E-COMMERCE WONDERLAND

Review a Local, Transactional E-Commerce Site

2009-07-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

The website that I have reviewed is Blooming Florist. This is a website that selling variety of flowers online, not even flowers, but also cookies, cupcakes, hand made chocolates and so on. Customers can shop by products provided in the website, such as flowers, flowers and gift, hand bouquet, wines and many others categories or shop by occasions, e.g. 'Congratulations', 'Happy Birthday' or 'Wedding Flowers'. It is a very well organized webpage and easy to use for customers.

Blooming Florist start its operations in 1981 and it is managed by May and Martin Cheah. It has grown from a small retail shop to its present set-up of six retail outlets in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur and a head office cum workshop cum retail outlet in Kelana Jaya. through these years. Currently, besides being linked with most reliable florists throughout Malaysia, Blooming is also networked with 75,000 florists worldwide through its membership in Interflora Pacific Unit Limited. It has a verified certification by VeriSign.

Blooming Florist offers the following customer services:

Delivery - Blooming Florist provides delivery services to its customers. It provides same day and next day delivery in PJ/KL or throughout Malaysia. Besides that, it also provides peak floral delivery days and Sunday & public holiday, but customers need to order two days in advance.

Online Payment - Blooming Florist accepts Visa or Mastercard, AIMEX, Diners Club and JCB. Besides that, customers can payment by online banking through Maybank2u.com, RHB e-banking.

Sign up an Account - To track an order in Blooming Florist, customers have to register themselves as a member first. After registeration, customers can enjoy shopping in Blooming Florist.

Outstation & Outside Malaysia services - Bloomong Florist not only concern about the customers in Klang Valley, but also outstation customers. Interflora is a network of Florist whose membership now exceeds 75,000. Blooming.com.my is a Member of Interflora. This network enables flowers to be Delivered Worldwide by Reliable Member Florist located all over the World.

By Simone

E-Governemnt in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies

2009-07-07T06:13:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, many countries are implementing e-government including Malaysia. The implementation of electronic government started since the introduction of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) in 1996 by the Malaysian government. This implementation will improve the government operates internally and also how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. Besides that, it also can improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses.

The vision of e-government is to transform administrative process and service delivery through the use of IT and multimedia. According to the survey on international e-government ranking list, Malaysia’s ranking is 25th out of 32 countries in terms of e-government usage growth. It is due to Malaysian government put in efforts to promote e-government services.

Most of the e-government project implementations are currently in progress. The 7 projects of the Electronic Government Flagship Application are Project Monitoring System (SPP II), Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS), Generic Office Environment (GOE),Electronic Procurement (EP), Electronic Services (E-Services), Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)and E-Syariah.

Here are the Malaysian e-government successful application:

* Government’s drive for e-government service

* Electronic Labour Exchange (www.elx.gov.my) has matched 75,000 potential employees with employers since 2005.

* SMS alert on e-government services

* Online renewal of driving licenses

* Electronic filing of income tax forms

* Voter information

* Details for government tenders

* Employment opportunities

Implementing e- government still has some challenges in Malaysia. It can be risky, expensive, difficult and required changes. Ineffective project management, technology failures, funding discontinuity and unrealistic political demand are the problems in the development of e-government implementation. Hence, monitoring and evaluation are essential to effective E-government.. The first priority in Malaysia is improving the core government applications and integrating more services across agencies. Government also need to guide and control the transformation of government into e-government rather than just focusing on introduction of ICTs. At the same time, government need to strengthen the involvement of citizens and businesses use by ICT in public decision must be progress.

In conclusion, the success of e-government implementation in Malaysia is an important factor to determine Malaysia’s progress towards achieving vision 2020 and to build global bridges between Malaysia and other intelligent cities for mutual enrichment.

By Hooi Shang

A Discussion on E-Learning Offered in Malaysian Universities: Pros and Cons from the Student Perspectives

2009-07-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

E-Learning is a technology supported learning where the medium of instruction is via computer technology, particularly involving digital technology. E-Learning lessons are generally designed to guide students through information or to help students perform in specific tasks. Information based e-Learning content communicates information to the student. Lately in most Universities, e-learning is used to define a specific mode to attend a course or programs of study where the students rarely, if ever, attend face-to-face for on-campus access to educational facilities, because they study online.

The Pros of E-learning from Students Perspective

There are severe advantages of E-Learning from student’s perspectives.

Firstly, as we know, students will always faced financial problems since they do not have any income during their studies. Therefore, by having e-learning, it can help students in saving their cost by paying tuition fee, accommodation fee, transport fee and others. Students just need to have their computer or laptop with the internet connection and they can start their e-learning process. It is convenient for them and they can avoid some traveling cost compared to traveling and have their course in a campus as the traffic in Malaysia will be congested during the peak hour.

