J.S.S.Y's E-Commerce World

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers.
Prepaid cash card is a plastic card which provides an alternative payment method to cash when making purchases. Before using, the cardholder need to load funds to his/her card account at a bank, post office, payzone or paypoint terminals. Besides, cardholder also can load the funds by bank transfer or credit card. Moreover, using prepaid cash card has no risk of running into debt because it has no credit or overdraft facility. In addition, prepaid cash card allows consumers to have better control over their finance.

The application of prepaid cash card for consumers are:

• Paying bills - rent, utilities, insurance, car payment, and cell phone bills can be paid instantly.
• Purchase and online puchases can be made without cash.
• Remittance - funds transfer within and across two accounts
• Paying for tolls - use Touch n Go card (prepaid cash card) at all highways in Malaysia, major public transports in Klang Valley, selected parking sites and theme park.

Consumer benefits for having prepaid cash card:

• This payment option quickly and securely moves "Checking Account Like" funds without the hassle or risks involved with paper checks.
• Security features such as personal identification numbers (PINs) also protects consumers against theft and fraud. Consumers prefer prepaid cash cards because they act virtually the same as cash, only much more secured.
• Funds transfer - consumers can conveniently and inexpensively transfer funds to friends and relatives anywhere.
• Bill payment & online purchases -consumers can pay bills and purchase products and services online or through phone calls.

On my opinion, it appears prepaid cash card brings a lot of benefits to the business world, even for daily transactions. Moreover, the customers have a more secured way to spending their money by reloading cash for the prepaid cash card.

References:
http://www.touchngo.com.my/
http://www.onedebit.com/PrepaidDebitCardsOD.pdf

Revenue model for Google, Amazon.com and eBay
Google, Amazon.com and eBay is a successful e-commerce websites. Now, we would like to analyze their revenue model on they generate a superior return on invested capital. In e-business, the 5 major revenue models are sales revenue model, transaction fee revenue model, advertising revenue model, subscription revenue model and affiliate revenue model.

Google AdSence

Google AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, video advertisements on their sites. Revenue is generated on a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis and the ads are administered by Google. Same as Google AdWords, Google AdSense also generating affiliate fees, but it charge based on per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed.

Froogle

Froogle is a price engine that makes visitor easy to find information about products for sale online. Froogle is different from most other price engines in that it neither charges any fees for listings, nor accepts payment for products to show up first. Also, it makes no commission on sales. In adiition, Froogle is a engine that help visitors search the products for sale online and no charge any fees.

Get more information from Google advertising program and Google’s revenue model

Amazon.com

Amazon.com is was one of the first major companies to implement online sales and it is successfully popularizing online sales. Now, Amazon ahs became a largest online retailer selling all kinds of merchandise, including books, VHS, DVD, music CDs and MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, etc.

The main sources of Amazon’s revenue are sales and transaction fees. The internet users can sold or buy a items directly by a third party through Amazon Marketplace. For any item being sold, Amazon will charge a commission based on the sale price, a transaction fee, and a variable closing fee. Transaction fee is charged at fixed fee, which is $0.99 per transaction and a closing fee varies with the type of trade and item traded.

Apart from that, Amazon also derives revenue from affiliate fees by setting up an affiliate marketing program. Website owners can create an online store on their own site. However, the online store can only sell the items from Amazon store. A referral fees will be paid to the website owner and normally it is in the range of 4% to 10% of the product price.

Whereas eBay is an online auction and shopping website where people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. eBay generates revenue from the transaction fee revenue model. eBay provides Internet platforms of choice for global commerce, payments and communications to public and charged a transaction fees, such as insertion fees, final value fees, promotional fees and reservation fees.

CONCEPT OF E-COMMERCE
What is Electronic Commerce? Electronic commerce or also better known as e-commerce is narrowly defined as buying and selling products or services over the Internet. The concept has been broadened to include all business activities of a sales cycle. In short it embodies the concept of doing business online using the Internet to in an efficient and effective way. Besides that, it is also about letting the customers to control the access to a business's computer system so that they can serve their purchasing needs. The development of e-commerce is largely responsible for many successful names such as Amazon, eBay, Priceline and Expedia, to name a few.

