Review a local e-commerce site

E-commerce are becoming more world widely use in this globalize and competitive century. A lot of companies in Malaysia had set up their own local e-commerce site to promote and trade their product at large to the public through the internet.The main benefits of e-commerce to businesses and corresponding benefits to consumers in Malaysia include worldwide access and greater choice; enhanced competitiveness and quality of service; mass customization and personalized products and services; elimination of intermediaries and product availability; greater efficiency and lower costs; and new business opportunities and new products and services.

There is a lot e-commerce site in Malaysia; it includes site to buy computer, book movie ticket, buy electronic product, shop for accessories and more.

Airasia.com
It is a website set up by an airline company where allow users to purchase their service through online. An E-commerce stand a major role for this company functions where allows users conveniently obtain the information need for travel. The main business revenue earned by Airasia.com is from providing flight fare service to traveler. Traveler can obtain cheaper price by booking the fare online without involving travel agent. Other than that, the company provides service that link traveler to find hotel within the departure region and state through online which ease the traveler to have accommodation. There is also some information available in the site which gives knowledge to the traveler who is intended to tour in the departure state. In addition, the site also acts as agent to offer traveler to rent car but is only available for some states. There are more service listed in the website which includes boarding express, further request, check and change fare, route map, and many more. Of course, all these services can be enjoyed by e-payment. Airasia.com provides range of payment ways to suit traveler will.
If possible try to visit Airasia.com and get e-commerce service experience.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

Corporate blogging is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goal. Corporate blog has become a new marketing communication tool for companies. Corporate blog has divided into three types and there are internal blogs, external blogs, and CEO blogs. These three types of blogs have been explained at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog .

Corporate blogging has become the new marketing communication tool for companies because it is a way of promoting about anything whether it may be public relations, marketing a new product, improving brand image and for research. Moreover, blog achieves the goal of growing a business because the company expands as it caters to online customers who may come across it. Blogs are a great tool of promoting a business; it can help in interacting with users and display their feedback. When other people view the testimonials made by customers themselves, they will be satisfied as they know that the company is listened to their comments.

Furthermore, corporate blog also is a form of advertising for companies because customer will seek there again and again. Indirectly, there has become an advertisement to the customers. There is a variety of information available in the blog. Therefore, a successful marketing through blogs creates or enters an area of interest where the readers are known the products or services. Finally, the corporate blogging as a success communication tool because company may do public speaking, to build trustworthiness for themselves and boost up their company’s credentials. Blogging has become a new less time consuming and less expensive way to reach potential and current customers.

E-government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies...

The electronic Government initiative in Malaysia was launched to lead the country into the information age. E-government in Malaysia is referring to the function of internet technology as a stage for providing services, exchanging information, and transacting with citizens and business as well as working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all of the citizens. The vision of the government is to provide service effectively and efficiently to the citizen of Malaysia in order to achieve targets or needs of its citizen and across a different channel. Other than that, E-government also enhances the accessibility, convenience and quality of interface with citizens and business. It will develop information flows and processes to increase the quality and speed of policy growth, improvement and enlargement.There are some examples of the electronic government in the Malaysia such as e-syariah, e-service, electronic labor exchange (ELX), and so on. E-syariah is scheming under e-government flagship application of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC).

Case management system incorporate the processes associated with the case management of syariah court. The purpose of the e-Syariah is to enhance the service quality of the syariah court and improve the productivity and efficiency of the management of the Syariah Court. Besides that, it also upholds the splendors of Islam through the ICT.

E-service is a pilot project which is also under electronic Government Flagship within the (MSC). The objective of E-service is to conduct transactions with Government agencies such as Tenaga National Berhad (TNB), Telekom Malaysia Berhad and Road Transport Department (RTD) through internet or e-service kiosks. Therefore, citizens no longer need to queue up and wait for hours to conduct the transaction.

Finally, electronic labor exchange (ELX) is a stop-center of employee market information. It enables employer and job seeker to communicate together in the same area. The purpose of (ELX) is to offer an effective center of labor information and reference. It is also an integrated job matching process, it will be easier for company to find the right employee to fulfill or match their job whereas employees also can search for their interested jobs as well.

