local e-commerce site: lelong.com

Lelong.com.my was commerced at the end of 1998. It is the founders of the pioneer auction website in Malaysia. It provides an open trading platform where the market determines the value of items that are sold. Thus, it styled and functioned is similar to the international auction site such as eBay.com.

In the home page of Lelong.com.my, there are three language preferences for the users to select. Thus, the users may choose the language that he/she is more comfortable with. I believe this will probably reduce misunderstanding between the seller and the bidder. Beside that, Lelong.com.my has divided goods into different categories. This is easier for the users like me to search for the items as there are already categorized it.

Other than convenient, I am emphasis on the security when I trade. There is a safetrade service in this website that provide the buyer and seller to complete their online transaction more safety. Furthermore, people that are currently not residing in Malaysia are not allowed to sell things over this website. This is because they want to reduce and prevent online fraud. With this service provided, it enhances users confident during the online transaction.

It also provides a forum for the users to discuss and exchange information with other users. However, the most importantly is this website provide fee calculator. Thus, the users only need to key in the figure and the calculator will show them the exact amount that they suppose to pay. It is so convenient and users friendly.

Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction

Nowadays, e-auction becomes a normal and popular internet activity for the internet users. However, e-auction fraud such as bid shielding, shilling, failure to ship merchandise and other problems still exist.

Thus, some important issue must take note when a consumer participating in an e-auction in order to minimize or prevent e-auction fraud.

User identifies verification: IC number, mother’s name, driver’s license or such privacy information can use by users to identify the verification when make bid in e-auction or trading in the internet.

Authentication service: It is a service provide by the specific companies use to determine whether an item is genuine or not. However, sometimes different expert authenticators may have different opinion when doing the verification in the same item based on their different experience.

Grading services: It used to determine the physical condition of the items. Different items may have different grading system. Thus, it will be more precise when grading the items.

Escrow Service: It provides users with safe and convenient environment when they conduct business with other users through internet. Escrow service provider act as a third-party. They collect, hold and send a buyer’s money to a seller according to instructions agreed on by both buyer and seller. Once the buyer receives and approves the item from the seller within an agreed time frame, the escrow service will send the payment to the seller.

Feedback forum: Feedback forum is a good platform that allows buyer and sellers to build up their own e-auction reputation. Users can give comment on their online trading experience. It is especially useful when potential buyer make reference to those comments in the feedback forum in order to make online trading decision.

Non-payment Punishment: It is a policy implemented by the e-Bay to punish those who do not pay for their winning bids at the due time. For example, suspension of their accounts. This can be a warning to those bidders who do not honor in the winning bids.

Piracy in Malaysia: Fighting through education and enforcement

Malaysia’s image has once being alleged as a leading producer and exporter of pirated products. According to Fifth Annual Business Software Alliance (BSA) and International Date Corporation (IDC) Global Software Piracy Study, Malaysia maintained its software piracy rate at 59% , it is representing a loss of US311 million. The following chart illustrates average piracy rates in the Asia Pacific region:

Cultural differences are the major factors that affect the piracy problem. In addition, the strength of intellectual property protection and the availability of pirated software also the factors that determine the piracy rate in the particular country.

Furthermore, development of internet and technology has increased the conveniences of privacy. People produce huge numbers of CDs and DVDs in short time and sell them at very low prices. Those illegal download from internet has caused music and video companies suffer thousand million dollars losses per year.

Therefore, Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs work along with Business Software Alliance or other relevant association to counter the piracy problem. They should focus on the sources that cause piracy problem in order to mitigate it.

In addition, they should educate the consumers and computer users through public education such as awareness campaigns. This will enrich the users' knowledge regarding other people copy right. Furthermore, it may inform the businesses and the public at large about the risked associated with using the pirated product and encouraging the use of legitimate product.

