Ebusiness
Biggest benefit of the internet: how it enables organizations to
perform business with anyone, anywhere, anytime.
· Ecommerce- the buying and selling of goods and services over the
internet.
- It refers only to online transactions.
· Ebsuiness- derived from the term Ecommerce. It is the conducting of
business on the internet, not only buying and selling, but also serving
customers and collaborating with business partners.
- Also refers to online exchanges if information.
Ebusiness Models
· Ebusiness Model- is an approach to conducting electronic business on
the internet
- Takes place between two major entities- business and
consumers.
Business-to-business (B2B)
· Applies to business buying from and selling to each other over the
internet.
· Electronic marketplaces represent a new wave in B2B ebusiness
models.
· Electronic marketplaces or emarketplaces- are interactive business
communities providing a central market space where multiple buyers and sellers
can engage in business activities.
- They represent structures for conducting commercial exchange,
consolidating supply chains, and creating new sales channels.
Business-to-business Emarketplace Overview.
· Their sell almost anything, from services to direct
materials.
Business-to-consumer (B2C)
·Applies to any business that sells its products or services to
consumers over the internet.
Eshop
·Sometimes referred to as an estore or etailer. It is a
version of a retail store where customers can shop at any hour of the day
without leaving their home or office.
· These online stores sell and support a variety of products and
services.
·The other online businesses channeling their goods and services via
the internet only, such as Amazon.com, are called pure plays.
Types of Businesses:
· Brick-and-mortar business- a business that operates in a physical
store without an internet presence.
· Pure-play (virtual) business- a business that operates on the
internet only without a physical store. Examples include Amazon.com and
Expedia.com
· Click-and-mortar business- a business that operates in a physical
store and on the internet. Examples include REI and Barnes and
Noble.
Email
· Email- consists of a number of eshops. It serves as a gateway through
which a visitor can access other eshops.
- It may be generalized or specialized depending on the products
offered by the eshops it hosts.
- Eshops in emails benefit from brand reinforcement and increased
traffic as visiting one shop on the email often leads to browsing “neighboring”
shops.
Consumer-to-business (C2B)
· Applies to any consumer that sells a product or service to a business
over the internet.
· An example is Priceline.com where bidders (or customers) ser their
prices for items such as airline tickets or hotel rooms, and a seller decides
whether to supply them.
Consumer-to-consumer (C2C)
· Applies to sites primarily offering goods and services to assist
consumers interacting with each other over the internet.
·The internet’s most successful C2C online auction website, eBay,
links like-minded buyers and sellers for a small commission.
· C2C online communities, or virtual communities, interact via email
groups, web-based discussion forums, or chat rooms.
Online auctions:
· Electronic auction (eauction)- sellers and buyers solicit consecutive
bids from each other and prices are determined dynamically.
· Forward auction- an auction that sellers use as a selling channel to
many buyers and the highest bid wins.
· Reverse auction- an auction that buyers use to purchase a product or
service, selecting the seller with the lowest bid.
C2C Communities:
· Communities of interest- people interact with each other on specific
topics, such as golfing and stamp collecting.
·Communities of relations- people come together to share certain life
experience, such as cancer patients, senior citizens, and car
enthusiasts.
· Communities of fantasy- people participate in imaginary environments,
such as fantasy football teams and playing one-to-one with Michael
Jordan.
Ebusiness Benefits and Challenges.
Ebusiness Benefits:
· Highly Accessible- businesses can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, and 365 days a year.
· Increased Customer Loyalty- additional channels to contact, respond
to, and access customers helps contribute to customer loyalty.
· Improved Information Content- in the past, customers had to order
catalogs or travel to a physical facility before they could compare price and
product attributes. Electronic catalogs and web pages present customers with
updated information in real time about goods, services, and prices.
· Increased Convenience- Ebusiness automates and improves many of the
activities that make up a buying experience.
· Increased Global Reach- Business, both small and large, can reach new
markets.
·Decreased Cost- the cost of conducting business on the Internet is
substantially less than traditional forms of business communication.
Ebusiness Challenges:
·Protecting Consumers- consumers must be protected against unsolicited goods and
communication, illegal or harmful goods, insufficient information about goods or
their suppliers, invasion of privacy, and cyberfraud.
·Leveraging Existing Systems- most companies already use information technology to conduct
business in non-Internet environments, such as marketing, order management,
billing, inventory, distribution, and customer service. The internet represents
an alternative and complementary way to do business, but it is imperative that
ebusiness systems integrate existing sytsems in a manner that avoids duplicating
functionality and maintains usability, performance, and reliability.
· Increasing Liability- Ebsuiness exposes suppliers to unknown liabilities because internet
commerce law is vaguely defined and differs from country to country. The
internet and its use in ebusiness have raised many ethical, social, and
political issues, such as identity theft and information
manipulation.
·Providing Security- The internet provides universal access, but companies must protect
their assets against accidental or malicious misuse. System security, however,
must not create prohibitive complexity or reduce flexibility. Customer
information also needs to be protected from internal and external misuse.
Privacy systems should safeguard the personal information critical to building
sites that satisfy customer and business needs. A serious deficiency arises from
the use of the internet as a marketing means. Sixty percent of internet users do
not trust the internet as a payment channel. Making purchases via the internet
is considered unsafe by many. The issue affects both the business and the
consumer. However, with encryption and the development of secure websites,
security is becoming less of a constraint for ebusinesses.
·Adhering to Taxation Rules- the internet is not yet subject to the same level of taxation as
traditional businesses. While taxation should not discourage consumers from
using electronic purchasing channels, it should not favor internet purchases
over store purchases either. Instead, a tax policy should provide a level
playing field for traditional retail businesses, mail-order companies, and
internet-based merchants. The internet marketplace is rapidly expanding, yet it
remains mostly free from traditional forms of taxation. In one recent study,
uncollected state and local sales taxes from ebusiness were projected to exceed
$60 billion in 2008.
Mashups
· Web mashup- a website or web application that uses content from more
than one source to create a completely new service.
·The web version of a mashup allows users to mix map data, photos,
video, news feeds, blog entries and so on.
·Application Programming Interface (API)- set of routines, protocols,
and tools for building software applications. A good API makes it easier to
develop a program by providing all the building blocks.
· Mashup editors- they are WYSIWYGs (What You See Is What You Get) for
mashups. They provide a visual interface to build a mashup, often allowing the
user to drag and drop data points into a web application
