Abstract:
Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) based e-commerce platforms have been advent since the early days of World Wide Web and dot-com bubble (i.e., early to mid-1990s). But it only got better as time went on and technology became more capable. One of the earliest examples of C2C platform one may look up would mostly be eBay. eBay became a great success story during the late 1990s and early 2000s. For many, eBay set a standard for C2C business model, due to which early eBay competitors, such as Craigslist, implemented some similar concepts to that of the eBay. As time went on, more and more C2C platforms started to appear. One of these early Craigslist knock-off, which gained fame and prominence in third world countries like Pakistan, was OLX. OLX worked similar to Craigslist; it allows the users to post ads for the products they intend to sell, in addition to also letting them buy products from the platform. The platform experienced a boom during its early launch in Pakistan. But, as time went on, competitors for OLX started to appear in Pakistan; Facebook Marketplace was one of the few competitors which threatened the position of OLX in the Pakistani e-commerce market. Nevertheless, OLX still remained prominent until the introduction of business to consumer platforms like Daraz in Pakistan. The main selling point of Daraz at that time was that it provided its own logistics service for shipping the items from big retailers to the buyers. Although Daraz also supports the C2C model, its main emphasis on big retailers forces many small C2C businesses to not use platforms like Daraz. After the world was and is affected by the COVID-19 (it is still affecting the everyday life of the whole human-race as we speak), many people were forced to either work from home or lose their jobs. This prospect greatly impacted the everyday life of many Pakistanis. Due to fear of losing job and suspected economic instability, many Pakistanis started their own small business of selling used goods online. The only problem; no reliable platform exists for these people and the existing systems either fall short of fulfilling the needs of the re-sellers or cost a lot of money. So, we have undertaken this project to design and develop a new C2C e-commerce platform with features not available on other Pakistani C2C e-commerce platforms