Insignificant punishment toward those pirated activities have been the main cause of piracy in Malaysia. Thus, strong government policy with effective enforcement is the key mean to minimize the piracy rate as well. Although it will take longer time to process but it is the most effective method.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate blog is a blog published by or with the support of an organization to reach their organization’s goal. Companies use it for external and internal communications. External communications is to strengthen relationships with important target groups. Internally, blogs are use as tools for collaboration and knowledge management.

Corporate often updated its blog to announce news about their new products and services. It also uses to explain and clarify policies as well as react on public criticism on certain issues. This has enabled the company to communicate with customer more effectively. Hence, this has increase the transparency and accessibility in the corporate image. For example Bplans Blog is a great extension of Bplans.com.

Beside that, it is a user-friendly publishing interface. The design of the webpage is more creative and innovative compare to the traditional communication channel in marketing the products and services. Thus, it attracts people to visit the blog and promoted the company products and services.

Furthermore, corporate blogging is the most cost effective way in marketing the company products and services. This is because people that surfing internet is often more than the people reading newspaper. The management also need not need to spend money on making changes of the information in the blog. This has reduced the expenses of advertisement for company.

Corporate blogging has broadened the corporate internet marketing program. At the same time, corporate blogs enable some interact with the targeted market on a more personal level by building link credibility to tie back to the corporate site. Thus, it has increased the corporate websites’ value and it become more visible to search engines. Therefore, corporate blogging has become one of the marketing tools in most of the companies.

Click here for further information.

E-Government in Malaysia:Its implementation so far and citizen adoption strategies

Electronic government (E-government) is one of the seven flagship applications introduced in Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC). In the survey, Malaysia’s ranking is at 25th out of 32 countries in terms of E-government usage growth. Since the implementation of E-government was initiated in 1996, it enables government to exchange information, provide services and transaction with citizens, businesses and other arms of governments more efficiently.

Implementation of e-government includes several government processes and services online such as:-
e-Procurement – purchase and sale of supplies and services through the internet. It provides real time bidding solutions for buyers and sellers that bring an unprecedented level of profitability, control and simplicity to corporate procurement and liquidation processes.

Project Monitoring System – system used to monitor the implementation of government’s development projects from the high-level management down to activity levels. This enables government agencies to have a better management and access information.

Electronic Labour Exchange – provide a one-stop job search and job advertisement platform for Malaysian jobseekers and employers.

E-Syariah – provide a case management structure that integrates the processes related to management of cases for the Syariah Court.

Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) – provide a single interface for government employees to efficiently and effectively manage the human resource processes.

Citizen’s adoption strategies of e-government in Malaysia:-
1) Improve legislation on personal data protection, privacy and security so that consumers are protected. Hence, they feel more confident and safer performing online transactions with government.
2) Narrow the digital divide especially in urban so that the citizens are ready and able to adopt online government services.
3) Provide e-Citizen education, skills and training to every citizen about the benefits of using e-government services.

Click here for further information.

e-tailing

Nowadays, e-tailing take part in pure play-type business have the opportunity to gain higher profit margins because the overhead expenses associated with a physical retail space, such as retail space, labour and inventory is significantly alleviated. Pure play allows a retailer to reach customers world wide while they still maintaining in one location for each customer to visit. It is operate for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

Furthermore, e-tailing contains online clothes, online reservation the restaurant, eyeglasses, tourism, e-groceries and others. This is more convenient to us looking for different online categories to shopping.

For example, Dell is direct sell their computers and laptops online. They do not appoint any retailer to sell their product in shop. This is because they are able to save a lots cost through online services. However, they have now start to presence brick and mortar business. There is a first Dell physical store in Malaysia that located in Mid Valley Megamall’s IT World, Kuala Lumpur.

One of the reason that Dell implement this strategy is to increase the market share in the PC market as they have been taken over by Acer as the 2nd in worldwide notebook market. With this strategy, they are able generate more revenue. It enable the customer to physically feel and touch the product. It is more reality compare to the catalogue provided in e-tailing. Then, they may purchase the physical products through their shop.

