Another example of e-commerce success and its causes

Dell.com is an extremely successful e-commerce business. By using online system, we can purchase Dell product at home and get it in timely. It is a popular product among computer technology consumer.

There some keys of successful in Dell e-commerce:
1) Customers and suppliers
Dell perceived that both customers and suppliers must be treated as collaborators and co-workers. They have approached their customers in the best products and provide effective services. For instance, Dell can meet customer’s needs quickly by delivering the products in the right time. Instead, they tend to build a good relationship with their suppliers and customers and bring up open communications with each other.

2) JIT system
Dell known as a leader in supply chain management and just-in-time manufacturing. By using just-in-time system, dell successes to increase their revenue by eliminate inventory cost and storage cost. The key to accomplish this strategy is keeps the same suppliers and increase supplier to manage inventory for Dell.

3) Team member
Dell believes that their team will continue to develop, retain, and grow in e-commerce. Dell holds a Platinum councils twice a year in each region of the world. This meeting consists of around 100 members of company’s senior management and customers to share their concerns and discuss the technology changes. Their main purpose is to know the needs of the customer and fulfill their needs.

4) Tools
Dell is using personalization and customization tools. Dell create a special Premier Page to its own main corporate customer. Premier Page involves all products that covered purchasing contracts and special pricing under the contract with that firm. This can guarantee customer will get a fair price for each purchase.

Do you actually kno what is mean by phishing???

I believe that almost everyone has been received scam email before. Those email look like sent by a famous or trustworthy website that ask for your personal information. It is actually known as phishing email.
The perpetrators will usually send phishing email by several ways.

1) Phishing emails may ask to “verify the account”
For example, phishing email may act like Yahoo that asks to update credit card information.

Or ask to verify eBay identity:

2) Be aware the phrase of “Dear valued customer” or “First generic bank user”.
Most probably phishing email do not contain customer’s name.

http://www.phishtank.com/what_is_phishing.php

3) If phishing email contains customer’s name, remember check the anonymous link before click on it. Sometimes, the link that senses of urgency may usually mask. It usually the full name of the company but does not bring to that address.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/email/phishing.mspx?ifs=0

Another example of phishing mail through the msn. However, they will require login first before go into that website. this is the way that the perpetrators steal users private information.

In order to prevent from becoming the next victim, there are some ways that helps to prevent from phishing.
1) Do not reply the email that asking the personal information.
It is because most of the businesses will not ask the personal information through email. If believe that the email is legitimate, do not hesitate to call the number to check for details.

2) If there are any suspicious activity, review the banking and credit card statement monthly or call to the banks to ask for details.

3) Microsoft have come out with a phishing filter block which available in Internet Explorer 7. When detecting an unknown website, it will display a red warning page that blocks phishing email.

For our own safety, we must remember not to click the link inside the email. If you feel suspicious, types the correct URL by hand and login to your own account. Besides, I think that we should usually change our password to avoid the scammers. Otherwise will be get fooled by the perpetrators unfortunately.

For those related video can refer to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqRZGhiHGxg

Boo.com failure and its causes

As we have seen the factors that help in the success of Amazon.com in the previous post, there are however a large number of e-commerce companies that are not able to maintain their profit through e-commerce. Some well-known business-to-consumers (B2C) failures include eToys, Xpeditor, Chemdex.com and Webvan.com.

One of it includes Boo.com. It beset with problems and mismanagement from the beginning. The site relied heavily on JavaScript and Flash technology. The dial-up Internet usage was a norm and it has a very small bandwidth. Hence, it time consuming. The complicated design required to be displayed in a fixed size windows limits the space available to display product information to customer. Customers find it as an ineffective way to search for wanted information.

Boo.com’s founders spent £125 million in just six months, to market itself as a global company but then had to deal with different languages, pricing and tax structures in countries it served. Their sales wasn’t up to their expectation, especially when there were a high numbers of returned products by their customers (the company mysteriously decided to pay postage on returns).

