International Journal of All Research Education and Scientific Methods (IJARESM)

ISSN: 2455-6211, Volume 7, Issue 3, March 2019, Impact Factor: 2.287

A Study of Sustainable Business Practices for

Online Business
Dr. S.G. Walke1, Dr. Mahavir M. Shetiya2, Dr. Atul Kumar3
1
Professor, S.N.G. Institute of Management and Research Pune, Maharashtra, India
2
Associate Professor, S.N.G. Institute of Management and Research, Pune, Maharashtra, India
3
Associate Professor, Siddhant Institute of Business Management, Pune, Maharashtra, India

ABSTRACT

Starting a business is difficult. More difficult is sustaining it over the long-run. In the absence of a good strategy,
businesses can fail very quickly. Online businesses have ushered in big numbers in India in recent times.
Governments’ strong pushes to Digital India, Start-up India, and Digital Commerce, etc. have encouraged
businesses to comeup in an online mode. They are no more a trend. Rather they have become the need of the
hour. In such circumstances, many people may jump into the online business domain. But sustaining these
businesses requires a clear strategic path. This article tries to identify key factors that can lead to sustainability
for online businesses. Both primary and secondary data has been used for this purpose. Respondents widely
agree to the sustainable business practices stated for the online business. At the same time, they deny much of
the visibility of these factors in the current business framework of online business firms.

Keywords: Sustainability, Online business, Long-term, Strategy.

1. INTRODUCTION

The importance of adopting sustainable business practices has been emphasized worldwide very strongly. Often
sustainable business practices are taken in the context of environmental issues. This article looks at the concept of
sustainability in a very generic sense. The focus is on business strategy leading to sustainability. The definition of
sustainability that this article reflects is “Sustainability may be understood as a strategic tool to achieve competitive
advantages and help companies successfully operate internationally” (Cambra-Fierro and Rocio, 2011).

On the other hand definitions like “sustainable business is environmentally and socially aware business strategiesand
operating practices that both guide firms to a cleaner and healthier world and offer an avenue to improved profitability”
(Larson et al., 2000) are not within the scope of discussion in this work.

A study by (Hogevoldet al., 2015) provides approval in a service industry of an assessed sustainable business model
derived from a merchandise industry and other industries also. The findings indicate that the model appears to be
universally applicable across sources and stakeholders in the service sector beyond the organization and industry-
specific characteristics in services. Online business is a relatively new concept in India. Hence it is important to
understand sustainability practices for these operations so that they can survive in the long-run as well.

Evolution of online business

The first e-Commerce company CompuServe was found way back in 1969. Evolution of e-commerce business can be
summarized as under:

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International Journal of All Research Education and Scientific Methods (IJARESM)
ISSN: 2455-6211, Volume 7, Issue 3, March 2019, Impact Factor: 2.287

Table 1: History of online and e-Commerce business

Year Major Ecommerce Event

1969 First major ecommerce company, CompuServe, is founded.
1979 Michael Aldrich invents electronic shopping.
1982 Boston Computer Exchange launches as one of the first ecommerce platforms.
1992 Book Stacks Unlimited launches as one of the first online marketplaces for books.
Netscape launches Netscape Navigator, an early web browser, making it easier for
1994
users to browse online.
1995 Amazon and eBay launch.
1998 PayPal launches as an online payment system.
1999 Alibaba.com launches.
2000 Google launches AdWords as an online search advertising tool.
2005 Amazon launches Amazon Prime with expedited, flat-fee shipping for members.
2005 Esty, an online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods launches.
2009 BigCommerce launches as an online storefront platform.
2009 Square, Inc. is founded.
2011 Google Wallet launches as an online payment system.
2011 Facebook launches sponsored stories as a form of early advertising.
2011 Stripe launches.
2014 Apple Pay launches as a form of mobile payment.
2014 Jet.com launches.
2017 Instagram shoppable posts are introduced.
2017 Cyber Monday sales exceed $6.5B.
Source: www.bigcommerce.com

Over the previous few years, India has been experiencing an advanced revolution of sorts. Over half of the nation's
populace, presently approaches internet abled devices, and attributable to our massive populace, it translates to a user
base of over a large portion of a billion people. These staggering numbers have made India a hotbed for internet-based
businesses, the largest gainer of which has been the e-commerce industry. A report by the India Brand Equity
Foundation (IBEF), projects that the revenue generated from the e-commerce industry in the nation is well on its course
to breach the US$100 billion imprint constantly 2020. However, this was not generally the situation with online
businesses in India. There was practically some sort of reluctance among the masses, in accepting everything advanced.
The concept of e-commerce first officially came forward in 1991, a time when the internet (for all intents and purposes)
didn't even exist in India. Even worldwide, very few could comprehend that the demonstration of purchasing and
selling products and enterprises over the internet would be as widely accepted as a practice, as it is today. By the late
'90s, people became aware of this thing called the internet, yet for a dominant part of them, it remained an extravagance
they didn't especially need. In a genuinely Indian manner, it was distinctly in 2002, when the IRCTC introduced an
online reservation system that people in general widely accepted the internet as something productive, by which time
an organization named Amazon, was already beginning to create a few mumbles in the US.