Secondly, it is also convenient and flexible for students in such a way that students are not bound to a specific day or time to be physically attending classes. This is because e-learning sessions are available everyday anytime. Students can just online and start their studies whenever they are free. They can also pause learning sessions whenever they want or when they have some other things to be done.

Furthermore, they will not be so tiring since they can just sit in their house and proceed with the studies without traveling from house to campus. E-learning can be done whenever and wherever they want. Students can proceed with their learning when they are not at home if they have the laptop with them. They can just fill up their free time with E-learning. Whenever they do not understand in some area, they can just post the question to the forum and people in the forum will have a discussion and try to solve their problems.

The Cons of E-learning from Students Perspectives

One of the disadvantages of E-learning from student’s perspectives is students can hardly make friends by just communicating through internet. This is because they can not clearly understand the person’s personality and without face-to-face communication, is hard for a people to build a friendship and understand that person. Besides, students will lack of socialization skills and it will not be an advantage in their future when they need to work in the society. They might lack of some verbal communication skill since they are just communicating to each other via internet without speaking verbally to each other in the previous days. This will lead to some conflict when they are working in an organization.

On the other hand, there is also a problem when students face difficulty or do not understand in some particular area, they can not get the solution on the spot whereas they need to post the question on the forum and wait for replies. Some how, even if their queries has been replied, the explanation given might not be accurate because they will not know the real identity of the person who replies whether they are expert or not. Moreover, if the explanation provided is not clear enough or the student’s problem still have not solve, students will face difficulty because they do not know where to find a proper person to make their queries cleared. Everything in this world will have their pros and cons, same goes to E-Learning.

Whether it is good or not is depends on personal perspectives. Students that prefer to have more personal space and more flexibility will prefer studies through E-learning compared to the traditional way which students are required to travel to the campus for classes while students that like to have more friends will more likely to stick with the traditional way.

By Sze Ying

Corporate blogging: A New Marketing Communication Tools for Companies

2009-07-06T03:35:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, blogging activities become a popular activity in the internet world. It is not only for personal usage, but it also adopted by companies for business purpose. Corporate blogging is publish the information about the organization and used by an organization to reach its organizational goal. It has now become a new marketing communication tool for companies.

For example, Google had implemented a corporate blog in year 2004 which is shares all information about Google with people and visitors can leave comment for them.Dell,Amazon Web Services and BBC also had implemented a corporate blog. For further information about companies that really get corporate blogging, you can refer to http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/08/08/15-companies-that-really-get-corporate-blogging/.

There are two common types of corporate blog which are internal blogs and external blogs. Internal blog is a weblog that can view by employee whereas external blog is a blog that can be view by public that allow employees, teams or spokespersons share their opinion. Internal blogs can be used in e-mail discussions and is useful when the people involved are in different locations. External blog is always used to announce new products and services and to react on certain issues. Customers can leave their comment in the blog and it is useful for organizations to get the direct feedback from the customer.

Corporate blogging is a new marketing communication tool for companies because it can sell and promote their products from there. It is also a form of advertising for companies. Customers are easier to search their products by information provided and they can know the latest news about the products of the company. Blogging gives a much needed way for customers to communicate with company .It can build rapport with customers. It also provides customers a channel to interact with companies. Customers can provide feedback and give suggestion about the products and company can try to handle queries from customers in the comments area.

Besides that, corporate blogging provide high-quality content on their blog and frequently update their information which can reinforce the value of the companies. It can attract customers and they will often visit the corporate blog to see the news of the products. Blogging can position business as thought-leaders to build product awareness and loyalty. Therefore, corporate blog is very helpful for communications between companies and customers.

For further information,you can refer to following links:
(i) Top 15 Corporate Blogs (Technorati Ranked - May 2008
(ii) The Corporate Blogging Book (Portfolio 2006) by Debbie Weil
(iii) The New Rules of Business Blogs e-book by Linas Simonis

By Teng Teng

Electronic Currency

2009-07-04T17:51:00.000-07:00

Electronic currency (known as E-money, electronic cash, digital money, digital cash or digital currency) means that money which is exchanged only electronically or transacted online. You can send and receive money from someone and make online payments 24 hours a day from anywhere. Electronic currency usually involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Examples of electronic money are Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and direct deposit.

Electronic currency gives a lot of benefits to users. Users have free account sign up and real time online payments. It just needs one click to send the mass payments. In addition, it has the lower merchant fees than credit cards. Electronic currency can use as universal media of exchange. Users can enter the transaction around the world without paying any exchange fees once a user acquires a global electronic currency. Besides that, global electronic currencies will provide global units of account to help the buyers and sellers understand what products and services are worth without calculation.