Beside that, brick and mortar business is able to reduce the possible problem that incurred in e-tailing such as lost shipment, errors in shipments, overbilled customers, faulty products and credit card fraud. All this are often the causes that cause the customer felt unsecure of their product or the transaction process.

Electronic currency

Electronic currency refers to transactions carried out electronically with a net result of funds transferred from one party to another. It is anonymous and reusable. An amount of money must convert to electronic currency before we can spend it. The electronic currency has serial numbers. Each one is issued by a bank and represents a specified sum of real money.

One of the most attractive features of electronics currency to the consumers is confidentiality. Other people will not obtain the information about the buyer during the electronic currency amount being sent to the seller as the bank will have no record of the customer involved in the electronic currency transaction. Unlike credit card companies, they collect customer’s data and may have the probability to sell it to third parties. Therefore, it provides safety protection of customers’ privacy.

The security of electronic currency is provided by the use of encryption. The use of RSA cryptography makes it almost impossible to break the code of a digital signature. In addition, the enacted digital signature statutes require a certification authority to use a trustworthy system. Thus, this improves the security of the transaction.

However, there are some drawbacks of electronic currency. Fraud committed to electronic currency is one of it. If a consumer misplaces his private key and perpetrator uses it to withdraw funds, the bank would never know and the consumer would be liable for it. Besides, if the security code is broken and the message is intercepted, the hacker will be able to perpetrate fraud on the recipient of the message.

Another potential problem is double spending of digital coins. This is only a potential drawback if the consumer chooses a peer-to-peer transaction. This is because the bank is able to check the serial number of each coin in the transaction against its database of spent coins. The transaction will be denied if the coin has been spent. Thus, the consumer will be protected if he includes the intermediary (bank) in the transaction. Otherwise, the consumers have to bear the risk that coins may be intercepted or sent to wrong recipient.

The application of prepaid-cash card for consumers.

A prepaid-cash card is a pre-paid debit card that enables the card holders to make purchases and the payment is deducted from the card’s available balance. It has become popular and widely used in all parts of the world. The most common prepaid-cash card used by Malaysian is Touch ‘n Go card and mobile prepaid card while Octopus card is famously use in Hong Kong.



Touch ‘n Go card may use in many places such as highway and Light Rail Transit (LRT). It is very convenient to the users especially during festival time. Users can easily pass through the counter with Touch-and-Go card. Thus, they do no need to waste their time to buy ticket. Furthermore, Touch ‘n Go card can be used to buy item in some outlets situated in Klang Valley such as Burger King and A&W. Beside that, there will be a plan to replaces credit card with Touch ‘n Go card at petrol station as the dealer of petrol station have to bear the 1% commission for credit card transactions.


Cell phone prepaid card is also a type of prepaid cash card. The users buy those prepaid cash card and reload into their mobile phone account in order to make call or perform any communication purposes. For example, IDD prepaid calling card that uses to make a call to other country.

Octopus card is the most useful prepaid cash card in Hong Kong. It has offered various services for the user. For exmple, user can use those cards to purchases goods in retail outlets and pay for the public transportation services. They are over 10 million transaction incurred everyday.

Overall, the advantage of the prepaid cash card is cardholder themselves can control their expenditure because the payment will become invalid once it exceed the balance available in the card. Thus, cardholder will not overspend their money.

Credit card debts: causes and prevention

Nowadays, most of the adult will have at least one credit card in their wallet. When a person has a credit card, he is able to spend the money before he earns it. This means he is using future money for current expenses.

One of the reasons that cause credit card debts is the cardholders do not payoff their debt or are late in paying off the minimum payment required. This may because the cardholders are too busy with their work and forget about the payment. Thus, the users should set up a direct debit for the minimum amount and pay off as much of the remaining balance as possible to keep the debts low.

Another general reason for credit card debts is overspending. People tend to spend more than what they earn with the credit card. Thus, a monthly spending plan is essential. Without this plan, they may find themselves spending on the credit card unnecessarily and ended up with a plenty of credit card debts. The cardholders also need to be smart in using credit card in place of cash and make sure they can pay off the cost over time.

