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E-commerce
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Overview of
E-commerce
• Definition:
Electronic Commerce (EC) describes the process
of buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging
products, services, and information usingcomputer network and the Internet. It also
include servicing customers, collaborating with
business partners, conducting e-learning, intra
business activities, and conducting electronictransactions within an organization.
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E-commerce forms
• EC can take several forms depending onthe degree of digitization of :
1-product 2-process 3-Deleivary agent.
All of them can be physically or digitally.
• examples: buying SW is pure digitally,buying a shirt is partially digital and
partially physically.• Any transaction that is partially digital is an
E-commerce transaction.
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• EC organization are pure physicallyorganizations, but companies engaged only inEC are virtual organizations.
• EC can done over the:1-Internet 2-Value-Added networks ( VAN) that
add communication services to existing commoncarriers such as LAN.
* For example: buying food from vending machine,buying with smart cards or cell phone are all ECactivities.
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Types of EC transactions
1-Business to business (B2B): seller and buyer are
organizations.
2- collaborative commerce (c-commerce): sharing
business activities electronically.3-Business to consumer (B2C): seller is an
organization, buyers are individuals.
4-consumer to business (C2B): consumer names aservice, the organization try to fulfill it. (it looks
for a supplier to the service).
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5-consumer-to-consumer (C2C): individual sellsproduct to other individual.
6-intra business (intraorganization) commerce:internally improve org. functions.
7-government to citizens (G2C) or others:government provides services to citizens usingEC technologies. It can do business to other governments.
8- mobile commerce (MC): EC is done in awireless environment, using cell phones toaccess the Internet.
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EC models
• Some of the major EC models are:
1-Online direct marketing sell directly tocustomers.
2-Name-your-price (use priceline.com)
3-Find the best price: specify your need,compare prices, choose the best price.
4-virtual marketing: spread your brand onthe NET.
5-membership model: for members only.
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EC benefits
• To organization:
1- Expands a company’s market place to nationaland international markets.
2- decreases cost of creating, processing,distributing, storing, and retrieving information bydigitized process.
3-enables companies to get material and services
from other companies faster and cheaper.4-enables small business to compete with large
ones.
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EC benefits
• To customers
1-provide less expensive products and servicesprovided by online services.
2- gives customers more choices to select from.3-makes it possible for people to work and study
at home.
4-allows consumers to communicate and
exchange ideas.5-enables customers to shop 24 hours daily.
6-delivers detailed information in seconds.
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EC benefits
• To society
1- enable individual to work at home, and do
less traveling.
2- allows some good to be sold at low prices
which increase the living standards.
3-enables people in developing countries toenjoy products and services that are not
available in these countries.
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Limitations and
failures of EC• There are technical and not technical limitations which
slowed the growth of EC, some of which are:
A- Technical limitations:
1-lack of universally accepted standards.
2-insufficient telecommunications bandwidth
3-still-evolving SW development tools.
4-difficulties of integrating the Internet and EC applicationsand SW with some existing applications and DBs
(especially legacy).5-need for special WEB servers.
6-expensive and inconvenient Internet accessibility.
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• B- Non Technical limitations:
1-unresolved legal issues (for quality, security, andreliability).
2-lack of national and international government regulations
and industry standards.3-lack of mature methods for measuring EC benefits.
4-many sellers and buyers wait for EC to stabilize beforethey take part.
5-customers resistance to change from real to virtual store.6-thinking that EC is expensive and unsecured.
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EC mechanisms
• The most common are:
A-Electronic auctions B-Portals
- Electronic Auctions:
A mechanisms where sellers place offers and
buyers make sequential bids. It uses competitive
nature for reaching a final price.
• The Internet provide an efficient infrastructure,• a less expensive and with many participants of
sellers and buyers.
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Auction types
1- Forward: used as a selling channel for oneseller to many buyers.
- products are placed in a site like eBay.com.
Sellers and buyers can individuals. They bidcontinuously and the heights bidder wins theitems.
2- Reverse auctions: there is one buyer, (an
organization) that wants to buy a product or services. Then suppliers are invited to submitbids. Online bidding is fast and attracts manybidders. The lowest bid wins.
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Auction Benefits
• Benefits to sellers:
- Increase revenues in a short period of
time.
- More buyers means more optimized
selling prices.
- Saves auction fees, administrativeexpenses.
- Enables more liquidation
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• Benefits to buyers
- increased chances to find unique products.
- Chance to bargain instead of buying afixed price.
- Entertainment buyers enjoy e-buying.
- Anonymity buyers remain anonymous.