The success of Amazon and its causes

With the advancement in information technology and changing trends in globalization, e-commerce development has boomed in the past few years and become more popular nowadays.

Amazon.com Inc was launched in 1994 by Jeff Becoz and reincorporated in 1996 with principal corporate offices in Seattle, Washington. It offers Earth’s Biggest Selection and seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company and has become the first best known online retailer of the internet world.

There are a variety of factors that contributes to Amazon.com success story.

1. It offers competitive price to customer by putting great effort to connect and interact with wholesalers in order to minimize the cost and able to offer the best lowest price to customer. Despite of the low price offered, it also makes sure that the product is of the same quality as any other product offered by competitors with the same price.
2. A wide range of books related to a variety of subjects and topic. It also offers lots of products related to different ages, interest, field and areas, including video, music, cell phone, hardware, software, health care product, households and much other stuff. The strategy to work better and adopting a strong base of selling products makes Amazon.com different from other e-commerce organization.
3. The efficiency in dealing the customer and continuously focus on their needs makes Amazon.com on top of all the other e-commerce companies.
4. In order to achieve success in the global market, the company hires local employees in foreign countries to help them gather information about the local market and demand of the local potential customer.
5. It also provides users friendly interface with convenience and ease of use and help to maintain customer royalty. It provides high customer service, such as easy search, customize option, e-mail confirmation and always add useful information related to product.
   
6. Besides that, it also provides safe, convenient and reliable payment system to customer. Customer will be kept informed of the transaction processing system; it also provides guarantees and adopting return policy.
   

With all the benefits offered by Amazon.com, it will be able to get more customers and expands its operation to more placse in the world. However, to maintain its competitiveness, it should keep on updating and focus on what customers really want and provide more outstanding and innovative products or services.

what's the history and evolution of E-Commerce???

E- commerce definition

It defined as a process of real-time businesses which included buying, selling or exchanging products, services or even information through telecommunication network.

History
Internet was developed few decades ago. That day onwards, people will be able to exchange their information from different geographical areas. On 1990s, internet became widely used and thus electronic commerce came into existence for many businesses.

For instance, banks, they have been used the Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) to exchange the account information electronically over the private communication network. While for the business, they have been involved in using the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for many years. They use EDI to transmit the data into a standard format and share it with another business partners.

http://www.ecommerce-land.com/history_ecommerce.html


In order to have a clearer picture about the evolution E-Commerce, can refers to the trends below:

http://newmedia.medill.northwestern.edu/courses/nmpspring01/brown/Revstream/history.htm

As the time passed by, there are more and more online shopping. As we can see that, electronic commerce is evolving according to the customer advantage and become famous in this era. Consumers are able to get the information, online shopping and so on with just stay at home. Hence, electronic-commerce has created a new and virtual world which laying on the secure foundation for the future generation.

~~REVENUE MODEL~~

Revenue model is a description of how the company or an E-Commerce project in generating income through their published websites by using different techniques. Along with the evolution of e-commerce, the traditional revenue model especially sales is expanded to variety of revenue options and e-commerce business model. There are five revenue options existed nowadays which are sales, transaction fees, subscription fees, advertising fees, and affiliate fees.

1. Sales---A company generates revenue from selling goods, merchandise information and services which provided in their published websites.

Amazon.com is generating sales revenue from its online bookstore, electronics, software, DVDs, video games, music CDs, MP3s, apparel, footwear, health products, and etc.
eBay also sells a variety of goods such as cell phones, cameras, cars, CDs, concert tickets and others through its website.
However, Google is not generating revenue through sales of goods which was done by Amazon and eBay.

2. Transaction fees---Companies receive commission based on the volume of the transactions made or fee per transaction conducted at the website regardless of the volume.

eBay is a classical example for this model since eBay’s main feature is auction. eBay acted as an intermediate in business trade between buyers and sellers and receive transaction fees as commissions from them. Like most auction companies, eBay does not only sell goods that it owns itself. eBay merely facilitates the process of listing and displaying goods, bidding on the goods, and paying for them. eBay acted as a marketplace for individuals and businesses to auction off goods and services through its website.
Google and Amazon.com are not exercising this transaction model in market.

