An Example of E-commerce Failure and Its Causes

Nowadays, E-commerce had become so popular in our life. Most of us know about e-commerce is through online shopping. Online shopping had growth rapidly in the E-commerce society as it is so convenience for us as we just need to stay at home online, click few buttons and paying it by credit cards or other payment methods. Then, the goods will be sent to our house. It is convenient and useful for us as we need not rushing here and there to purchase the things that we want. Even we can buy things that are not available in our country. But why E-commerce still fails and what are the causes??

Let us take an example of Jeans Online. “Why people do not buy the jeans online?” if you want to buy a jeans will you buy online? As for me, I will not buy it because I can’t try it on and can’t check the quality of fabric. Although it is still a “real” business, unfortunately it is unlike other businesses. People will have lack confidences to purchase a jeans compare with buying a book online. Let take another example of amazon.com which selling books online. Amazon.com has succeeded all the way as the book is different from the Jeans. You can buy a book when the book title is interested or useful but Jeans cannot. There does not have any fitting room develop in the web and thus we cannot try the jeans before purchase it. Besides, the cutting of the jeans may be bigger or smaller than other. This will be troublesome if we had purchased a jeans that does not fit to you. So the failure and causes is it cannot be try and customize before purchase.

The second failure and its cause of E-commerce is the cost of develop. The company may meet a lot of trial and error, before they can carry out their business in a cost-effective way. There will need a high startup cost when a company start to do online business. However, what is the most purpose of doing business? People will sure try to generate profit in a faster way, and thus they will try to sell the product more expensive. However, the consumers also wouldn’t buy an expensive good from online shopping, you know why? This is due to the reason if the goods are expensive, why I want to buy online? It is better for me to buy in physical shopping. The consumer wants buying online is because the goods are cheaper and more conveniences compared with go out shopping physically.

Thirdly, the tools of developing the E-commerce are not democratized. Actually if you did not involved with E-commerce you probably would not have encountered it. To get a right tool in place to allow you to sell the products are expensive and ridiculously hard. For example, something getting a proper merchant account and flexible credit card processor doesn’t come cheap. So it becomes failure.

Next on failure of E-commerce are poor customer services. If you do not serve your customer well this can make your E-commerce business failed. The customers will not visit your website again. This is because if the customer services of online shopping is poor then why I need use it? People will choose to buy through physical shopping as it will be better and more satisfy.

The last issue is the security problems. Once must make sure the website is as secure as possible E-commerce must have sufficient protection on the customer’s credit card information as it is vital enough. Moreover, it also needs to over look the securities system as to protect the customer’s information such as billing address, phone number and email address. Theft will be occurred if the E-commerce company failed to do so. The information of credit card will access by the hacker. In such situation, do you still want to purchase gods from online shopping if you know that the security is poor??

Real-World Case: Google is changing everything

Google, a company associated with EC, had impacted our life most. According to Carr (2006), Google’s unconventional IT and EC management strategy offers a glimpse into how organizations might deploy technology in the future. Google has grown more quickly than other EC company and started to generate profit faster. Google is known primarily for its search engine and its related targeted-advertising tools. It delivers advertisers far more revenue per click in search result than its competitors.

Google’s mission is to deliver technologies to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Therefore, Google had developed several useful application to improve our life quality as well as convenient us. For example, Google is trying to reinvent the spreadsheet as a free web-based application that makes it simple for users to input and share data with up to 10 users simultaneously, overcoming the key limitation of Microsoft’s Excel. The program is designed to help people organize their own information and make it more easily accessible to others via the Web. Data in the spreadsheet are saved automatically with each user action over the Web onto Google computer servers. Users can sort data and take advantage of 200 functions and common spreadsheet formulas for basic calculations.

In addition, Google is currently studying how much demand is for Google Spreadsheet to work with Google Base, an online database service that allows Google users to post various types of information online. Google Base is viewed by analysts as a stepping stone into classified e-advertising, by helping users feature relevant information on Google’s main search index.

In 2006, Google expanded into the software business, offering Google Office and a set of Web programs likes e-mail. Google is now convenient us with its "GMail". It also offers Google Calendar, Google Earth, Google Maps and etc. Google had brought us to a higher level of Information Age. Now, we need not went to library or school few miles away from home to find the learning materials, journal articles, useful informations and etc. We just need to "Google" it and the things that we want will pop up in front of our monitor. It is more comvenient and faster way to gether information.