The main real stepping stone towards setting off the e-commerce juggernaut, was perhaps the creation of Flipkart, when
two engineers from IIT Delhi decided to sell books online from an apartment in the Koramangala area of Bengaluru - a
business idea that was not at all like that of Amazon. Little did they realize that a decade later, US retail mammoths,
Walmart, would acquire their business in a US$ 16 billion-dollar deal, after a fierce offering war with none other than
Amazon?

However, even when Flipkart came into being, the internet despite everything didn't have the accessibility it needed for
such businesses to explode. Reliance Industries, MukeshAmbani, corrected that in one stroke when he announced the
appearance of Reliance Jio. If there is one thing Indians, or anyone of any nationality unabashedly likes, it is free stuff.
Perhaps, in what was one of the greatest marketing strategies ever, Mr. Ambani handed out free SIM cards as though he
had stumbled onto a secret dungeon with an endless flexibly of them, or possibly a few months' worth. He was offering
data services at a small amount of the expense compared to what his competitors were charging.

Normally, this move of Ambanis' had several ramifications. For starters, all other network operators were forced to cut
down their prices to a fundamentally more affordable range. The entirety of this together culminated in the
aforementioned truth, wherein the user base in the nation simply exploded. As of now, the e-commerce industry was
already doing quite well in India. However, they were going to receive a massive push. 'Data is the new oil', screamed
columnists and newspapers.
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International Journal of All Research Education and Scientific Methods (IJARESM)
ISSN: 2455-6211, Volume 7, Issue 3, March 2019, Impact Factor: 2.287

Of course, this likewise birthed a whole new set of cyber security risks, however as we have witnessed, it's a hazard
people will take if they can have anything from milk to even a new mobile phone delivered right to their doorstep.
What followed was a large group of new policies, constructed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He allowed for a
100% FDI top, in B2B e-commerce businesses. Suddenly pretty much every business had an online projection of itself.
The existing e-commerce businesses were presently extremely valuable. India emerged as an e-commerce powerhouse,
which will just develop in stature in the times to come.

Key features of online business:

 There are no geographical boundaries

 It is easy to set up
 There are flexible business hours
 Much cheaper than traditional business
 There are a few security and integrity issues
 Marketing strategies cost less
 Buyer and seller don’t meet
 There is no personal touch
 There is a transaction risk
 Delivery of products takes time
 The transaction risk is higher than traditional business
 Anyone can buy anything from anywhere at anytime
 Now there are many types of e-Businesses. It all depends on who the final consumer is.

Some of the types of online businesses

Business-to-Business (B2B)
Transactions taking place between two organizations fall under the Business to the Business category of online
business. Producers and customary commerce wholesalers ordinarily operate with this type of electronic commerce.
Likewise, it greatly improves the efficiency of companies.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
When a consumer purchases items from a seller then it is business to consumer exchange. People shopping from
Flipkart, Amazon, etc. is an example of business to consumer exchange. In such an exchange the last consumer himself
is directly purchasing from the seller.

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)
A consumer selling item or service to another consumer is a consumer to consumer exchange. For example, people set
up promotions on OLX of the items that they need to sell. C2C type of exchanges generally happens for second-hand
items. The website is just the facilitator not the provider of the products or the service.

Consumer-to-Business (C2B)
In C2B there is a complete reversal of the customary sense of exchanging products. This type of e-commerce is very
basic in publicly supporting based projects. A large number of people make their services or items available for
purchase for companies seeking precisely these types of services or items.
This article, however, looks a little forward and checks the sustainability of these enterprises in the long-run. Starting a
business is difficult. More difficult is sustaining it over the long-run. In the absence of a good strategy, businesses can
fail very quickly.

Objectives of the study

1. To study the evolution of online business,
2. To understand the factors that can lead to sustainability for online business
3. To sense the presence of these factors in the current online businesses in India.

The research questions to be addressed

 RQ1 – What are the factors that can lead to sustainability for an online business?
 RQ2 –Are these factors visible in the current online businesses in India?

2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Big data analytics is becoming a very popular concept in academia just as in industry. It has come up with new decision
tools to design data-driven supply chains. The manufacturing business is under huge pressure to integrate sustainable
practices into their overall business for sustainable operations management. The purpose of this investigation is to
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International Journal of All Research Education and Scientific Methods (IJARESM)
ISSN: 2455-6211, Volume 7, Issue 3, March 2019, Impact Factor: 2.287

analyze the predictors of sustainable business performance through big data analytics in the context of developing
countries. The findings show that management and leadership style, state and central-government strategy as the two
most significant predictors of big data analytics and supportability practices. The results provide unique experiences
into manufacturing firms to improve their sustainable business performance from an operations management viewpoint
(Rautet al., 2019).

