E-commerce experienced a rapid development and still continues to be effective in the world. In Turkey, the development of e-commerce accelerated in the last years and it became increasingly common in retail sector. Although e-commerce is not using effectively in Turkey as in the world, especially big companies gives importance to e-commerce.
Although the e-commerce which is a growing market is in the efficiency of large firms, it is now discovered by SMEs and being used. With this discovery, the development of e-commerce accelerated. However, the effectiveness of SMEs on e-commerce market is not at the desired level yet.
The most important reason of this is that the foreign investors who have the weighted share of the e-commerce market in Turkey. These large investors affected most of the users with e-commerce web sites that they built. The most important reason why those investors are on this market is the open doors and promises of the e-commerce market of Turkey.
However this is not an obstacle for SMEs to give up entering the market. Because now brands coming together and set up shopping web sites and sell their products on these web sites to their customers.
According to the new Turkish Commercial Code which will enter into force on 1st of July 2012, every company has to have their own web site now. In this regard, SMEs need to build their web sites to be more effective on e-commerce. And now other SMEs which do not yet show esteem to e-commerce must see the opportunities of e-commerce and they should take place on online shopping world.
Although large shareholders are not the only reason that holdback SMEs from using online shopping advantages. Another factor is the lack of technical knowledge. However, web design is a highly developed sector in our country and a lot of web design company has experience in building an e-commerce web site. With getting help from professionals SMEs can have a web site and this make it much easier to take place on e-commerce market.
If we explain it with numbers, there are 35 million internet and 5-6 million online shopping users in Turkey. Small and medium sized businesses which have opened stores on largest e-commerce sites should realize the value of the potential of this growing and dynamic e-commerce market in Turkey and should reserve share for their own.