HISTORY OF E-COMMERCE
E-commerce has emerged into a multi-billion dollar industry even before the personal computers prevailed. This industry in fact is the most influential and the fastest growing industry in the world. How did this exactly happened? By looking into the evolution of e-commerce, it would be easier for us to judge the trends of e-commerce in the future. Hence, let's go back in time to see how e-commerce started and evolved till today. The history of e-commerce is actually the history of how Information Technology has transformed business processes. The most popular activity on the Web is shopping. It has much allure in it, it lets you shop at your leisure, anytime, and anywhere. It all started in the late 1970s, when the ability to use electronic technologies such as the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) appeared. This allowed organizations to send commercial documentation electronically. The EDI was standardized through ASCX12 to guarantee that companies would be able to complete transaction reliably with one another in 1984.

In year 1991, e-commerce became possible when the Internet was opened for commercial use. Since then, thousands of businesses have taken up residence at the websites. At first, the term e-commerce meant the process of execution of commercial transactions electronically with the help the EDI and EFT which gave an opportunity for users to exchange business information and do electronic transactions. In 1992, CompuServe offered online retail services to its customers, which gave people the first chance to but things through their computers. In 1994, the Netscape arrived and provided its users a simple browser which can be used to serve the Internet and provided its users a safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer. Although the Internet began to advance in popularity among the general public in 1994, it took approximately four years to develop the security protocols like http and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) which allowed rapid access and a persistent connection to the Internet.

Amazon.com, is one of the most famous e-commerce companies and is located in Seattle, Washington (USA). It was founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos and was one of the first American e-commerce companies to sell products over the Internet. Amazon.com was considered as an online bookstore, but in time it extended a variety of goods by adding electronics, software, DVDs, video games, music CDs, MP3s, apparel, footwear, health products and more. In 2000, a great number of business companies in the United States and Western Europe represented their services in the World Wide Web. At this time people began to define the term e-commerce as the process of purchasing of available goods and services over the Internet using secure connections and electronic payment services. Although the dot-com collapse in 2000 led to unfortunate results and many of e-commerce companies disappeared, the “brick and mortar” retailers recognized the advantages of electronic commerce and began to add such capabilities to their web sites.

By the end of 2001, the largest form of e-commerce, Business-to-Business (B2B) model, had around $700 billion in transactions. According to all available data, e-commerce sales continued to grow in the next few years and, by the end of 2007, e-commerce sales accounted for 3.4 percent of total sales. In 2007, Fortune magazine ranked Dell as the 34th-largest company in the Fortune 500 list and 8th on its annual Top 20 list of the most successful and admired companies in the USA in recognition of the company’s business model. In 2008, a research was conducted and the domain name Amazon.com is said that had attracted about 615 million customers every year. The most popular feature of the web site is the review system, which is the ability for visitors to submit their reviews and rate any product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Amazon.com is also well-known for its clear and user-friendly advanced search facility which enables visitors to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the database. History of e-commerce is unthinkable without Amazon or eBAy which are among the first Internet companies that allowed electrinoc transaction. Thanks to its founders that we now have a increadible e-commerce sector and that we get to enjoy the buying and selling advantages of the Internet. Currently there are 5 largest and most famous worldwide Internet retailers: Amazon, Dell, Staples, Office Depot and Hewlett Packard. According to statistics, the most popular categories of products sold in the World Wide Web are music, books, computers, office supplies and other consumer electronics products.

History of e-commerce is a history of a new virtual world which is evolving according to the customer needs and advantage. It is a world which we are all building together brick by brick, laying a secure foundation for the future generations. Efficiency, intelligence and availability are the major benefits of e-commerce. The benefits of e-commerce are the results of digitalization of business information and availability of global network (Internet).

Reference Links:

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

http://ict.cdimm.org/man/engleza/ecomm03.pdf