1. Visit http://yahoo.com and http://facebook.com as examples of online communities
a. What is mean by an online community and how is it important for ecommerce?
The online community is also known with the name “social network site” is a virtual community that exists on the internet and whose members enable its existence through joining in membership rituals. The online community is a form of an information system that everyone in over the world can post any of content under the management of administrator. (Wikipedia, 2010). In addition, today online communities have become a supplemental type of communication, every member can communicate through many form such as voice, chat, blogs, video conference, forum that they can share each other any ideas, picture, movie, or something else. These are some advantages that assist enormously for e-commerce. Community will keep the customer coming back to the website that they access again. Moreover, that customer can also introduce their friends visit that website, as a result, the number of customers will increase possessively.
b. Is there a common thread and a local community sense in action?
The answer is yes. These are listed below:
- Select and search by categories
- Registration, profile management, shopping online, auction.
- Some website can detect the living region of visitors
- News, Forum or Group belong to local community.
Wikipedia (2010). Online Community. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_community
2. Visit the famous online store front at http://www.amazon.com
a. Why has it been a successful site? How does the purchase of a book work?
Today, we all know Amazon is one of the largest websites selling the books; it achieves the top ranks in a very short time. To succeed like this, Amazon website often offer the following:
- A decent price.
- Almost available anything people wish.
- They have extra information for a large number of books like reader’s comments.
- International sale is also one of the successful reasons.
- Convenience: customers go online instead of go to the store and certainly, customer can buy the book they want.
- Good quality and reliability in products
According to Amazon.com (2010), claims that to purchase of a book at Amazon is quite easy. The customers do not need to create their account first. It will be created automatically when people place the first order online. These are the steps to place an order:
1. Find the products you wish
2. Add the products to Shopping Cart
3. Proceed to Checkout
4. Sign in or Create a New Account
5. Enter a Shipping Address
6. Select a Shipping Method
7. Provide payment information
8. Review and submit
9. Check Your Order Status.
b. Are there any secure transactions not involving money.
Yes, they use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to encrypt confidential information between user browser and Amazon web server in customer self-service tools during transactions. Some self-services are “Account Profile”, “Billing & Addresses”, “Ordering Settings”, “Lists” and “Your Content”.
Reference
Amazon.com (2010). Ordering. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_navbox_lnor_new?nodeId=524700
3. What happens with new models emerging such as price comparison sites?
As Wikipedia (2010) states, a price comparison service is also know as shopping comparison or price engine allows customers to view the difference prices of the specific products from other websites. The major function of this service is to compare different retailers pricing on a specific product, hence, the customers can find the best deal (ArticlesBase, 2009).
There are three main sites that provide this component are Pricewatch, Pricegrabber, and Nextag. These websites will control and manage most of the market. Accordingly, this will promote the competition between the retailers; they have to give some strategy about prices and quality to attract customer.
References
Articlesbase (2009). Development of price comparing sites. Retrieved from http://www.articlesbase.com/domain-names-articles/development-of-price-comparing-sites-800182.html
Wikipedia (2010). Price comparision service. Retrieve from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_comparison_service
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