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Portals
• E-commerce portals:
As the Internet and Intranets are widely used,
more and more information are gathered which
(overload) . Information is scattered acrossdocuments, e-mail messages, and database in
different locations and systems. This makes
finding accurate and relevant information takes
time and requires access to multiple systems.
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• To solve this problem PORTALS are used.
• Portal is an information gateway. It
attempts to address information overload
through an intranet-based environment to
search and access relevant information
from disparate IT system and Internet
using advanced indexing and searchtechniques.
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• Information portal:
A single point of access through a Web
browser to critical business information
located inside and outside an organization
and it can be personalized.
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Types of Portals
Portals vary according to audiences and contents.We consider five types:
1- commercial (public): offer routine contents for
different audiences, most popular on theInternet, intended for broad audiences.
Examples : yahoo.com, lycos.com
2-publishing portals: intended for specific groups of
specific interests. They provide extensive on linesearch.
examples: techweb.com and zdnet.com
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3-personal portals: contain specific filtered
information for individuals. Offer narrowcontents for one audience. Example anypersonal web page.
4-mobile portals: accessible from mobile
devices.5-voice portals: web sites with audio
interface, they can be accessed by a
standard phone or cell phone.
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Legal and Ethical issues in
E-Commerce
• When buyers and sellers do not know
each other and can not even see each
other (they may be in different countries),
there is a chance that dishonest peoplewill commit fraud and other crimes over
the Internet.
• Internet fraud has grown very fast evenfaster than the Internet itself.
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E-commerce
• Process of buying, selling, transferring, exchangingproducts, services, or information over computer networks
• Pure versus partial
– Based on degree of digitization• Product
• Process
• Intermediary
– Pure requires all three components to be fully digitized
• Internet versus non-Internet – Most are Internet based
– May be value-added networks or local area networks
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E-commerce Transactions
• Business-to-business (B2B)
• Business-to-consumer (B2C)
• Consumer-to-consumer (C2C)
• Consumer-to-business (C2B)• Government-to-citizens (G2C)
• Collaborative commerce between partners
• Business to employees
• Intrabusiness/Intraorganizational commerce• Mobile commerce (M-commerce)
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Scope of E-commerce
• Applications supported by infrastructure – Hardware
– Software
• Messaging, multimedia, interfaces, business services
– Networks• communications
• Support areas – People
– Legal and public policy and regulations
– Marketing and advertisements – Support services ranging from payments to order delivery
– Business partnerships like joint ventures, e-marketplaces,affiliations
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Advantages
• Advantages: – Expands marketplace globally
– Expands availability of resources
– Shortens marketing-distributionchannels
– Decreases expenses
– Reduces inventory – Aids small businesses in
competing
– Enables specialized niches
– Quicker delivery of information
– Enables individuals to work from
home – Facilitates delivery of public
services
– Allows for purchase of goods at lowered prices
– Enables customization,personalization
– Decreases costs tocustomers, while increasingtheir choices
– Allows for 24 hour shopping
– Makes electronic auctionspossible
– Enables people to interactin electronic communities
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Limitations
• Limitations: – Lack of universal standards
– Insufficient bandwidth
– Software-development tools are still evolving
– Integration difficulties
– Need for special Web servers in addition to network servers
– Accessibility expensive
– Unresolved legal issues
– Lack of national and international governmental regulations
– Lack of mature methodologies to measure benefits and justify
– Customer resistance
– Security questions – Insufficient number of buyers and sellers for profitable e-commerceoperations
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E-commerce Mechanisms
• Electronic auctions – Competitive market mechanisms
• Forward auctions
– Sellers place offers and buyers make sequential bids
• Reverse auctions
– Sellers are invited to submit bids on product or service buyer wants
• Bartering – Exchange of goods or services without money transactions
• Portals
– Information gateways• Single point of access through Web browser
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Portals
• Commercial – Offer content to broad audiences
• Routine
• Little personalization
• Publishing – Based on specific interests
• Extensive search capabilities
• Personal – Target specific filtered information
• Narrow content• Personalized
• Mobile – Accessible through mobile devices
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Portals
• Voice – Audio interfaces
– Accessible through phones
• Corporate
– Access to business information located both withinand outside of organization
• Rich content
• Limited communities
• Organized focal point
– Suppliers – Customers
– Employees
– Supervisors
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Legal and Ethical Issues
• Fraud – Seller’s and buyer’s
• Buyer protection
• Seller protection – Unwarranted repudiation
– Intellectual property rights – Domain names
• Privacy issues – Cookies
– Web tracking
– Sales of lists
– Monitoring e-mails and site visits• Taxation
• Disintermediation
• Intellectual Property issues