3. Subscription fees---Customers pay a fixed amount either monthly or yearly when they are subscribing for access to contents and services offered by the website such as library services and online journal database, as well as privileged discounts for members.

eBay Stores offers three subscription tiers with features designed to boost sellers’ success through every stage of business growth. These three subscription tiers are classified by custom pages available for sellers to boost their brand, frequency of related store name appears in “Shop eBay Stores” area of matching search results, and etc.

Google offer a premier edition which costs $50 per user account per year under Google Apps for business. Google’s web-based messaging and collaboration apps require no hardware or software and need minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings for businesses.

Kindle subscriptions under Amazon.com offer the subscribers to subscribe to periodical publications and have them delivered wirelessly to subscribers’ Kindle.

4. Advertising fees---Publishers can charge other companies for allowing them to place banners or advertisements on their websites, in return for a fee as advertisement fees. All these three websites generate revenue through this advertising fee.

Amazon.com- Clickriver

Google- Google AdWords and Google AdSense

eBay- Advertise With Us

5. Affiliate fees---Companies receive commissions for referring customers to others’ website. It included CPM (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition/action).

Google AdSense put relevant CPC and CPM ads through the same auction, and lets them compete against one another. AdSense automatically displays the text and image ads that will generate the maximum revenue for a page once the auction over.

Amazon.com's program of "Make Money Advertising Amazon Products" offer subcribers earn up to 15% in referrals by advertising Amazon products. For example, when you add these links and banners to your web page and visitors click on them from your page, you can earn up to 15% on all purchases made during their shopping session.

eBay's advertising placements are charged on a CPM basis of between USD $5 - $7 CPM, and campaigns start from USD $1000.

In conclusion, the usage of revenue models are based on the function, purpose and requirement needed of the companies in business model. In my opinion, these revenue models are keep on expanding. As a result, I really believe that Google, Amazon.com as well as eBay will operate other new models in future. In consequence, e-commerce will be improved absolutely.

Says who??*Shereen*

Hello, everyone =) I have a great name and I love my name..Yes, people call me Shereen but my parents call me Ah Meng as per my last name. I am a simple-minded girl who love God and everyone in my life; my dearest mummy and daddy, my sister and my friends. I am turning into 21 year old this coming July =) *hint hint*....I love blogging and I have my own personal blog. I use it as a journal and in updating all the awesome stuff that happens in my life. I find it as an useful tool in helping me to express myself in a better way. *I am really bad in expressing my feelings sometimes.*
God has placed in my heart to pursue this course, Commerce in Accounting in UTAR, Sg Long. It's gonna be my final year and I am pretty excited. What more about me? I love shopping and catching up movies with my friends. I love eating as well. Aren't we thankful that we have nice foods all around Malaysia? My favorite food is nasi lemak. *yummy* Not forgetting, all times junk food, CHOCOLATES!!! Cupcakes could be the third in rank.
I am grateful to have the ability to listen to music. For without nice songs in my life, I would be bored to death..haha..I may not have a good voice but I simply love singing.
There is so much more to tell about myself but I guess this would be enough as an introduction.
The top 4 websites that I visited most are http://www.facebook.com/ , http://www.hotmail.com/ , http://www.utar.edu.my/ and http://www.blogspot.com/. By logging in to facebook, I could see all the updates in my friends' life. It is a way to keep in tag with each other. Besides, I need to check all the mails sent to me in my mail box in the Hotmail website. As for the course of subjects that I'm taking, I would need to log in to the UTAR websites to view all the lecture notes and tutorial questions. In getting to explore further about the many interesting places to hang out, I would visit my friends blog to get the up to date information.
Last but not least, come drop by and leave comments and make this blog as an useful tool for us to learn more. Your comments will be very much appreciated.