a. What is meant by an online community and how is it important for e-commerce?
A number of people use the computer network as a media channel to communicate. They may use the tools such as newsletters, telephone, email, online social networks or instant messages to conduct their communication, but not face to face (Wikipedia, 2009). The online communication can be synchronous when participants are interacting in real time, or asynchronous when participants interact with spans of time between their information exchanges (Andrew & Matthew, 2004). Yahoo provide an online communication platform for public, but Zope only for those companies and developers which working on Zope applications.
E-commerce means doing business over Internet, selling goods and services which are delivered online and offline (Coppel, 2000). Online communication in the Internet provide a platform for e-commerce, e-commerce cannot work without online communication.
b. Visit the three auctions sites at http://ebay.com, http://ebay.co.uk and http://ebay.com.au:
i. Is there a common thread and a local community sense in action?
Yes, I find a common thread of 'Leather case cover wallet for Apple ipod touch 2' in all three ebay sites. The location of the items are same in Hong Kong. The Web sites also have local community sense, they show the item price in local currency (US $5.28 in US, GBP 3.73 in UK and AU $2.19 in AU). User may need to pay the extra local shipment fee. And some of the items are exclusive for local customer.
ii. What electronic payment systems are used? Are they globally acceptable?
They are using the PayPal online pay system. PayPal is a famous globally acceptable pay system. PayPal has over 100 million accounts worldwide, user come from 190 countries and supports 18 currencies for payment (https://www.paypal.com/hk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-country-functionality-outside). Users use their credit card such as Visa, Master, AE and etc to buy their item. PayPal is a middleman to complete the transaction payment without exposing credit card information to the merchant (https://www.paypal.com/hk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing/securitycenter/buy/Index-outside).
iii. What are the benefits to of an online auction sale to a buyer, a seller and E-bay owners?
The online auction are efficiency, open 24hrs x 7 days per week. Shopping without geography constrain and can be national and multinational companies for consumers resident anywhere with Internet connection. The costs of online auction are much cheaper than opening shop and advertising in many countries.
c. Find three others examples of an online business using an online community approach.
Shopping in Yahoo http://shopping.yahoo.com/, Amazon http://www.amazom.com/ and Disney http://home.disney.go.com
2. Visit the famous online store front at http://www.amazon.com
a. Why has it been a successful site? How does the purchase of a book work?
Amazon is satisfy the criteria in e-commerce such as efficiency, user friendly, open non-stop, globalization and competitive. The success of Amazon as she able to meet the consumers needs, and fully integrated of demand chain and supply chain stated by (Pereira & Fife 2000). Their said that Amazon offer a range of products and services, facilitated by a strong brand recognition. Amazon could facilitate readers to seek other and authors to discuss ideas. Amazon build browsing and searching capabilities in its site, and provides product information, reviews, recommendations, 1-click technology and personalization on a broad selection of products. Amazon was one of the first sites to customize pages for each registered customer, using collaborative filtering.
Steps for book purchase (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_navbox_lnor_new?nodeId=524700)
- Find the book - browse or search the book. Type keyword in search box and located it in the page.
- Add the book into shopping cart - click the 'Add to Shopping Cart' button on the book detail page.
- Proceed to Checkout - review all books in the shopping cart and click 'To Buy Now' button to proceed checkout
- Sign in or Create a new accounts - enter e-mail address and click 'Sign in' button
- Enter a shipping address
- Choose a shipping method
- Provide payment information and password - accept credit cards such as AE, Visa, Master...
- Review and submit the order - check the accuracy all of the information and make any necessary adjustments.
- Check order status - review or change about the order that placed before
Create or maintenance customer account and view purchase history are a secure transactions process that is not involving money. Those Web pages are protected by Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) communications protocol, indicated by the 'https://' show at the beginning of Web page address.
c. What is the range of items that you can buy?
The range of items that can be brought in Amazon:
- Books
- Movies, Music & Games
- Digital Downloads
- Computers & office
- Electronics
- Home & Garden
- Grocery, Health & Baby
- Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry
- Sports & Outdoors
- Tools, Auto & Industrial
The above list is showed in the 'Shop All Departments' on the left hand side of the menu bar and changed into a pull down menu in other pages. It is a easy way for users to locate what their want on any pages in the site.
When you select the department by moving the pointer to it, the sub-category list will be show.
3. What happens with new models such as price comparison sites?
The huge growth of the Internet provides a new age of perfectly competitive markets. The price comparison sites provide a revolutionized way for consumers to gather prices and products information. With the perfect information about prices and products in our fingertips, consumers can quickly and easily find the best deals. Someone predicts that Internet market will eventually display pricing consistent stated by (Baye, Morgan & Scholten, 2004).
Reference
- Andrew, F. W. and Matthew, J. S. (2004), Online communication 2nd edition, Routledge.
- Baye, M.R., Morgan, J and Scholten, P. (2004), Price dispersion in the small and in the large: evidence from an internet price comparison site, The Journal of Industrial Economics 12/2004, 52(4), 436-496.
- Coppel, J. (2000), E-commerce: impacts and policy challenges, OECD Economics department working papers, 252.
- Pereira, F. and Fife, E. (2000), Meeting consumer needs on the internet: successful business models, Center for Telecommunications Management, 217.
- Wikipedia. (2009), Virtual community, Wikipedial. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community on 9th Mar, 2009.
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