A person having too many credit cards may also cause credit card debts. The more credit cards a person has, the more likely they are to use them. Hence, it is advisable to clear any outstanding balances and cancel (in writing) cards that no longer used or just use one or two at a time.

When an individual loses their job or some portion of income, he may have difficulties to payoff his debts. Situation will be worse if he continues to spend the same amount with their reduced income. Thus, he should call up the credit card company and explain the situation to them. The credit card company may agree to freeze his card temporary (and perhaps even the interest rate) and let him paxyoff the debt at an agreed amount each month.

In conclusion, the key to keep away from credit card debts is use the credit card wisely. Plan it before spend!

Mobile Payment systems in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumers’ adoption strategies

Mobile payment system is a payment system that emerges due to the development of mobile-commerce (m-commerce) and it is conducted over a wireless telecommunication network.

Last year, there is a mobile payment event held in Thailand. It is to unlocking the business opportunities with mobile payment services. In Malaysia, cash and check payment still account for a large portion of the number of transactions in the economy. Hence, mobile payment system is still very new to all the consumers. Therefore, it has created huge potentials to begin with this service.

First of all, there are almost 88% (25 million) of Malaysian population are subscribing to mobile phone services. With this large number of mobile phone subscribers in Malaysia, it has immense opportunities to leverage on the mobile phone to accelerate the migration to mobile payment.

In term of speed, simplicity, cost and conveniences for the public, mobile payment system has provide an efficient and cost effective method of delivering the financial services even in the remote areas. For example, users can transfer money to their friends, pay bills, meals or even taxi rides by using mobile payment system.

Many of the companies have invited those established brand such as Touch ’n Go, Maybank, Visa International and Nokia to work together in order to provide various avenues of payments and services to their customer. They also offer a special user interface to allow customers payment details, credit balance and recent transaction on the mobile phone screen at any point in time. Those convenient services have attracted the consumers to adopt this payment services.

In future, there will be more adoption of mobile payment as there is acceleration of consumer preferences and technology evolves. However, there still need to strengthen consumer confidence in the security and reliability of mobile networks as a mean for consumers to access financial services.

Here is the article that related to mobile payment system:-
1.http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3667181
2.Malaysia's first mobile payment system launched : News : Communications - ZDNet Asia

3.http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,39001884,00.htmhttp:/www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,39001884,00.htm

Firm Use the Cyber Thugs to Attack Competitors

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) can become a useful tool by the legitimate firms to damage their competitors’ website or servers. However, it only take place in internet.

DDoS attack is an attempt that attacker gain the illegal administrative access to as large amount of compromised systems on the internet as possible to attack a single target. It purposes is to make the computer resource unavailable to its intended users or potential users. The common method of DDoS attack involves the flood of incoming messages to the target systems with external communications requests. Thus, the target system cannot respond to legitimate requests as soon as possible or cannot responds to the valid applications effectively and efficiency.


Normally, the DDoS attack will force the targeted system to reset or close down for few hours even for few days in order to repairs and restore. This is because DDoS attack will consume all the resources of the targeted system that it can no longer provide its intended services or as a communication media between the users and the targeted system.


DDoS attack always used in the business industry on the internet. This attack will seriously influence the operating of the competitors’ computer system especially those websites that major revenue is rely on the online selling or transaction fees. Once the website closes down for few hours or few days, the million in dollar per day will be loss. Furthermore, reputation of the company and the confident of the users will loss due to the DDoS attack to the company system. Thus, most of the companies are afraid to become the target system of DDoS.

How To Safeguard Our Personal and Finaicial Data?

Performance of computer systems and networking have becoming more advance nowadays. It allows corporate to record, store and retrieve huge amounts of data faster and more efficiently than ever before. However, these capabilities have raised the concerns about the privacy of individuals in large networked information technology environments as online threats increased. There are several ways to safeguard our personal and financial data from network.