Here are the major electronic currencies on the net ：

（1） PayPal
PayPal is a popular Web-based payment method that allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet It is the safer, easier way to pay and get paid online . The service is convenient to users because it allows anyone to pay in any way they prefer, including through credit cards, bank accounts, buyer credit or account balances .In addition, PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users which it charges a fee. In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay .

(2) Web Money
WM Transfer Ltd company is owner and administrator of WebMoney Transfer

payment system WebMoney Transfer system based in 1998 and is a legal corporate entity of Belize, Central America At first,this WebMoney Transfer system targeted mainly at Russian clients, it is now used world-wide. Webmoney system is very easy and convenient to use. Just a single mouse click with private ,payments are made instantly with, encrypted certificate for accessing account.

(3) E-gold
E-gold is an electronic currency, operated by Gold & Silver Reserve Inc . It is a payment service similar to Pay Pal, however there has a few significant differences. For example, it is based on gold. When you open an Egold account, you are actually buying a quantity of gold .Besides that, there is a minimum amount which must be purchased. The advantages of E-gold are low transaction fees, zero financial risk, fast, flexible, convenient.

By Hooi Shang

Mobile Payment System in Malaysia: Its Potentials and Consumers' Adoption Strategies

2009-07-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me explain about mobile payment system. Mobile payment refers to a payment system that involved mobile phone. It is an alternative way of payment method and it has adopted in many countries especially Asia and Europe. Mobile payment system is a secure and convenient way to let users to pay for tickets (airlines or cinema), banking or even pay on music or books.

Malaysia's first mobile payment was launched in 2001. Malaysians can now enjoy a mobile commerce by using GSM cellular phone. TeleMoney where it is the first mobile payment system via multi-channel access for Internet and wireless transactions in Malaysia. It is a service free of banks and telco dependence. A credit card or debit card holder or user can register for this service. The website of http://www.mobile-money.com is a website that provides mobile payment system in Malaysia.

Such mobile payment system has brought potentials to the consumers or users, the potentials are as following:

Ubiquity - With mobile payment, consumers can make payment anytime, anywhere by just using their mobile phone. Hence, it is very convenient to the consumers. For example, users can reload their mobile phone credit by using mobile phone, so users do not need to go to the top up centre purposely.
Save time - By using mobile payment, consumers actually can save a lot of time where consumers do not need to line up at the counter to make payment, especially in the bank, we usually have to wait so long just to make a payment or make a small transaction, it is really wasting time. However, mobile payment can help to solve this problem.
Secure & Safe - Users do not need to worry about the safety while using mobile payment because it is secure and safe. Mobile payment will assure the safety of data for the users and it will keep the data of the users private and confidential. Furthermore, the Mobile Money Payment System conforms to the stringent requirements set by Bank Negara Malaysia and the participating banks. Besides that, the payment is secured by a strong pin fraud protection.
Easy to use - Mobile payment is easy to use where users do not need to go through too much of complicated steps to make payment. Users just need to register themselves in website, then they can easily enjoy mobile payment through their cell phone.

Consumers' adoption strategies are as follow:

Educate consumers about mobile payments, explain to them about how to use mobile payment and how it is function on billing or mobile purchase.
Enhance security, confidence and trust to users.
Collaborate with more banks, enterprises and companies to widen the ability of users to pay through mobile payment.
Maintain customers' loyalty and customers satisfaction.

By Simone

Credit card debt : Causes and Prevention

2009-07-03T02:30:00.000-07:00

Credit card debt is the unpaid balance on all credit cards. There is a debt when consumer purchases a good and services by using credit card. If a consumer has been late on payment, the debt will increase because there is a charged of interest and penalties when consumer does not pay the money they spent.

Nowadays, many people have poor money management skill. They do not set a monthly spending plan and do not check the monthly bills so that debt happens. They do not set a budget and always buying things not needed by using credit card. It makes the credit card debts increase. Younger generation is lack of knowledge of saving and managing personal finances because parent and teacher do not teach them about the important of it.

Besides that, people who has less income but their expenses increase is also a causes of credit card debts. Their monthly income cannot afford their expenses, and then they forced to use the credit card to pay the expenses. This leads to a rise in debt.

In addition, some of them do not know the interest rate of credit card and spending maximum credit limit. They do not read the fine print of credit card and keep on to buy things.

How to prevent credit card debts?

1. Credit card holder should manage finances by set up a budget and stick to it. They must set a detailed monthly plan and check their monthly bills by clearly know their monthly income and expenses. It can make sure that they spend within the monthly plan budget and spend on needed expenses.