An enterprise search identifies and enables specific content across the enterprise to be indexed, searched and displayed to authorized users. Google had partnered with Bearing Point, an IT consulting firm, to supply enterprise search capabilities. Bearing Point has experience in expending the Google to provide search services to specific industries and programs search engines to crawl through all the various data sources at a company and index their contents.

Enterprise searches can be integrated with other applications to improve performance. For example, Cognos Go! Search Service offers a familiar search interface for accessing strategic enterprise information that answer critical business questions with simple keywords search. It also offers a search engine for enterprise systems.

Google had created a sequences effect and impact through our life and living environment. I believe that Google will soon changing the life of us and the living standard of the world.

The History and Evolution of E-Commerce

What is commerce and e-commerce? Is there any differences? Basically, there is a slightly different. Commerce is the exchange of items between persons or companies. It is an exchange of money for a product, service or information. In early times, people trade their goods with neighbours or others for the goods that they needs. Both parties must meet their requirements then the transactions can be done.

Electronic Commerce is known as e-commerce. There many definition that can define e-commerce. According to Turban, 2008, e-commerce is defined as the process of buying, selling or exchanging products, services and information via computer networks. In other words, it means buying or selling of goods and services over the Internet. People from the earliest times have already engaged in commerce. It has been carried on in some areas and by some people in special geographical, technological or economic advantages.

At the beginning, electronically transactions were conducted with the help of the leading technologies, such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). EDI and EFT were both introduced in 1970s and its development gave an opportunity to the users to do business activities and exchange business information electronically. Its ability allowed users to do electronically transactions easily and faster. Although EDI has definitely developed but due to its different format, many companies have not been benefited.

In 1992s, the Mosaic web-browser becomes the first ‘point and click’ browser because it quickly adapted into a downloadable browser and Netscape allowed accessing to E-commerce easily. But then, the development of DSL was allowed quicker access and a persistent connection to the Internet.

As times goes by, the development of Red Hat Linux was another E-commerce growth. Linux gave users another choice in a platform other than Windows that was reliable and open-source.

Let’s take a look at the table how development attributed to the growth of ecommerce:

Year	Events
1970	Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) were introduced and gave an opportunity to the users to do business activities and exchange business information electronically easily and faster.
1990	The first web browser, World Wide Web by using a NeXT computer wrote by Tim Berners-Lee.
1992	CompuServe offers online retail products to its customers which gives people the first chance to buy things off their computer.
1994	Netscape released the Navigator browser under the code name Mozilla. It is a user friendly and a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
1995	Amazon.com and eBay.com were launched in e-commerce.
1998	Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) provides fast, always-on Internet service to subscribers across California. People can spend more time and money through online.
1999	According to Business.com, retail spending over the Internet reached $20 billion.
2000	The dot-com disaster.
2003	Amazon.com had its first yearly profit.
2007	R.H. Donnelley acquired Business.com at $345 million.
2008	US eCommerce and Online Retail sales projected to reach $204 billion which is 17 % increased in 2007.

In a nutshell, the concept of e-commerce is all about using the Internet to do business activities and exchange information faster and easier. It gives customers control in accessing to the computer systems and does commercial transactions electronically. Today’s e-commerce is growing and improving that concerning a great number of ecommerce-lovers. It has gained so much popularity because its underlying technologies are evolving where people can make an order, choose the payment and shipping method and wait the order is delivered to your house.

Sources from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_commerce

http://www.ecommerce-journal.com/articles/electronic_commerce_aka_e_commerce_history

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT_Computer

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT_Computer

An example of an E-commerce became success and its causes.

The success of ecommerce is an issue that has attracted the interest of public in this century. The practice of electronic commerce (e-commerce) has been in existence since 1965 when consumers were able to withdraw money from Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) and make purchases using point of sale terminals and credit cards. This was followed by systems that crossed organizational boundaries that enable organizations to exchange information and conduct business electronically. Such systems were commonly known as inter-organizational systems.

Let’s say we use eBay as our example for e-commerce’s success.