Firstly, we can download or purchase some software to guard against online threats in order to protect our computer from hackers and spyware. They are easily acquired either from the internet or from the local computer shops. Thus, it will be convenient for all the users to acquire. For examples of those software are Norton Antivirus, McAfee VirusScan, avast!, Girsoft AVG, NOD (Eset) and Spyware Terminator.


Beside that, we should never post our personal information in the chat rooms or on websites as well as enter full information in the online registration forms. This is because it can make you a target for identity theft, stalking or even harassment. In addition, we should never use E-mail or unsecured instant massage(IM) to transmit confidential information because E-mail and free instant massage communications are easily intercepted. Hence, it is not a secure process for transmitting personal information.


Then, a strong financial software password is also one of the methods to improve security of our personal and financial information privacy. A password should not contain personal information and change it constantly. It should be combination of numbers and alphabet. In addition, we should dispose our confidential information properly. It is recommended to dispose the materials in electronic formats (on CD or computer) so the information cannot retrieve by others.

Next, we should never reply to an E-mail, pop-up message that asks for personal or financial information in order to avoid phishing scams. Social engineers often use phishing to impersonate well-known banks, online retailers or credit card companies. They use fraudulent E-mails and websites to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account passwords and social security numbers.

In nutshell, it is advisable that we should protect or safeguard our personal and financial data properly. No matter how sophisticated the Information Technology, we can never be a foolproof!

Phishing: Examples and its Prevention Methods

Phishing may refer as brand spoofing or carding. It is a technique used by the social engineering to gain personal information from recipients for the purposes of identity theft through the fraudulent e-mail messages.

Normally, E-mail of phishing sends to the people who are new to the internet or who are not aware of phishing frauds. These E-mails contain a link that would look like the real link but in fact not. When the users direct click on the link , they are spoof by phishers. PayPal, eBay, MSN, Yahoo, Best Buy and online retail store are often the target of phisher. It may also from anywhere that a person may have to register and supply financial information when register for an account. The link of E-mail may not be obvious to recipients. Thus, those recipients should be careful on not directly click on the links in the E-mail that especially sent by the bank or credit card company. They should call up the company using the listed number provided in the bank statement and not from the phone number provided in the E-mail.


The phisher may also create fraudulent website to required victim to fill in their details such as their names, bank account number, pin number, credit card number, social security number to register and log in. The appearance of the fraudulent website seemed to be similar to the real website. Thus, visitors may not aware of it. As the result, phisher is able to obtain the secure information from the visitor. Therefore, users should verify the website through the sign from www.Verisign.com to avoid the possibility of landing on a spoof website.

Beside that, users may install anti phishing software to protect from frauds and scams by the phishers. Some companies may also use augmenting password logins to prevent the phishing. For example, the Bank of America’s website ID is one of several banks that ask users to select a personal image and display the selected image with any forms that request a password. In addition, users of the bank’s online services are also instructs to enter a password only when they see the image they selected.

Here are some relevent websites and articles:-

http://www.antiphishing.org/
http://www.mozilla.org/security/phishing-test.html
http://www.mailfrontier.com/docs/SurefirePhishingTips.pdf

The Threat of Online Security: How Safe Is Our Data?

Internet has become a critical infrastructure between one another. An individual may use the internet to make their payment while the corporate may use it to deal with their customers or suppliers. Thus, there are a lots personnel and confidential data involved during the transaction.

In e-commerce, online security always been question by the users especially the rate of threat in online security increased recently. Those threats may refer to malicious codes which are virus, Trojan horses and worms. Viruses are the best known in the malicious code categories. It is a piece of software code that inserts itself into an operating system in order to propagate it. However, it does not run independently. It required user to move them from one machine to another.

Then, Trojan horse is a program that appears to have a useful function but in fact it contains a hidden function that presents a security risk. It normally will give the attacker some degree of control over the user’s machine. This control allows the attacker to remotely access and commands to the user’s machine. The data that usually targeted by Trojan horse are usernames and passwords. In addition, Trojan horse may also make the user’s machine become part of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) network where they used to attack other users.