Safa Rayneh

Mygovernment

Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction

What is e-auction???
E-auctions also call online auctions. It refers to those auctions conducted through the Internet with the bidders (from one or more locations) simultaneously bidding to be selected for supplying the items on auction. In other words, the venue for the auction is on an Internet website or platform.

The performance of online auctions has excited purchasing managers who are looking to reduce their costs. The leading web auction sites such as eBay www.ebay.com, Priceline www.priceline.com and Freemarkets www.freemarkets.com have shown the business how to use the Internet to shape the price paid for goods and services. Since eBay launched its pioneer person-to-person auction site in September 1995, online auctions actually have become an important type of web-based business and seem to be becoming more popular.

However, e-auction also got its frauds. There are bid shielding, shilling, fake photos and misleading description, improper grading techniques, loss and damage claims, fake escrow services, bid siphoning, and so on.

But, there are ways of prevention on e-auction fraud. Lets us view the example of the largest internet auctioneer, eBay, which has introduced several measures in an effort to reduce fraud. The following are:

1. User identity verification - eBay uses the services of Equifax to verify user identities for a $5 fee. Verified eBay User, a voluntary program, encourages users to supply eBay with information for online verification. By offering their Social Security number, driver’s license number, and date of birth, users can qualify for the highest level of verification on eBay.

2. Authentication service - Product authentication is a way of determining whether an item is genuine and described appropriately. Authentication is very difficult to perform because it relies on the expertise of the authenticators. Because of their training and experience, experts can (for a fee) often detect counterfeits based on subtle details. However, two expert authenticators may have different opinions about the authenticity of the same item.

3. Grading services - Grading is a way of determining the physical condition of an item, such as “poor quality” or “mint condition.” The actual grading system depends on the type of item being graded. Different items have different grading systems. For example, trading cards are graded from A1 to F1, whereas coins are graded from poor to perfect uncirculated.

4. Feedback Forum - The eBay Feedback Forum allows registered buyers and sellers to build up their online trading reputations. It provides users with the ability to comment on their experiences with other individuals.

5. Insurance policy - eBay offers insurance underwritten by Lloyd’s of London. Users are covered up to $200, with a $25 deductible. The program is provided at no cost to eBay users.

6. Escrow services - For items valued at more than $200 or when either a buyer or seller feels the need for additional security, eBay recommends escrow services (for a fee). With an easy-to-access link to a third-party escrow service, both partners in a deal are protected. The buyer mails the payment to the escrow service, which verifies the payment and alerts the seller when everything checks out. At that point, the seller ships the goods to the buyer. After an agreed-upon inspection period, the buyer notifies the service, which then sends a check to the seller. An example of a provider of online escrow services is tradenable.com.

7. Nonpayment punishment - eBay implemented a policy against those who do not honor their winning bids. To help protect sellers, first-time nonpayment results in a friendly warning. A sterner warning is issued for a second-time offense, a 30-day suspension for a third offense, and indefinite suspension for a fourth offense.

8. Appraisal services - Appraisers use a variety of methods to appraise items, including expert assessment of authenticity and condition and reviewing what comparable items have sold for in the marketplace in recent months. An appraised value is usually accurate at the time of appraisal but may change over time as an item becomes more or less popular in the marketplace.

9. Verification - One way of confirming the identity and evaluating the condition of an item is through verification. With verification, neutral third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means. For example, some collectors have their item “DNA tagged” for identification purposes. This provides a way of tracking an item if it changes ownership in the future.

Mobile Payment systems in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumers' adoption strategies.

Mobile payment system in Malaysia is a point-of sale payment made through a mobile device. It enables consumers to receive and send money using mobile device such as mobile phone, Smartphone, Cellular telephone and personal digital assistant (PDA). With that, consumers no longer need to bring any cash or credit card while travelling, they just need to use their hand phone as their credit card to make the payments. It is more convenient for consumers especially in this fast growing market. The largest credit card payment system is visa which launches a universal system and signed with mobile giants. Mobile giant like Nokia launches this service in Nokia handset which allows customers to remote payment, person-to-person payments, and contact fewer payments.