Pierre Omidyar has started to establish eBay from his home in 1995 and now is a leader in Internet revenue. The first name eBay used was Echo Bay Technology. When the company tried to register the domain name echobay.com, they found out that it was already in used. So, they shortened the name to eBay.com and this how the Website was born. EBay is the world's online marketplace where a place for buyers and sellers come together and trade almost anything.

EBay today has become so successful in e-commerce compared to other websites. The main reason is because its URL is short and easy to remember. There are different types of payment methods available in eBay which allow users to choose a payment method that is convenient and secure to them, such as PayPal, Personal Cheques, Money Orders and many more. EBay may lists out all the items by categories that allow users to find anything on eBay easily and faster, including cars, real estate, collectibles, concert tickets, CDs, clothing, DVDs, and artwork. Moreover, anyone with an eBay account can bid on the item that they like at the right price. Therefore, you can bid at the maximum amount that you’re willing to pay for an item so you could pay less.
{Reference: http://www.happynews.com/living/online/history-ebay.htm}
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/18371/why_is_ebay_so_successful.html?cat=3

The causes of eBay to success are:
* Focus -> By doing business activities via eBay, we can choose something to sell that we knew. This is because we are familiar with the particular product and easily for us to search some information regarding the particular product. Therefore, we do not have to waste our time wondering whether it will sell or how much you should pay for it.

* Research -> By researching products available in eBay, you can gain valuable knowledge and find cheap source of the items. People who shop on eBay are looking for something specific and then deal with a wholesaler.
{Reference: http://www.bargainchecker.com/articles/ebay/eBay-Success.aspx}

* Help Page -> It is useful by helping us to solve the problems. It also provides the tips and ways to become better buyers, about payment and shipping, bidding and buying and so on.

* Accessible -> EBay has an open access, level playing field, transparency, equal access to information are attributes of any environment with positive outcomes.

* Connection -> EBay enables individuals to connect and interact with one another such as market solutions, collaboration and wisdom crowds.

* Enjoying -> People tend to enjoy the experience of the shopping bazaar and the competition of the bidding process. EBay auction also allows the users to bargain over the price.

* Practical Place -> It is a very practical place to buy and sell collectibles or commodities.

* Attitude of the seller -> Most of the sellers in eBay are warm, decent, trustworthy and honest people. No worries when purchasing.

Google vs. Amazon.com vs. eBay

Google is one of the largest searching engine in the world, the main revenue source for Google is online advertising. Whereby, Amazon.com is an online bookstore initially and then developed as giant of online shopping site. In the other hand, eBay is the world's largest online auction site. The main revenue sources for eBay is revenue is from fees charged to list items up, picture service fees, listing upgrade fees, final value fees and reservation fees.

As one of the largest searching engine in the world, Google has several revenue models. Google AdWords is one of the revenue model for Google, it is a pay per click advertising program of Google designed to allow the advertisers to present advertisements. Pay per Click Advertising is the best way to send immediate, targeted traffic to users website. Pay per click, which payment is based on qualifying click on advertisement. An advertiser has to pay every time once his advertisement receives a clicks.

Another example of Google revenue source is AdSense. AdSense is an advertising serving program run by Google . Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, video advertisements on their sites. AdSense program includes AdSense for search and AdSense for content. AdSense for search is Google’s service for distributing relevant advertisements from its advertisers for display with search results on the Google Network members’ sites. Whereby, AdSense for content is distributing advertisements from Google’s advertisers that are relevant to content on Google Network members’ sites.

The advertiser required to pay Google every time once the users click on one of their advertisements displayed on Google Network members’ web sites.

Amazon.com, one of the successfully example of company selling goods online. Amazon.com generates profit by selling etail sales of music CDs, videostapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, clothing, industrial & scientific supplies, and more.

Amazon Marketplace in Amazon.com is a fixed price marketplace for users to buy or sell new or used products directly through Amazon.com. Amazon.com charges a commission, a transaction fee, and a variable closing fee for each product sold in their site. The revenue brought in by the Amazon Marketplace is one of the main source of revenue for Amazon.com.

The world's biggest and common auction site.
eBay, simple and easy way to bids online, users can make thr bid anytime and every way that has internet access.
Variety of items and products can be found in eBay with low price for consumers to bid.

eBay has various revenue model, it earns transaction fee from owning paypal, an online paying service system for users to buy items online more conveniently. eBay also gains sales from the service of listing customer’s product to be sold to other users as well as some advertisement fee.