2. Card holder also must read the fine print and know the interest rate of the cards. Before you made payment or signed for agreement, you must read the details of the agreement such as the interest rate of the card and the rewards provided to card holder.

3. Card holder must pay the bill on time. Credit card companies can increase your interest rate if you made late payment.

4. Another prevention method is educating youngest generation about how to manage finances when they have a credit card. Parent is responsible to explain and teach their children about how to getting out of credit card debt. It also important to provide topics of saving and managing personal finances to educate students so that they will not meet debt problems in the future.

5. Card holder should go and look for consumer credit counselor that helps us solve the credit card debt by lowered the interest payments.

For further information,you can refer to:

(i) http://www.mozdex.com/prevent-credit-card-debt/
(ii) http://www.everlife.com/reducing-debts.php

I hope the above information provided can help you all have an understand about causes of credit card debt and the prevention methods.

By Teng Teng

The Application of Pre-paid Cash Card for Consumer

2009-06-29T17:57:00.000-07:00

A pre-paid cash card is a stored-value card that allows us to make payment using that card so that we do not need to bring so much cash along with us. We can just transfer the cash to credit in the card and just use that card to do the payment. So, sometimes if we do not bring cash we also can use the card to pay for it. A pre-paid cash card is similar as a debit card. One major difference between pre-paid cash card and debit card is that debit cards are usually issued in the name of individual account holders, while stored value cards are usually anonymous.

Although the pre-paid cash card works almost the same like a credit card, a pre-paid cash card is different because it allows consumers to have a better control over their finance. They must make sure that their card has enough credit before they spend. It is much more convenient and are designed to be used as a safer alternative as compare to cash.

A prepaid cash card can be used to buy things and pay bills, such as utilities, as long as it is accepted in different retailer. The most common pre-paid cash card we can see everyday in Malaysia is the Touch ‘n Go smart card. It is used by Malaysian toll express way and highway operators as the sole electronic payment system (EPS). It is designed to ease the queue congestion at toll plazas and some drivers use together with SmartTAG (a non-stop electronic toll collection system).Besides, this card can also be used on some other public transportation system in Kuala Lumpur such as KTM Komuter , KL Monorail and Rapid KL . Besides, the Touch ‘n Go smart card can also be used in certain parking lots and some merchants such as A & W, Carrefour ,7-Eleven, Burger King, Baskin Robbins and others.

In conculsion, by using the prepaid cash card, it enhances the speed of paying for low value but high frequency transactions. Furthermore, it is also convenient because consumer need not bring a huge amount of cash and waste their time in queuing up in the cash lane to complete the transaction. Moreover, by not bringing huge amount, it can reduce the social problem and reduce the risk of being rob, theft, snatch and others.

By Sze Ying

How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

2009-06-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, internet is becoming an important thing for many people. However, Internet is not a safe place. Information transmitted over the Internet is more vulnerable and risk than internal networks because they are open to anyone. Hackers have hacked in to many sites and stolen peoples identities and even bank account details.Hence, it is important that users increase the internet security in order to protect their data

Here are some suggestion ways for you to safeguard your data:
1. install and Update spyware and virus protection

Install an antivirus program like Symantec and Norton antivirus, AVG antivirus is software that prevent a worm, virus or spyware program from sending out files or other stored information from your computer. This software needs to be kept up-to-date to remain effective If you do not subscribed to these updates, computer may be vulnerable to attacks by malicious software.

2. Firewall installation

A firewall is a computer system that is designed to block unauthorized access to or from a private network and it is effective at stopping spyware installation .In addition, firewall helps to screen out many kinds of malicious Internet traffic before it reaches our computer, therefore hackers unable to access personal information on the computer.

3. Choose a secure password to protect account information

Avoid using any password that could be guess easily. Passwords are confidential information; hence do not respond to any message that asks for your password. If you suspect something is amiss or wrong, please change your passwords immediately.

4. Use your own computer, instead of public machine to access financial information

When u needs to check your bank balance, use your own computer logging is the better way for you to safeguard your financial data. Avoid accessing financial information in public because we do not know how powerful their firewalls are.

5. Don’t simply download e-mail attachments that are sent from someone you do not know

Users should not download attachments, software updates or applications through an e-mail link. They actually take personal information to a site created by the phishing thief while these links and forms may appear to be directed to a legitimate business site.

By Hooi Shang

The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

2009-06-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

Since the internet has been developed, it is very convenient for us to complete many tasks by using internet. It brings a lot of benefits for us. In contrast, it is also have its cons. Internet is a public system which every transaction made through online can be traced, logged, monitored and stored in anywhere, anytime. There are so many people using internet everyday for various activities. Nowadays, more and more company using online transaction. It is important for businesses to be understood and alert with the threats that might occur to their business transactions.