The objective of this research is to identify the role of Industry 4.0 to promote sustainable business performance in
SMEs in Thailand. Discoveries reveal that Industry 4.0 is key to the development of sustainable business performance
among SMEs. Elements of Industry 4.0, for example, big data, Internet of Things and shrewd production line have a
positive role in advancing data technology (IT) implementation, which contributes to sustainable business performance.
Moreover, association structure and process strengthen the positive relationship between Industry 4.0 and IT
implementation (Haseebet al., 2019a).

The findings of another study revealed that social and technological challenges played significant roles in boosting
sustainable competitive advantage and sustainable business performance. Moreover, strategic alignment was key in
reflecting the positive roles of social and technological factors on sustainable competitive advantage. Discoveries of the
investigation are beneficial for practitioners and will permit their strategies to reflect sustainable competitive
advantages and sustainable business performance (Haseebet al., 2019b).

Secondary data on 83 worldwide, large enterprises examining sustainable procurement practices are analyzed utilizing
hierarchical multiple regression examination. Dynamic capabilities view and stakeholder theory are utilized to develop
the hypotheses. The results show that sustainable procurement performance for large enterprises varies across supply
chain tiers and increases in the direction of the end customer. Due to the normalization of regulations and dynamic
capabilities of worldwide, large enterprises, no critical difference is observed across geographic regions (Ghadgeet al.,
2019).

Digitalization is revolutionizing how business is conducted inside modern value chains using Internet of Things (IoT)
technologies, intensive data exchange and predictive analytics. However, technological application all alone isn't
enough; benefitting from digitalization requires business model development, for example, making the change to
advanced service business models (Paridaet al., 2019).

Not much literature is seen on the sustainability of the online business. Most of the research is concentrated on
manufacturing and advocates things like lean manufacturing, automation, etc. However, a special study in the context
of online business has not been conducted.

3. METHODS
Data collection
The following methodology was designed for the study to collect primary data.
a. Identify a sample of 100 online business entrepreneurs as per convenience sampling.
b. Design and validate a 10-point each questionnaire for sustainable business practices and about their visibility
c. Seek responses on a 5-point agree-disagree scale
d. Conduct the survey
e. Summarize the responses
f. Apply a t-test at 95% confidence level
g. Analyze the results

3.2 Hypotheses
The hypotheses set in this regard were as under –
 Ho1: There are no sustainable business practices for online business
 Ha1:There are sustainable business practices for online business
 Ho2: The identified sustainable business practices are seen in Indian online businesses
 Ha2:The identified sustainable business practices are not seen in Indian online businesses

The study was conducted across India.The 10 opportunities identified based onthe literature review were as under:

Table 2: The 10 identified sustainable business practices for online businesses

Sr. No. Business practices for sustainability
1 Regular technology forecasting
2 Strategic planning
3 Regular SWOT analysis
4 Major thrust on innovation
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International Journal of All Research Education and Scientific Methods (IJARESM)
ISSN: 2455-6211, Volume 7, Issue 3, March 2019, Impact Factor: 2.287

5 Financial discipline
6 Strong enterprise control systems
7 Rolling plans to adopt to environmental changes
8 Environmental scanners
9 Employee talent management
10 Strategies for diversification

Scheme formed for testing of hypotheses

a. Responses would be collected under 2 sections (business practices for sustainability and their visibility) of the
questionnaire on a 5-point agree-disagree scale (Completely agree, Somewhat agree, Neutral, Somewhat
disagree and Completely disagree),
b. Under each of the sections, the responses would be aggregated under two groups of agreeing and disagree,
c. In doing so for each of the extreme responses, a weight of 2 would be to distinguish them from the non-
extreme responses,
d. For each of the question, an average count will be calculated in the two opposites,
e. Percentages to questions under a particular section of the questionnaire will be averaged to get a single score
for that section,
f. The section-wise average score percentage will be compared with a hypothesized mean of the population of
50% score connoting an event by chance and not due to statistical significance,
g. P-values will be calculated and the null hypotheses will be checked for rejection or non-rejection. These
calculations would be done at a 95% confidence level using a t-test since the standard deviation (SD) of the
population is not known.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Descriptive analysis of the sample (Table set 5)

Head office of respondents

Number of respondents-
Sr. No. Area Percentage
online business entrepreneurs
1 Delhi 10 10%
2 Mumbai 15 15%
3 Chennai 11 11%
4 Kolkatta 8 8%
5 Pune 6 6%
6 Bengaluru 8 8%
7 Hyderabad 10 10%
8 Nagpur 12 12%
9 Bhopal 10 10%
10 Others 10 10%
Total 100 100%