Worm is a type of malicious code that runs independently. It consumes resources of its host and it is capable of propagating the complete working version of itself into another machine. This mean once the worm has attacks the machine and take it over, the worm itself will scan for and attack other machine. Thus, there is not human intervention is required to spread a worm across a network. Besides, the entire process only takes seconds or less to spread over thousand of machines.

In nutshell, proper safeguards should be undertaken by the user to protect their data. They may download antivirus program or any other program to guard against those security problems.

Related info:-

http://www.infosecwriters.com/text_resources/pdf/Mal_Codes_in_Depth.pdf

Identify and Compare the Revenue Model For Goole,Amazon.com and eBay

Revenue model is a description of how the company or an E-Commerce project will earn their revenue. Since E-commerce consists of doing business online or electronically, the revenue models are different from the “brick and mortar” business.

Amazon.com is an E-commerce company. They source and sell variety of products worldwide through their retail website. The products categories include books, electronics & computer, sports & outdoors, tools, auto & industrial and other. Thus, it generates revenue from sale. Beside that, it also generates revenue through co-branded credit card agreements and other marketing and promotional services which is online advertising. There are also subscription service for Amazon Prime and other membership program which the consumers have to pay for the subscription fees. Amazon.com also receives commission and per-unit fees from the sellers through Amazon Enterprise Solution which known as affiliate fees.

Google.com is focused on improving the ways people connect with the information. They maintain the largest and most comprehensive index of websites and other online content in order to make the information freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Thus, Google.com generates their revenue from advertising fee. They enable advertisers to place their display ads on their web sites through Google Adwords. Then, they receive payment from their customer base on the cost per click basis and cost per impression pricing. Google.com also generates their revenue from licensing of their web search technology and the sales and license of other products and services.

eBay is an online marketplace that provide sale of goods and services, online payments services and online communication offerings to diverse community of individuals and businesses. It provides a virtual space for an ongoing auction. Thus, it revenue model is base on transaction fees. The highest of the transaction incurred through eBay, the more revenue they will generate. This is because eBay earns commission based on either volume of the transactions or the fee per transaction conducted at the website. Beside that, it is also generate revenue from advertising.

Amazon.com, Google.com and eBay are providing different type of service in E-commerce. Thus, they are having different kind of revenue model. Amazon.com revenues is mainly generate from sale of products and services to customers while Google.com is mainly generate from advertising fees which the advertising revenue had make up to 99% of their revenue. Then, eBay is generally generates revenue from transaction fees which it had make up to 97% of their revenue.

An Example of an E-commerce Success and its Causes

E-commerce is a system used to conduct business transactions of buying and selling goods and services over a computer network. There are various strategies for the E-commerce to be success. The strategies reasons for success may focus on the marketing, promotional and product or service strategies of the company.

One of the companies’ successes in the E-commerce is Amazon.com. It was launched in 1999 which is an online auction house. There are other same kind of retailers emerged in electronic commerce but Amazon.com was success as best know of E-commerce despite the highly challenging and competitive environment faced by the E-commerce.

The cause of success for Amazon.com is because its informative environment is developing with a strong basic of market knowledge that is customer competition. Beside that, a strong communication and persuading relation with each customer is strongly emphasized in Amazon.com. Thus, Amazon.com able to handle the emerging challenges in market and used the advanced tools to overcome those challenges. At the same time, Amazon.com is able to maintain the balance between the relationship of the company and customer.

Other than that, Amazon.com governs the internet business with the best marketing techniques such as free shipping of product. It also able anticipates the market position, trends and fulfills the demand of its customers. Therefore, it is the favorite website to most of the users. In addition, it is the only website that contains the web books, business brands and retails on a single web-based business. Thus, Amazon.com does not only leads to sale books but also offer a variety of electronic items as well as gifts, video, music, wireless mobile phones, kitchen utensils, health and fitness, automobile, house holds, software, hardware and other. As the result, its items are suitable for all stage of people.

