Exercise1-3

3. What happens with new models such as price comparison sites?

Wikipedia(2009) states that Price comparison sites typically do not charge users anything to use the site. Instead, they are monetized through payments from retailers who are listed on the site. Depending on the particular business model of the comparison shopping site, retailers will either pay a flat fee to be included on the site or pay a fee each time a user clicks through to the retailer web site or pay every time a user completes a specified action.

Cairncross(2001) states that price comparison sites enable shoppers to compare prices, products, and availability. Customers can download a piece of software that automatically tells them the best available price for the product they want. It will increasingly be available on internet-enabled mobile telephones, so that customers can use them while they shop rather leave the house.

Price comparsion sites provide online buyer an efficiency methods for comparison of product price.

References:
1. Cairncross(2001). “The death of distance”, Revised Edition, Harvard Business Press(p.118)
2. Wikipedia(2009). “Price_comparison_service”, Received 19th March, 2009 from URL - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_comparison_service

Exercise1-2C

2.C. What is the range of items that you can buy?
(Amazon.com 2009) The range if items which are listed in the following:

1. Books.
2. Music, DVD & Games.
3. Electronics.
4. Computing & Office.
5. Home & Garden.
6. Toys, Children & Baby.
7. Jewellery & Watches.
8. Clothing & Shoes.
9. Sports & Leisure.
10. Health & Beauty.
11. DIY & Tools.

2.C.i. List the steps involved and comments.

1. Sign In - if you are not a member of Amazon.com, you should click "Start here" in Amazon homepage and input your personal information such as email, password for website log in, birth date. Please see the below figure for reference. Alternatively, if you have been a member of Amazon.com, just enter email address and password for log in.


2. Search your favour - I want to show you how to find a Green Levi's T-shirt in Amazon website.

a.) click the button named "Shop All Departments" which is located at the left top corner of the web page.
b.) Click the text link named Clothing which is under Clothing & Shoes department.

c.) Filter the product by Sex, click Men’s department under Quick Search.



d.) Filter the T-shirt by color, click Green under Colour Category.


e.) Filter the T-Shirt by Brand, click Levi’s under Top Brands category.
f.) Success to find out a green Levi’s T-shirts.

g.) Click the button named "Add to shopping basket" and select the order quantity.

3. Check out and payment.

a.) Check out - Click the button named "Proceess to Checkout"

b.) Input delivery address

c.) Select payment methods and complete the payment

References:

Amazon.com(2009), URL are received from http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/site-directory/ref=_ngw_

Exercise1-2B

2B. Is there any secure transactions not involving money?

Yes, it uses Secure Sockets Layer(SSL) that provide security and data integrity for communications between customer web browser and Amazon web server in customer self-service tools such as“Account Profile”, “Payment & Addresses”, Ordering Settings” and “Your content”. All of customer self-service tools are encrypted confidential information with SSL technology during transactions.

Exercise1-2A

2.A. Why has it been a successful site? How does the purchase of a book work?

(Rothwell 2008) Amazon.com illustrates the use of technology, access to information, and connectivity to create a new concept to reach a global market-place. Amazon.com boasts the following :

• A five-year growth rate of more than 25 percent, with international sales outpacing North American sales.
• Product lines the include worldwide electronics, more than 35,000 health and beauty items, and over one million automotive parts and accessories for ten thousand vechicles.
• Digital video downloads with access to thousands of movies, television shows, and video through Amazon Unbox.
• Web services that provide hundreds of thousands of developers with "compute" and "storage" capabilities through Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage.

Amazon.com has been a successful site because it always develops a new concept for the business trendy that attract the customer focus. Today people reply on Amazon.com for quality and reliability in products and services sourced and delivered across the globe.

Purchase of a book in Amazon.com is easy. Amazon.com(2009) stated that there was no need to created an account first and the user automatically created an account when they placed their first order online.

(Amazon.com, 2009)Here are the steps for placing an order.

1. Find the Items You Want
2. Add the Items to Your Shopping Cart
3. Proceed to Checkout
4. Sign In/Create a New Account
5. Enter a Shipping Address
6. Choose a Shipping Method
7. Provide Payment Information and a Password
8. Review and Submit Your Order
9. Check Your Order Status

Referances:

1. Rothwell (2008), "Human Resource Transformation", First Edition, Davies-Black Publishing. (p.29)
2. Amazon.com (2009), "Ordering", URL recerived from http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_navbox_lnor_new?nodeId=524700
   
   

Exercise1-1C

1C. Find three others examples of an online business using an online community approach.

Example 1.

Safetycommunity.com is an online safety community website, that is created exclusively for the workplace safety industry. Please refer to their official web site at http://www.safetycommunity.com/.

Example 2.

Onlinecommunitymagazines.com is an online magazine community website, that give a help for small and medium sized businesses to start marketing online with audio, video, ads & logos. Please refer to their official web site at http://www.onlinecommunitymagazines.com/.

Example3.

Bigfishgames.com is an online game community website, that has an interactive entertainment and a lots of online java games for their member. Please refer to their official web site at http://atlantis.bigfishgames.com/

Exercise1-1B

1B.i.) Is there a common thread and a local community sense in action?

Yes, there are a common thread and a local community sense listed in the following:

• Select and Search by categories.
• Member registration, account management, bidding, buying and selling post features.
• An embedded script automatically detects the visitor living region and provides regional selection when visitor accesses their website in the first time.
• Local community are such as News, Forum and Group.

1B.ii.) What electronic payment systems are used? Are they globally acceptable?

Ebay accepts 4 types of electronic payment system which are Paypal, Moneybookers, Pay mate and Escrow.

Yes, Paypal, Moneybookers, Paymate and Escrow are globally acceptable.

1B.iii.) Benefits to of an online auction sale to a buyer, a seller and E-bay owners?

Benefits to of an online auction sale to a buy which are listed in the following:

• Online auction opens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is no regional time zone limitation, bidding can work for all the times. Buyers save time and money by monitoring, researching and biding on properties from the comfort of their own home.
• Online auction is not geography constrained for buying located anywhere in the world. Buyer save time and money by travelling.
• Payment is secure and easy. Many electronic payment methods are acceptable, let's the auction process be more convenience.
  
  Benefits to of online auction sale to a seller which are listed in the following:
• Online auction has already had a number of bidders, seller save time by finding the buyers.
• Online auction acts as a agency to help seller selling their products.
  
  Benefits to of online auction sale to E-bay owners which are listed in the following:
• E-bay owners can receive income from advertisers who need to pay for the advertisement fee.

Exercise1-1A

1A. What is meant by an online community? How is it important for e-commerce?

An online community is a group of people who want to gather together around a shared purpose, activity and interest; they are brought together by the chance of shared community feeling with others who share their world views via internet.
Refer to YAHOO's website, there are a number of different technical environments that are used for virtual communication platform that are formed for instance News-groups, Forums, BLOG, E-mail etc. Moreover, an online community is a group of people who need join to meet a need, for example social, information, and learning. Refer to ZOPE's website, there are a lots of technical knowledge articles, resources and documents sharing for the professional developers and web masters.

Before accessing the online community for accessing private resources or member services, users usually need to join in their membership. During registration, users need to fill in their personal information, for example, name, email address, sex, age, etc. Based on those personal information, YAHOO and ZOPE would send their recently promotions, services, new products and web news to their members by email for advertisement purpose.
As a result, a kindly virtual advertising channel is formed, which let their business rapidly grow as more people know their products.
The successful examples are such as YAHOO and ZOPE.