Gender

Number of respondents-online
Sr. No. Gender Percentage
business entrepreneurs
1 Male 71 71%
2 Female 29 29%
Total 100 100%

Age

Number of respondents-online
Sr. No. Age-group Percentage
business entrepreneurs
1 20-29 years 42 42%
2 30-39 years 31 31%
3 40-49 years 18 18%
4 >=50 years 9 9%
Total 100 100%

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International Journal of All Research Education and Scientific Methods (IJARESM)
ISSN: 2455-6211, Volume 7, Issue 3, March 2019, Impact Factor: 2.287

Type of online business

Number of respondents-online
Sr. No. Type Percentage
business entrepreneurs
1 B2B 26 26%
2 B2C 54 54%
3 Mix 20 20%
Total 100 100%

Experience in online business

Number of respondents-online
Sr. No. Experience Percentage
business entrepreneurs
1 < 5 years 69 69%
2 5-10 years 19 19%
3 >10 years 12 12%
Total 100 100%

Inferential analysis

Agreement Percentages to Opportunities

Table 4: Agreements for opportunities and testing of H1 at 95% confidence level

Sr. No. Business Practice for Sustainability % Agreement
1 Regular technology forecasting 74%
2 Strategic planning 79%
3 Regular SWOT analysis 81%
4 Major thrust on innovation 86%
5 Financial discipline 85%
6 Strong enterprise control systems 82%
7 Rolling plans to adopt to environmental changes 89%
8 Environmental scanners 91%
9 Employee talent management 74%
10 Strategies for diversification 79%
Average 82%
SD (Standard Deviation) 0.05793
H1 (Hypothesized Mean) 50%
Ho (Sample Mean) 0.82
n (Sample size) 100
t-value 55.24
p-value 0

Given the p-value of <0.0001, the null hypothesis that there are no sustainable business practices for online business
stands rejected.

Disagreement Percentages to the visibility of sustainable business practices in Indian online businesses
Table 5: Disagreement for visibility and testing of H2 at 95% confidence level
Sr. No. Business Practice for Sustainability % Disagreement
1 Regular technology forecasting 86%
2 Strategic planning 85%
3 Regular SWOT analysis 92%
4 Major thrust on innovation 89%
5 Financial discipline 74%

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International Journal of All Research Education and Scientific Methods (IJARESM)
ISSN: 2455-6211, Volume 7, Issue 3, March 2019, Impact Factor: 2.287

6 Strong enterprise control systems 74%

7 Rolling plans to adopt to environmental changes 89%
8 Environmental scanners 87%
9 Employee talent management 76%
10 Strategies for diversification 72%
Average 82%
SD (Standard Deviation) 0.07530678
H1 (Hypothesized Mean) 50%
Ho (Sample Mean) 0.82
n (Sample size) 100
t-value 43.02
p-value 0.0000

Given the p-value of <0.0001, the null hypothesis that the identified sustainable business practices are seen in Indian
online businesses stands rejected.

DISCUSSION

The average agreement of the respondents forthe identified business practices leading to sustainability was 82%. The
maximum agreement 91% was recorded for the factor Environmental scanners while the minimum agreement 74% was
recorded for the factor Employee talent management. The standard deviation of the agreement percentages for the 10
practices was 0.06. Thus, there was an overwhelming agreement in favor of the 10 identified business practices leading
to sustainability for online businesses. The visibility of these practices in Indian online businesses was strongly denied.
The average disagreement of the respondents forthe identified business practices leading to sustainability was 82%. The
maximum disagreement 92% was recorded for the factor Regular SWOT analysis while the minimum disagreement
74% was recorded for the factor Strategies for diversification. The standard deviation of the disagreement percentages
for the 10 practices was 0.08. This implies that the online businesses in India are missing the strategic touch that can
sustain them over the long-run.

CONCLUSION

Going by the wide agreement of the respondent online business entrepreneurs, the identified business practices can be
considered as those leading to sustainability in the long-term. The factors agreed to were Regular technology
forecasting, Strategic planning, Regular SWOT analysis, Major thrust on innovation, Financial discipline, Strong
enterprise control systems, Rolling plans to adopt to environmental changes, Environmental scanners, Employee talent
management and Strategies for diversification. At the same time, there was a big disagreement withthe visibility of
these factors in the existing online businesses in India. This implies that online businesses are operating more on
tactical planning and do not have strategies for long-term sustainability. In the absence of business practices leading to
sustainability, they may not survive over a longer period. If they are to survive over the long-run then they must adopt a
strategic approach to business and carry activities that will ensure success and survival even if there are major ups and
downs in the businesses.

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International Journal of All Research Education and Scientific Methods (IJARESM)
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