Beside that, Amazon.com continues to invest in the several areas of technology which including the seller platforms, web services and digital initiatives. It is because they want to improve their E-commerce process efficiency and support their infrastructure web service so that the server would not down when too much people visit the website.

In the nutshell, clarify the company key objectives as well as effective coordination in the operation is important for Amazon.com to sustain huge business benefits and success in E-commerce.

Discuss How E-commerce Can Reduce Cycle Time, Prove employees' Empowerment and Facilitate Customer Support

Nowadays, E-commerce has become an integral part in development of the commercial. It reduces the cycle time, improve employees’ empowerment as well as facilitate customer support.

Let us have a look at the aspect of the reduction of cycle time through the use of E-commerce. Cycle time is the total time that a customer placing an order and receiving the goods or services. Traditionally, the company has to pass through manufacturer and retailer before the goods reach to the customers. It is time consumed. However, the existence of E-commerce has speeded up the process of receiving orders and shortens the time to deliver goods or services to the customer. It reduces the cycle time by eliminating the steps in the business process. Thus, the company is able to offer the delivery time that are better than the competitors and increase the competitive advantage in the global.

Then, employees are having greater accountability through the use of E-commerce. Thus, the company improves their empowerment in order for them to access into the information that related to the product or company more easily. This is because employees have to face various complex inquiries from the on-line customers or potential customers. Hence, they often have to obtain information from the company database. However, they are restricted to alter any information without proper permission. For example, when customers do the online shopping, they will have some queries in their mind before placing the orders. Therefore, they will call to the contact centre. Employees with greater empowerment can solve the customers’ problems immediately with the available real-time information. It can also ensure the consistency of information across the channels and help to boost up the sales.

Last but not least, E-commerce can used to facilitate the customer support. E-commerce improves and enhanced customer relationship by providing a broad range of technological solutions and the communication opportunities. In additional, customer support is available 24 hours. Thus, the customerswill get assist when they confront with any problem. As the result, it will increase the customer satisfaction.

An Example of an E-commere Failure and its Causes

Many newly formed DotCom companies around the world failed in year 2000. This is because the market with similar products or services has created intense competition among themselves. The causes of failure can be separated into controllable and uncontrollable causes. The controllable causes can be further divided into strategic, operational and technical causes while uncontrollable can be divided into technical and behavioral causes.

Furniture.com is one of the example of an E-commerce failure. It was a company that sold furniture and other household amenities online. Under controllable causes, Furniture.com failed to make the optimum decision as the entrepreneurs lacked a clear understanding of business fundamental in the areas of finance, marketing, distribution, inventory and other. As a result, Furniture.com had insufficient back-end operations to support front-end demands.

Beside that, Furniture.com was wrongly focused on spending pattern to support or initiate high growth. Thus, they had overspent on marketing and IT infrastructure in an attempt to grow quickly. As the result, it did not pay proper attention to the product differentiation, product quality and back-end infrastructure to support front-end sales and after-sales services. Finally, it suffers a huge loss. For example, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed by Furniture.com, the company generated revenue of $10.9 million in 1999 but loss $46 million because it spent $33.9 million on sales and marketing which was three times the cost of product development, general and administrative expenses combined.

Then, delivery system in Furniture.com is slow. This is under operational cause which the business mainly closed due to its logistics problems. In addition, it often sent the wrong products which resulted in paying extra cost for pick-ups, refunds and reordering. Furthermore, Furniture.com often do not turn up their promised. Hence, shoppers felt irritating and turning them away from the company’s business.

Other than that, server down is the technical cause that makes Furniture.com failed. The web servers often run with interruption. Long server down time in Furniture.com cause the customers quickly lose their interest when they visit the website.

As the result, an E-commerce company must be aware of their delivery and server services. Then, the entrepeneur should have the fundamental knowledge of business in order to manage the company well and sustain in the E-commerce.