The advancements in technology grow at an alarming rate, and each week we see new things that we ever were possible before. According to the 2009 Security Threat Report from Sophos, one new infected Web page is discovered every 4.5 seconds. By logging on to the net, you are at risk at once. Online security threats are a big challenge today. The main threats of online security are Spyware, Computer Viruses and Hackers.

Spyware is computer software that is installed furtively on a personal computer to steal information of a user such as passwords, credit cards information, back account details, browsing habits and others without the user's knowledge. It is known to change computer settings, resulting in slow connection speeds, different home pages, or loss of Internet or functionality of other programs. Unlike viruses and worm , spyware does not usually self-replicate. The types of spyware include Trojan Horses, Key Loggers, Dialers and Adware Programs.

Computer Virus is a computer program that can spread itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the owner. Most personal computers are now connected to the Internet and to local area networks, facilitating the spread of malicious code. Today's viruses may also take advantage of network services such as the World Wide Web ,E-mail, Instant Messaging , and file sharing systems and virus will be sent through the infected file or mail. Moreover, our email address book will be one of the sources for the virus to find new people to attack.

Hackers are increasingly motivated by money and stealing our bank account and credit card information. Hackers will try to hack into the computer system, get the information and transfer the money to their account without authorized by the top management. Therefore, in order to avoid yourself getting involed in the threat, users must protect their computer by installing anti-virus software, such as Avira Anti Virus and always be alert when using internet.

By Sze Ying

A Review on A Post on Internet Security from My E-Commerce Blog

2009-06-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

From the post which titled as ‘More Than 1 Million Computer Viruses in Circulation Now’ in the My E-Commerce blog, I found that the number of computer viruses, worms and Trojans are actually increased from the year 2006 to 2007, indirectly it also means that the cyber criminal problem is also getting serious. Nowadays, in our daily life, not only our personal computers at home, the computers at university also easily get attack by viruses. I believe that the number of viruses will keep on increasing if the there is no solution on it. Besides that, this post has given me more understanding about threats to the computer, especially malware and malicious program.

First of all, let me explain what is viruses, worms and Trojans. Viruses is a program or piece of code that is loaded onto your computer without your knowledge and runs against your wishes and it need a host to run and activate it, whereas worms is a software program that can run independently. Besides that, it uses a network to send copies of itself to other computers and it may do so without user intervention. However, Trojans is a program that may appear to be legitimate, but in fact does something malicious.

Malware is actually a portmanteau word that comes from the words malicious and software. It is a harmful software program to a computer system, which has been designed to damage and disrupt the system, such as viruses, worms and Trojans. According to the Symantec report, 1,122,311 malware is detected, it is quite a huge number. The majority of these viruses are aimed at the personal computer that runs with Microsoft Windows and the criminals are using Trojans to gain access to the PC. In addition, according to Security Firm, it also said that the number of malicious programs has reached an unprecedented high.

Hence, Internet security is very important to the computer system, in order to protect the computer from those viruses, worms and Trojans threats and attacks. In order to avoid the computer system attack by those viruses, worms and Trojans, security firm has used heuristics, or rules of thumb, to spot programs and some used behavior blockers that shut down any program that shows malicious intent. At home, we should also install the anti-virus program. Let’s together reduce the number of those viruses and the number of cyber criminal problems!

By Simone

Phishing: Examples and its prevention method

2009-06-25T06:08:00.000-07:00

There are many e-commerce crimes in the Internet world, for example, PHISHING. It is a common type of threats and attacks in e-commerce. Phishing is a technique that the perpetrator tries to steal sensitive personal information such as username, passwords and credit card numbers by instruct recipient to visit fraudulent websites. It is THEFT.Nowadays, it has become a significant criminal activity on the internet, especially happen by sending e-mail messages. Besides that, it also always happens in well known and trustworthy web sites, auction sites and online payment processors. For example, eBay, PayPal, online banks, Yahoo and MSN are the web sites that are always spoofed by the perpetrator.

The following are the examples of phishing:

1） eBay phishing email
Perpetrator likes to send email by using eBay logo to gain credibility and cheated that billing is out of order and required eBay member to login and verify the charges again. From that, they can tries to steal sensitive personal information. Below is the example of the eBay phishing email :

2) PayPal phishing scams
In the example below, this PayPal phishing scams tries to cheat recipients by acting as a security alert. It claimed that someone 'from a foreign IP address tried to login to recipient’s PayPal account and the e-mail inside include a link that urges recipients clicking it to update and confirm their account details. By clicking the link actually directs the recipient to the attacker’s website.

