ODR and the E-commerce

An e-commerce transaction is a means of performing commercial activities using the global digital e-commerce infrastructure. Using electronic means for doing business can greatly improve the efficiency of the business transactions. This infrastructure saves customers and merchants money and time. The more the processes of the transaction become online the more the parties save. In this paper we are concentrating on business to customer (B-to-C) e-commerce transactions. However we make a thorough research in all the possible processes in any transaction and we find that so far all of it can be automatically done online except dispute resolution. Disputes may arise for may reasons and Online alternative dispute resolutions (online-ADR or ODR) have been heavily researched to resolve them. None of the ODR methods have succeeded to make the resolution 100% automated. In this paper, we try to identify the Ecommerce transaction processes and study the current status of making it automated online. Also we will research the current status of ODR methods and the reason why they are not fully automated online. This paper would be a good read for anyone who wants to work in the ODR field.