Mobile Money International Sdn.Bhd is a Mobile payment system in Malaysia which implements the MM wallet and allows customers to send a payment request through an SMS text message by personal identification number (pin) authorization to pay their bills. Consumers can SMS-transfer money to anyone, anywhere, and anytime.

There are many benefits of Mobile Money system as following:

(1) This system is easy to sell to anyone, anywhere and anytime. The trader can sell goods to customers of other countries and receive payment on time.
(2) It provides safe and secure transaction. The Mobile Money Payments System is subjected to strict requirements by Bank Negara and certain banks. Therefore, consumers not need to concern about fraud or mistake during the transaction.
(3) The transactions get done almost instantly. Mobile Money guarantees those merchants are paid in two working days, whereas other payment systems need more days than that to process it.
(4) Merchants can use multi-methods to request for payments. For example: merchants can choose to pay the payment through the sms, Mobile Money website, online storefront system, or others. It is easier for merchants to choose which methods are more convenient for them.

Other than that, G-cash is an online payment service provider which has simple goal of converting a mobile phone into a wallet. G-cash can also be used to make purchase transactions and allows consumers to make the payment in the web. The transaction payments include government taxes, medicine, boat fare, food, insurance company, internet service and so on.

Besides that, G-cash also provides some benefits such as cash can be retrieved quickly and transferred safely using transaction technology. Based on the personalized account, people have full control over their money. Another benefit is G-cash also provides safe and secure transaction every time. This is because this system incorporates encryption technology to make transactions complete and to make sure the transaction of account is safe and secure.

Lastly, with the introduction of mobile payment systems, customers no longer need to queue up to pay their bills. Now it will make consumers’ access to the financial institutions and payment processing network even more effective and easy.


How to enquiries on Mobile Money ??

How Mobile Money Works ??

Credit Card debts: Causes and prevention

Credit card debts result when the user of a credit card purchases an goods or service through the card system. When the user of credit card does not pay for the money spent, the debt accumulates and increases through interest and penalties which usually in high rates.
The causes of the great amount of debts are mostly unconsciousness of user on the amount used to pay for goods or services by credit card. Some of the users only realized that they had great debts on credit card when the monthly statement is received. Great debts frequently come into the picture for those who are addicted to shop and make payment using the credit card. The knowledge and understanding of the credit card user is not sufficient to make planning in using the credit card and repaying the debt. Purchasing goods or services by credit card can also rephrase as purchasing goods or services using the future money which has not be earn. Therefore, the debts also commonly caused by credit card user unable to repay the debts because usually they spent more than what they earn which cause the user only affordable to repay the minimum amount for long period.
There are prevention and signal to show that the credit card users are on path to fully repay the debts. Purchase goods or services for petty amount by available cash or by debit card is the best. The raw idea of using credit card is to think twice before payment is made on some of the goods or services that are not in priority in the daily life, this will avoid the user from being trap by debts. The key to remember in using credit card is spent more pay more, spent more than earn debt is also more. There is expert suggested that pay the balance with the highest annual percentage rate first then move onto the debt with the next-highest interest rate. This will help the user to reduce the interest burden in repaying the debts. Good signal to be given if the credit card user able to repay the debts more than the minimum amount require for each month because it tells that the debts can be repay in less interest and in shorter period. For credit card user, it is advised to have full understanding on credit card and the consequence in using it. Comprehensive planning on using credit card and repaying the debt is a “must” to prevent attacked by creditors and warning letters.
Causes of using credit card and prevention on unlimited debt that has been discussed can be references to pre – credit card user to consider and be alert.