3) Citibank phishing e-mail
From the example below, we can see that the perpetrator send e-mail by acting as a safety and integrity for the online banking community to get recipient’s banking information. In the email, recipients given a link to visit a fake website and enter banking information that the perpetrator tries to stole.

The following are the some prevention methods that use to prevent from phishing scams:

a)Do not reply e-mails or fill out the forms in e-mails that urgently requesting personal financial information. Legitimate sites normally will not send email to ask for this information.

b)Don't click the links in suspicious email because it might be fraudulent websites.

c)Check and report the incident with your bank whether the bank has sent email to request banking information.

d)Frequently check your bank, credit and debit cards to make sure that all transactions are legitimate.

e)Check the web address to make sure you are in the correct website before you enter sensitive information. For example, when you want to enter information on eBay’s website, make sure the URL in the address bar starts with http://www.ebay.com/

f)You can set strong password for your account and change it frequently so that it will not easy to attack by perpetrator.

g)You also must make sure that your browser is up to date and security patches applied. It can help to protect your computer by using antivirus software and keep your computer updated

h)Company can educate customers or government can educate citizens by providing information about the symbol of phishing happen and how it looks like.

Nowadays, crime rate in internet is increasing. By given the information above, I hope you all have more understand about the phishing and learn the prevention methods.

By Teng Teng

Identify and compare the revenue model for Google,amazon.com and ebay

2009-06-19T12:30:00.001-07:00

A revenue model is to generate revenue and the major methods that are using are sales, transaction fees, advertising fees, subscription fees and affiliate fees. Now, let’s compare the three internationally well known websites’ revenue model and let’s take a look on how they apply their revenue model. According to the most recent results, Google generated more than 99% of revenue from advertising, it is clearly shows that advertising fees is the Google’s revenue model, whereas Amazon.com generated revenue mostly by selling variety of products and services online to its customers which means Amazon.com is using sales revenue model. As for eBay, it generated most of its revenue from its online auction services hence it is applying sales revenue model.

For Google, it offers targeted advertising solutions and global Internet search solutions, such as Google AdWords, Google AdSense and so on. Among all the revenue sources for Google, Adwords generates more than 90% of its revenue, it generated about $21 billion in year 2008. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising,where an advertiser has to pay when his or her advertisement receives a click and advertisers is advertised in the right side of the researchers’ search results. AdWords plays a vital role in Google’s growth. If advertisers continue to choose AdWords and the number of people clicking on the ads increases, Google will continue to generate revenue and profits.

Whereas Amazon.com at the beginning is acted as an online bookstore, but later it started to sell different types of products such as VCDs, DVDs, CD for music and so on. Due to this diversification and international presence of products, it increased Amazon.com’s revenue from year 2002 to 2006,which is from $3.9 billion to $10.7 billion. Moreover, Amazon.com is not only applied sales revenue model, but also transaction revenue model because they will receive the commissions when the third parties manage to sell their product through Amazon.com.

Both Amazon.com and eBay are applying sales revenue model, however the main difference between them is Amazon.com major on online bookstore and eBay major on online auction. As for eBay, it is a worldwide online auction and online shopping website that allows users or businesses to bid, sell and buy different products and services through eBay. Besides that, eBay allows users to sell and bid their items for the best price. The items that sell and bid in the website are computers, furniture, vehicle, miscellaneous items or anything that you think you want to sell also can sell on the website. On the other hand, it also established localized websites in thirty over countries to its original U.S website.

By Simone

The History and Evolution of E-Commerce

2009-06-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

In the 20th Century, most of the activities we are doing daily involved Information Technology, or so called ‘IT’. We always heard of the word “E- Commerce”. But, how well we all know about E-commerce?

According to Wikipedia, Commerce is a division of transaction which involves the activities of trade of goods and services between two parties, such as from producer to final consumer. It functions as the central mechanism which drives capitalism and certain other economic system but compare command economy, for example). Commercialization consists of the process of transforming something into a product, service or activity which one may then use in commerce.

Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) is a technology used by some modern business through Internet or other computer networks to do business transaction between parties such as buying and selling of products, services or exchanging information. E-commerce can be classified into several categories. This includes:

Business-to-Business (B2B) as commerce transaction between businesses such as wholesaler and retailer or manufacturer and wholesaler.

Business-to-Customer (B2C) involved electronic transaction between a business and consumer with product, or services. Consumer can order the product they want through the company’s website, such as Dell, www.dell.com to order or customize the product they want.

Customer-to-Customer (C2C) where consumers sell to each other through auction sites, such as www.lelong.com , one of the auction sites in Malaysia.

Customer-to-Business (C2B) can be defined as consumers or individuals offer products and services to companies and the companies pay them. It is totally contrast to the traditional business model, B2C where companies offer products and services to customers.

