economies, although e-commerce does take the form of commercial transactions facilitated over the Internet, e-commerce is now being conducted using mobile networks because of their growing ubiquity.
In emerging economies low levels of Internet penetration and the lack of secure payment mechanisms, inter alia, have slowed the growth of e-commerce as compared to its take-off in wealthier countries.
As this paper will show, e-commerce in developing economies is developing based on mobile networks, although the forms of e-commerce differ from those being introduced in the developed economies.
This paper examines the case of CellBazaar, an electronic marketplace (e-marketplace) operating in Bangladesh, which allows buyers and sellers to exchange information on products and services for sale in the e-marketplace by using their mobile phones.
The paper examines it’s success factors and its potential for expansion beyond the search component of a transaction.
This research was conducted by Ayesha Zainudeen, Rohan Samarajiva (PhD) and Nirmali Sivapragasam in February-April 2009.
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Report: CellBazaar, a mobile-based e marketplace (version 3.0)
Citation for the above report is as follows: Author Last Name, First Name Initial, (2010), Report Name, Retrieved Date, URL of document on LIRNEasia website.
Presentations
- Presentation at LIRNEasia-PTA Expert Forum, April 2010, Islamabad, Pakistan
- CellBazaar: A mobile‐based e‐marketplace“ Presentation by Ayesha Zainudeen at LIRNEasia‘s 5th Anniversary Conference, 9 – 11 December 2009
- “How the developing world may participate in the global Internet Economy: Innovation driven by competition” Lead presentation by Rohan Samarajiva at OECD/infoDev Workshop on “Policy coherence in the application of information and communication technologies for development”, Paris, France, 10 – 11 September 2009 (Full paper available here)
- “CellBazaar, a Mobile-based E marketplace: Success Factors and Potential for Expansion” Presentation by Rohan Samarajiva at the Preconference “Mobile2.0: Beyond Voice?” of the International Communication Association (ICA) preconference, 20 – 21 May 2009
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