The History and Evolution of E-commerce

Electronic commerce (E-commerce) is a process of buying and selling products or services or information over the computer networks. It is a technology mediated exchange between an individuals or organizations. Before the e-commerce being developed, it has been gone through several steps of development and evolution.

Initially, there are not much people having computer. Thus, only cash, check and credit card being used in the daily transaction. E-commerce was started in the early 1970s which allows organizations to transfer funds between one another electronically. Then, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been developed to exchange the business information and do electronic transactions. However, most of the company still unable to interact with each other as there was several different EDI formats that a business could use. Beside that, it is costly and complex to administer for the small business. Thus, EDI not widely accepted. ASC X12 standard has been introduced in 1984. It is more stable and reliable in transferring large amounts of transactions.

In 1992, the Mosaic web-browser was made available. It was the first ‘point and click’ browser. After that, Mosaic browser was adapted into a downloadable browser, Netscape which allow access to E-commerce easily. It provides the users a simple browser to surf the Internet and a safe online transaction technology known as Secure Sockets Layer. Amazon.com and eBay were then launched.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) which was another development of E-commerce after that moment. It allowed quicker access and persistent connection to the internet. This has encouraged people to spend more time online. Then, another major step in E-commerce growth was the Red Hat Linux. It has given the users another choice in a platform other then Windows.

Other than that, AOL (known as online software suite) and Napster were also the major development of the E-commerce. In early 2000, AOL and Time Warner merge and they push for the E-commerce. At that time, many people start to make transaction through E-commerce. This is because people are educated and the living standard has been increase. Hence, more people own computer. Beside that, it is more convenient as the users’ only need to sit at home and all the transaction can be done.

Nowadays, the largest E-commerce is Business to Business (B2Ba). This form of E-commerce had around $700 billion transactions in 2001 by selling their goods to other businesses. It has increase from year to year. The other forms of E-commerce which are growing include Consumer to Consumer (C2C) and Peer to Peer (P2P). In future, there will be more and more people and organization using E-commerce as technology become more advance.

Chee Ling

Sometimes it is hard to introduce yourself because you know yourself so well that you do not know where to start with. Let me give a try to see what kind of image you have about me through my impression about myself and your impression about me are not so different. Here it goes.

My name is Chee Ling. The name gave by my dad who got it when he saw a gecko. This is because gecko in Hockkien is known as “cheeling”. My dad is a conservative people and does not studies much. Therefore, he just gave a name on that moment.

I am a person who is positive about every aspect of life. There are many things I like to do, to see, and to experience. My favorite things to do are reading and collecting books. So, I like to go to bookshop and finding the books that I want to collect. Then, I will go to Starbuck to have a cup of coffee and read the book. Sometimes, it takes me two hours or more. I wanted to be producer but I realize that I don’t have much talent on writing the stories. But I like to imagine. I like to take pictures and chat on the internet. There are several website which are my favorite as they enable me to get more knowledge and meet new friends.

My favorite website will be www.friendster.com. It is a personal network site which has grown to its current size by creating permission-based individual networks of friends and acquaintances through which members can trade messages, view each other’s home pages and write testimonials. Besides that, it allows us to upload new photos and add new friends in our own group. There are also users who used the website for dating purposes.

Other than that, my internet activities will be visiting Google.This is because this website provided a lot of service such as web research, display advertising, e-mail, interactive advertising and other. Web research makes us easy to look for the information from thousand websites in the net. However, thing that attract me the most is the large space mailbox which is available to sign up for free.

I also will visit Cari Forum. Cari forum is probably a website for us to exchange our ideas and information with the people around the world. The discussion in the forum is very wide. The topic may from lawn mowers to animal husbandry and everything in between. There are many unique ideas come out of these open discussions.

Beside that, eBay is a famous online shopping in the net. Many categories were provided to meet the need of consumers. Therefore, consumers can access the Internet about products as well as purchase them at any hour and any day. I often visit this website to buy goods.

www.tudou.com is a website that allows us to load the drama and movie to watch for free. Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan and Chinese’s video are available over this website. We also can register to be member in order to load the video more easily.