E-commerce application was developed in the early 1970s, which was using the technology of Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to allow businesses in doing financial transaction from one party to another party such as sending electronic purchase orders or invoices. However, the use of these applications was limited to financial institutes, large corporations, and some daring businesses during that time.

The purpose of development of Electronic data interchange (EDI) is to improve the limitation of Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT). EFT expanded electronic transfers from financial transactions to other types of transaction processing. After the development, there is an increase in the number of company participated in this computer based application such as manufacturers, retailers and others. Such systems were called Interorganizational System (IOS). IOS allows the flow of information to be automated between organizations to reach a desired supply-chain management system, which enables the development of competitive organizations.

In 1980s, the growth and acceptance of credit cards, Automated Teller Machines (ATM) and telephone banking were also forms of electronic commerce. Electronic commerce would additionally include Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing in the 1990s. During 1994 e-commerce started to become popular. It tooks four years for it to develop the security protocols and DSL which allowed rapid access and connection to the internet. In the 2000s, e-commerce changed the process of purchasing of available goods and services over the internet using secure connections and electronic payment services. In year 2003, Amazon.com, www.amazon.com , the successful and famous E-commerce company had its first year with a full year of profit.

E-commerce business has become more and more popular nowadays. The success of Amazon.com has shown and makes people more confident to use this technology to expand their business. Since the technology is getting advance as time passed, I believes that someday in the future, every business will be using E-commerce to do their business.

By Sze Ying

Examples of an E-commerce failure

2009-06-18T05:57:00.000-07:00

"Webvan" is one of the example of e-commerce failure that we choose.

Webvan was an online "credit and delivery” grocery business and it was created by Louis Borders in 1999 . Basically, Webvan's products offering were focused on food, non-prescription drug products, and general merchandise .

What causes Webvan failure???

When Wedvan was popular, money was spent on infrastructure far exceeded sales growth. For example, Webvan placed a $1 billion (USD) to build a high tech grocery distribution system , purchased 30 Sun Microsystems Enterprise 4500 serves, several Cisco system Model 7513 and 7507 routers and others. Eventually, the company was run out of money.

Other reason that causes the company bankrupt is Webvan does not have basic knowledge of the sector. It is because Webvan made an arrogant assumption that they were a technology business and not a supermarket. Webvan run by the people who did not have working knowledge of the grocery business.

Besides that, Webvan’s failure was a result of poor customer relationship management. Webvan unable earn the trust of its customer. It is due to lack of an initiative by Webvan’s management to learn about customer’s expectation. Furthermore, Webvan was deterioration quality in a product in order to cost cutting. Hence, Webvan losing customer. They did not know about maintain the human touch is more important compare to the competitive in the low margin grocery business.

Webvan re-banded two years into its existence is one of the mistakes that cause Webvan’s failure. Re-banding was done in an effort to change their image from a grocery service to a general delivery service competing companies, for instance FedEx and UPS. The customers identified grocery bag was a logo of Webvan They changed their logo and website appearance in year 2000.Changing their logo and website ,at the same time struggling to raise capital for its daily operations was not a good strategic move.

At last, Webvan was shut down on July 13th 2001.This company has lost over $600 million providing that building a new, national chain of full service or home delivery supermarkets will probably not work.

By Hooi Shang

An example of an E-commerce success and its causes

2009-06-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of success stories in e-commerce. An example of an e-commerce success is eBay. Nowadays, many people like to buy and sell goods and services through eBay. It is an online auction site which was launched in September 1995 and it has 13 years of history. It is the world's online marketplace and it is a place for buyer and sellers to trade a broad variety goods and services worldwide. eBay has over 19 million registered users now and it is around millions of items are traded every day in eBay’s online marketplace. There are over two million people a day visit eBay. Besides that, many top companies such as Dell computers, TV Guide and Disney are now use eBay to sell their products.

There are two main purposes in eBay. The first purpose is to expose items to all people on the web effectively. The second is that seller can expose items at a very low cost. They can direct people to their website and create an auction to promote their products for only 30 cents.

Many people like to surf on eBay because eBay is a well-known website and it has higher chance that people can find out and compare the price of the items they want and trade it. eBay Inc. has expanded to include PayPal , half.com , Rent.com, Skype, Shopping.com and others.

In addition, people can sell anything on eBay except for items that violate eBay’s Prohibited and Restricted Items policy. The items are arranged by different categories. It is convenient and easy to be found by people. It enables buyers to search items easily and it also enables the sellers list an item for sale immediately within minutes of registering.

