1. Visit http://yahoo.com and http://facebook.com as examples of online communities.
What is meant by an online community and how is it important for e-commerce?
Online community by definition is a group of people that communicate each other using internet as a media. Examples of tools used in this communication are newsletter, instant messages, email and telephone. Online communities are generally used to share with other people on the web. Yahoo! provides different features such as Answers, Groups, Dating, Local and Yahoo! Messenger. These are various ways to share opinions (Local), knowledge (Answers), interests (Groups), feelings (Dating) or maybe only for chatting with friends (Yahoo! Messenger). As Facebook main slogan advertises “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life“ just to point out the aim of the website. Facebook, also, offers a wider variety of services such as pictures upload, instant messaging, mails, treads and many more.
Each online community tends to offer everything a visitor may need in order to make a guest with no need of visiting other sites. Facebook, for instance, provides many additional features intended to keep users busy browsing new tools every time they connect. E-commerce takes advantage of these additional features to create a community of users within a commercial website. The more visitors a website has the larger profits it may have.
Is there a common thread and a local community sense in action?
In the Yahoo! website there are many categories and, obviously, each has a defined thread even though chat and group seem to be the main way to create a community. In the chat rooms and Groups the are not common threads even because they can be created and joined by everybody. On the other hand, Facebook website tends to aim specifically on pictures and messages sharing. Many third-party features allow visitors to enjoy their time on the website doing various activities but here there is certainly a main thread common for everyone such as sharing pictures. Both Yahoo! and Facebook have localizations of their websites making easier for users to access the content in their own language. It is not a community sense dictated by the websites but the users usually tend to create a local community often driven by language differences.
2. Visit the famous online store front at http://www.amazon.com
Why has it been a successful site? How does the purchase of a book work?
Amazon is nowadays the most popular online retailer in the world. It operates in seven countries and it claims 64 million active customers. Amazon started in 1995 as an online books seller with an incredible success. In the following years it expanded its range of merchandise in electronics, music, DVD and so on. Amazon offers a wide range of categories counted as 31 and at some of the lowest prices in the market. These have been the main factors of its success. Other factors can be addressed as the user friendly web site and the community created within it in which discussions can be started on an item, suggestions to similar items are shown and editorial reviews for the books are included. To buy an item is relatively simple. In a case of a book, users just have to browse for the requested book, choose the item that better suits their needs and add it to the shopping cart. Shopping cart is a list of the items a user is interested to buy and when at least one object is present in it the option to “proceed to checkout” appears. Clicking on this new option customers will have to sign in or creating an account if they do not have one and a payment procedure will start. After entering details of payment, the operation is complete and the item is placed in the order form to be subsequently delivered to the customer location
Are there any secure transactions not involving money?
Amazon.com provides a self-designed method of payment called Amazon Flexible Payment Service (FPS) which ensures confidentiality and integrity of the data transferred with this method. All the sensitive data is also protected by an Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection to prevent any leak of information. Amazon.com offers other ways of retailing instead of simply buying and selling. A service called “Trade in” is used to exchange goods for amazon.com gift cards. This method does not involve any money transaction because the customer is just sending a good. Customers sends a product to a define amazon.com address and upon receipt of that good, amazon.com just deposits a gift card into the customer account. A SSL connection is in use when a trade in transaction is started to protect a misuse of the service. However, this service is still a beta phase, which means this project is still being tested
3. What happens with new models emerging such as price comparison sites?
The Internet nowadays made extremely easy to check a variety of different retailers before purchasing an item. However, the Internet offers an enormous amount of websites and to visit all of them is quite hard. Then, price comparison sites are being used to quickly scan through a various number of online shops to compare the price of the items being sold. On a customer perspective, this new tool is extremely useful having to check just one website instead of hundreds. On the other hand, showing the prices and easily comparing them may have a strong impact on the retailers. Many shops can be negatively affected being forced to reduce their price list having to compete with online retailers and multinational companies who are able to afford to sell at lower prices. Pros and cons are to be considered in the development of the sales future.
References
By De Vries, L. (2005) Amazon: E-Commerce Success Story. Nearly $7 Billion In Sales Last Year, from Banjos To Back Ribs. Retrieved
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Nayak, R. (2009). The State of
Amazon Payments. (n.d.). Retrieved
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