An example of an E-Commerce success and its causes

Amozon.com, Inc is an American electronic commerce (e-commerce) company in Seattle, Washington. It is largest online retailers for short of consumer goods. With sales several times that of its competitors, the company has achieved its status as the industry leader by adopting the concept of selling goods via the Internet’s World Wide Web (www). The company presently enjoys significant scale, brand and capital advantages over its rivals.

Amozon.com was founded in 1994, spurred by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO. It offers Earth’s Biggest Selection and seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company and has become the 1^st best know online retailer of the internet. There are a variety of factors that contributes to Amozon.com success story.

The key to Amozon.com success is a strong focus on customer experience, which is infused throughout all levels of the company and includes all aspects of the buying process. It offers competitive price to consumer by putting great effort to connect and interact with wholesalers in order to minimize the cost and able to offer the best lowest price to customer. Besides, no matter how the low price offered, it also makes sure that the product is of the same quality and not quantity as any product offered by competitors with the actual price.

On the other hand, Amozon.com is famous with its wide range of books related to variety of subjects and topic. It also offers lots of products related to different cross-gender, interest, field and area which including music, video, software, health and personal-care, household goods and gifts directly to customer.

In addition, Amozon.com also provides users friendly interface with easy and convenience help to maintain customer royalty. The services which provide to customer such as customize option, email confirmation; easy search and useful information had been strongly support by customers. Besides that, it also provides safe and reliable online payment system to customer. Customer will be always kept informed of the transaction processing system too. Furthermore, Amozon.com also provides guarantees and adopting return policy for the products.

An Example of An E-Commerce Failure and Its Causes

One of an example of an e-commerce failure is Dell of its Business-to-Business(B2B) strategies .

The primary reason is the lack of insight in the research and development area. A lack of knowledge in this area proved to be detrimental because the company was unprepared for the lack of cooperation that other businesses showed in this new idea. “Some observers reckon that Dell’s strong name and recognition may have worked against it, causing the company to be viewed as purely a computer manufacturer rather than a site also for alternative business products”

Even though the business-to-business sounded like a great new opportunity, Dell jumped too quickly at the new idea. The computer industry is extremely competitive with several B2B exchanges taking place on the Web. In turn Dell would not be the top choice for consumers. Therefore, in early January 2001, “A Dell representative said the computer maker closed the B2B exchange because of a lack of demand and unwillingness of customers to participate”. Dell gave up too early in the game because their expected profits were not met. They should have focused on showing consumers that they are not just a PC firm. One way to do this would be to advertise the B2B and demonstrate their reliability and value of their computers. This would target their faithful customers, aiming to enhance the loyalty in the Dell brand name.

Another downfall may have been due to Dell’s choice of suppliers. Choosing the best-fit match in the business world may have been difficult. Maybe if Dell incorporated smaller companies, they would have had more support and the potential for a larger growth. On the other hand, if they were to select a well-known firm, closely related to the computer industry, it could have provided consumers with a high degree of reassurance. For example, combining with Canon or Epson may have been a better B2B E-commerce strategy instead of Motorola which is less expertise.

The B2B exchange is an opportunity for the future of the company, yet it needs to reinvest in research and development before it continues with this idea. Since other companies have been successful in this type of business, it is proven that this is a profitable business if the time and energy is invested properly. However, Dell recklessly jumped into this market and as a result failed after four months. They were not able to obtain the profits they originally predicted.

The historical and evolutions of E-commerce

Electronic commerce (EC) is the process of buying and selling goods, services and information via computer networks.

In the early 1970s, EC applications started developed with electronic funds transfer (EFT), which refers to the computer-based systems used to perform financial transactions electronically. However, the use of these applications was limited to financial institutes, large corporations, and some daring businesses.

To improve the limitation of EFT, Electronic data interchange (EDI) was then developed in the late 1970s. EDI enlarged the pool of participating company from manufacturers, retailers, services, and others. Such systems were called Inter organizational System (IOS) which allows the flow of information to be automated between organizations to reach a desired supply-chain management system and also enables the development of competitive organizations. Apart from that, electronic commerce additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing from the 1990s onwards.

The term ‘electronic commerce’ was coined in the early 1990s when Internet became commercialized and users started to use the World Wide Web. Possibly EC is introduced from the Telephone Exchange Office. The earliest example of many-to-many EC in physical goods was a marketplace which used computers launched in 1982 named Boston Computer Exchange. The first online information marketplace, including online consulting, was likely the American Information Exchange, another pre-Internet online system introduced in 1991.

Here’s a video on the Origins of E-commerce:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wan896ZO4aY&eurl=http://ecommerze.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/the-history-and-evoltion-of-e-commerce/&feature=player_embedded

For evolutions of E-commerce, many innovative applications, ranging from direct online sales to e-learning experiences had been developed since 1995. Almost every organization in the world has a Web site.

In 1999, the emphasis of e-commerce shifted from B2C to B2B.

In 2001, from B2B to B2E, e-government, e-learning, and m-commerce.

In 2005, social networks started to rise and so did l-commerce and wireless applications.

E-commerce will undoubtedly continue to shift and change in the future. As the table below is evolution of E-commerce.

YEAR/EVENT
1984
EDI, or electronic data interchange, was standardized through ASC X12. This guaranteed that companies would be able to complete transactions with one another reliably.

1992
Compuserve offers online retail products to its customers. This gives people the first chance to buy things off their computer.

1994
Netscape arrived. Providing users a simple browser to surf the Internet and a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer.

1995
Two of the biggest names in e-commerce are launched: Amazon.com and eBay.com.

1998
DSL, or Digital Subscriber Line, provides fast, always-on Internet service to subscribers across California. This prompts people to spend more time, and money, online.

1999
Retail spending over the Internet reaches $20 billion, according to Business.com.

2000
The U.S government extended the moratorium on Internet taxes until at least 2005.

Source: http://newmedia.medill.northwestern.edu/courses/nmpspring01/brown/Revstream/history.htm

Discuss how E-Commerce can reduce cycle time, improve employees' empowerment and facilitate customer support

Cycle Time is the amount of time between a customer placing and order and receiving the goods. With e-commerce, customers only need to search what he/she wants, to enter his/her billing information and to sign up for an e-mail confirmation him/herself. It can reduce the cycle time as the organization does not have to do customer service representatives. Besides, it can reduce unnecessary phone calls and mailings. Organization also can make an order anytime through e-commerce. So that, organization will not face the problem of shortage of raw material if without made an order at the working time. Moreover, process through e-commerce can sell directly to customer and reduce the time through the middleman. Internet is available for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in 365 days (anytime). It provides customers a way to shop in their own time without salespeople. Reducing cycle times can increase competitive advantage, decrease carrying costs, decrease shrinkage costs, and improve cash flow.

Employees' empowerment is a strategy for productivity improvement program nowadays. Employees' empowerment may also be apart of e-commerce. Empowered salespeople customer service employees are given the authority to make customer satisfy, do it quickly, and helping to increase customer loyalty. E-commerce allows the decentralization of decision making and authority via empowerment and distribution system.

E-commerce brings more convenience to customer and facilitates customer support. Example: e-commerce allows customer make payment via bank-in, credit card and bank check. It also allow customer to shop or perform other transaction year around, anytime, anywhere. Customer can select from many vendors and from many products, let customer can conduct quick comparison.

Otherwise, customer can locate relevant and detailed product information in second. It also can participate in virtual auctions, allow sellers to sell things quickly. Some products have facilitated customization and personalization of products and services. So, e-commerce provided many facilitate and increase customer support.