Nowadays. eBay marketplace is emphasize on the vision of trust, honestly and efficiency. Therefore, it attracts many people to trade on eBay because the buyer and seller on eBay are mostly honest and trustworthy person.Besides that, eBay found a clever way for people to build an online reputation. This feedback system lets buyers and sellers comment on each transaction. Many people enjoy the experience of the shopping bazaar and they enjoy the competition of bidding process that leads eBay to success. eBay also enables individuals to connect and interact with one another in the world.It allows users to bargain about the price of the products. Therefore, eBay is a success in e-commerce and is very popular in the internet world.

Video: "eBay" by Weird Al Yankovic

By Teng Teng

About Teng Teng...

2009-06-09T02:14:00.000-07:00

I am Gan Teng Teng from Cheras. I am 21 years old and now taking Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) Accouting Course in University Tunku Abdul Rahman. My hobbies is watching tv, shopping, play badminton and listening to music. When I am free, I like to go out to play badminton with friends because it can keep body healthy.

The following are the top 5 websites that i visited the most:

1.www.google.com
I like to use Google to search information for assignment because there have a lot of useful information and I can absorb many knowledge from this web.

2.www.youtube.com
I like to see funny video and entertainment news from youtube.

3.chinese.cari.com.my
In Chinesecari, I can get a lot information about horoscopes, country news and view school forum and so on.

4.www.facebook.com
I can keep in touch with friends and getting to know about their updates from visit facebook.

5.thestar.com.my
I also often visit The Star Online because I can get english news and learn english from there.

My internet activities are playing online games, checking email, searching for information, chatting on msn messenger and downloading music. Internet is very important because it played a key role in keeping communication going. It also helps a lot in my study life.

About Sze Ying...

2009-06-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

Hi! My name is Sze Ying and I come from Cheras, Kuala Lumpur. I am graduated from SJK ( C ) Taman Connaught and followed by SMK Taman Connaught. I am currently a Year 3 Sem 1 student of Bachelor Commerce (Hons) Accounting course at UTAR, Sg. Long campus. My favorite activities are hanging out with my friends and play musical instrument such as electone. I love MUSIC, especially the classical music. By playing music can release my stress and lighten up my life when I am down.

The TOP FIVE websites that I visited the most is www.hotmail.com. I like to check my mail box for latest information forwarded from friends and uses it to contact with our lecturers for queries and appointments.Besides, www.facebook.com is the website that I found many of my long lost friends. I like to visit this website is because I can get the latest update of my friends even tough we does not meet often and they are studying at overseas. I often visit www.baidu.com to download the latest songs that I want. In addition, www.chinapress.com is the website i visit to update myself with the latest news which are happening around the world. Lastly, www.magmypic.com is the website i use to design my photos which have taken with my friends and family.

Besides that,Chatting in MSN is also one of the activity that i spend my free time. I am also using the Yahoo and Google search engines to search for information especially when doing assignments.It is a very helpful tool for me in getting information in order to complete my assignments.

About Simone...

2009-06-08T20:45:00.000-07:00

I am Simone and my full name is Koh Yuk Teng Simone, from Kuala Lumpur. I am now taking Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) Accounting and is in Year 3 Sem 1. My hobbies is watching TV, listen to music or radio, surfing Internet, and also swimming. Listen to music is the hobby that I like the most especially listen to those classical music or sentimental music, because those music can help to relax myself.

The top 5 websites that I visited the most are as following:

I like to Google, Yahoo and Youtube is because I found that those websites are quite useful in searching for related and updated information. In Google and Yahoo, I can search for information for my study, games, e-shopping, horoscopes and so on. From Youtube, I can search for variety of videos. The reason i often visit Facebook is because i can meet a lot of friends and i can always keep in touch with my primary and secondary schoolmates and even my university coursemates. Sometimes I would like to view other's forum from ChineseCari.

My internet activities usually are checking email, searching for information, viewing forum, downloading music and playing games. Through Internet, it actually help a lots in my daily life,even it also help me in my study. It is so convenient and useful and it also let me communicate with others more easily. ^^

About Hooi Shang...

2009-06-08T17:29:00.000-07:00

My name is Ong Hooi Shang from Kuala Lumpur. I am taking bachelor of commerce (Hons) Accounting Course. My hobbies are listening to music, playing piano and watching television. I always listen to music when I am free. For me, listen to music can reduce my stress and made me more happy.

Top 5 websites which I visited most are Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Youtube, The Star. I will access to Google and Yahoo to find some information that I needed. This two website is very useful when doing assignment and thesis. Facebook is one of the website that i like the most . It is because i can see my friends picture and playing the facebook games. Sometimes, i will also access to the Star website to get the latest news.

The top 5 internet activities: i will always access to hotmail to check my mail and chat with my friends through msn. Beside that , i will also access to facebook to see my friends picture and playing games. Other activities that i always do are downloading song and reading online newspaper .