Question 1
Part A
- Online Community
There are different explaination on the word "community", the best I found in the Oxford Dictionary is that community is "an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location".
Online community is a virtual community which grouping people with common interests and values together through the network and electronic means. The people within the community communicate and interact each other with words, picture, symbols and video clips, but not interacting face to face.
The interaction within the community can be online and offline, instant and batch processing. With the network such as Internet, the community can be national and multinational.
- Importance of Online Community to e-commerce
In term of the e-commerce, the online community is important for collecting the information, for example, the current trend of the community. Survey to collect information for improving product and inventing new products.
The more important is to promote the products. As the community sharing common values, when a product a company found is suitable for them, they will become that target group of the product.
Part B
(i)
- Common thread and local community sense in action at http://ebay.com, http://ebay.co.uk, http://ebay.com.au
By observing the websites, the look and feel of the eBay are similar.
The category within the website is slightly different, it may be the results of the different habits in different countries. When looking for an item, the system will locate the items within the same country or region. The currency is exchanged into the local currency. It is found to be local community sense because the habits and trends are different throughout the countries.
(ii)
- Electronic payment systems and acceptability
In eBay, PayPal is the only electronic payment system used. According to the PayPal (2009), PayPal works with 190 countries and regions and 18 currencies.
However, there are only 17 countries and regions provided with total payment solution. 48 countries and regions can send, receive and withdraw money via mostly US bank account. In the other countries it supports, PayPal can only send money.
As a result, it is found to be not globally acceptable.
- Beneifts of online auction sale to a buyer, a seller and eBay owner
In terms of the buyers, they can buy the goods with a lower cost or the cost within budget.
In terms of the seller, they can post whatever used or unused items they want to sell to the site for auction. Some people seems it is a environmental friendly actions. When a new product is put to auction it can be used to test product to the market.
In terms of the eBay owner, payment should be done on each transaction. According to eBay.au's FAQ, personal account should pay 3.4%+0.3 AUD for domestic transactions. Premier and business account should pay 1.1% to 2.4% + 0.3 AUD for domestic transactions.
Part CThree other examples of online business using online community approach.hk.auctions.yahoo.comYahoo Auctions links people for buying and selling of the things they are interested. The website grouped the products into different categories. The users can also leave comments and ask question through the system.
The auctions and shopping site from yahoo are existing in some regions. Some of the regions provides either of them only. The
Yahoo Shopping site links different kind of shops such as traditional shops, chain shops and professional shops for users to find the product they needs and compare the price with the similar products.
taobaoTaobao is business website from
Alibaba. It is a Chinese based trading website. It links with companies and individual for trading.
Just like yahoo auctions, comments and rating of the seller are shown for users to see if the person can be trust or not.
Red-dotsRed-dots is a website for auctions and sellings, it provide two languages - Chinese and English for user to access.
Like Taobao and Yahoo's services, the website links with the companies and individual for trading but serve mostly localized in Hong Kong.
Question 2a. Why www.amazon.com has been a successful site? How does the purchase of a book work?The original Amazon website is a online book store. It become a successful site because it adds new kind of products such as Music CDs and videos. The more important change is that the users can write the review of the products/books on the website, let people who interested with the product to read for product evalution
(Erny).
When buying a book, first we enter the Amazon website, we move the mouse pointer to the book category from the upper left corner. We can see there are four kind of sub-categories - Books, Kindle Books, Textbooks and Magazines.
Figure 1. Categories of products in Amazon.com
By selecting different category, the page change with its searching methods.
Figure 2. Page for Search textbook
After we selecte the book as the category, the books which are best seller, New and Pre-order books are shown. At this point, we can also choose the kind of books available via the menu on the left such as Crafts & Hobbies and Entertainment.
With a selected book, the user can see the product rating, details, price, versions such as hard cover, paperback, editorial and customer review and discussion available. User can know information by reading them.
Figure 3. Selected a book
Check out is required after books and products are added into
shopping cart, Amazon requires registered user to purchase books. Login or create a new account leads user to
Shipping and payment page. At this page, the product delivery method should be choose with decision of ordering gift.
Figure 4. Delivery
Figure 5. Wrap Gift
When the credit card information is entered, an order can be placed to user according the delivery method selected.
Figure 6. Credit card information page
b. any secure transaction not involoving money?Transaction on a downloadable game comes without money. It is quite unexpected that credit card information is required when checkout the $0 item.
c. Range of item can buy in Amazon.com
- Movies, Music and Games
- Digitial Downloads
- Kindle
- Computer and Office
- Electronics
- Home and Garden
- Grocery, Health and Beauty
- Toys, Kids and Baby
- Apparel, Shoes and Jewelry
- Sports and Outdoors
- Tools, Auto and Industrial
Question 3With the comparison sites, the customers can compare the price, features and specification of the products with different manufacturers. User review, test reports of the product is also included with the product page for user to determine the product they need. (Kelli, 2008)
Although, each website have different parameters on evulate the products. However, the customer can buy the product with better feature product with the new price comparison sites. (Kelli, 2008)
Reference:
AskOxford, Retrieved 11 March 2009 from http://www.askoxford.com/?view=uk
PayPal, PayPal Worldwide, Retrieved 11 March 2009 from https://www.paypal.com/hk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-approved-signup-countries-outside&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1fa798f5a5f5ae42e779d4b5655493f6170e35f7dda078d0f4
PayPal, PayPal FAQ, Retrieved 11 March 2009 from http://pages.ebay.com.au/useprotection/basic-faq.html#a5
Erny, D. (n.d.), Internet History, Retrieved 15 March 2009 from http://www.internet-story.com/
Kelli B. G. (10 October, 2008), Which Comparison Shopping Site Is Best?, Retrieved 18 March 2009, http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/deals/which-comparison-shopping-site-is-best/?hpadref=1
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