Electronic currency

Say good-bye to traditional application

Say hello to Safe and convenient new electronic currency

Traditional applications of rendering payment include credit cards, debit cards and charge cards. However, these traditional forms of rendering payment online have posed problems to both the consumer and the seller. For example, not all merchants are equipped to accept credit card transactions. Some merchants even prefer not to accept credit card transactions because credit card companies charge merchants a two to six percent service fee for each transaction.

But, now technological progress has undoubtedly created a new direction in the means of payment. The Internet and E-commerce have become an increasingly commercial area, where daily payments are rendered for goods, information and services.

Electronic currency is essentially a system that allows a person to pay for goods or services by transmitting a number from one computer to another. These transactions are carried out electronically, transferring funds from one party to another, by either a debit or credit. These funds are instantly cleared and secured by using strong encryption, thus eliminating the payment risk to the consumer. As a result, electronic payments are becoming the central part to online business between customer and seller.

There are few benefits on the electronic payment system. For instance, privacy and confidentiality of customer’s information are adequately protected. The systems unlike credit card companies, they are invading consumer's privacy by collecting their spending habits and reselling the data to third parties. Besides, the security of electronic currency is provided by the use of encryption. The enacted digital signature statutes require a certification authority to use a trustworthy system. Therefore, even though there is speculation about the security of the Internet, electronic currency consumers are probably more secure in their transactions than the more traditional ways of doing business.

Apart from that, let me introduce you others type of electronic currency which is electronic micropayments. This is the system where it solves the problem of purchasing inexpensive items by using credit cards. If you are interested, please go and click the words of 'electronic micropayments' that i highlighted and read through the article. It can help you to gain the knowledges about it.

The application of pre-paid cash card for consumers

Prepaid cash cards are a recent phenomenon. However, more and more people are using it. It is like a credit or debit card, and gives users the ability to purchase products and service with a card but with a crucial difference. Users can only spend the balance that has been preloaded onto the card. This means that there is no risk of running into debt as it has no credit or overdraft facility.
Money can be loaded onto a prepaid card by cash at bank, post office, Pay Point Terminal, bank transfer or even by another credit card. Applying for a prepaid credit or debit card is an extremely simple process, because it does not involve a credit search or any kind because you are not being offered credit. The application is quick and painless. Some of the prepaid card does not require that you be 18 years old in order to be approved for a card, which is a greater way to teach teenagers how to manage their finance properly. MasterCard and Maestro prepaid cards are available through participating financial institutions are retailers. People can apply it as well.

When using for purchasing at a high street store or shopping market, they work in exactly the same way as a credit or debit card. You can hand the cashier. You will be asked to enter your PIN numbers which supplied wit the card on an electronic keypad or to sign a payment slip so that your signature can be matched with that on the back of the card if there is no chip on the card. The total amount will be taken from your card immediately and the transaction is complete.

Prepaid cash card can also be used to shop online. You click on items which you want to buy then click on the website’s “checkout” page before filling in your details and those of your prepaid card. As long as you have enough cash loaded on your card. The website checks it by the usual means of the authorization, then purchase is completed and your item will be shipped to you. Moreover, the prepaid card can be used to buy groceries and petrol, paying bills, withdrawing cash from at ATM, topping up your mobile phone, as a replacement for travelers cheques or travel cash for a low cost alternative to paying for goods and services aboard, and many others.
A prepaid cash card is good to use because there is no debt risk. With a prepaid card, users are no chance of spending too much as you are limited to the amount you put on your card. Prepaid card are an ideal way to budget for yourself or help to manage your children spending. There are some benefits for using Visa prepaid card at http://www.corporate.visa.com/pd/consumer_products/prepaid.jsp

Phishing : Examples and its prevention methods

Phishing also referred to spoofing or carding. Phishing is type of electronic fraud that uses social engineering. Phishers pretend to be a trustworthy party such as a bank in attempt to steal sensitive information like passwords, bank account numbers, or credit card details. A Phishing attack is carried out electronically, commonly through email or instant messaging. Typically, the messages appear to come from well known and trusty websites such as eBay, PayPal, and BestBuy. However, it can also occur through voice phone calls, text messages, or other electronic communication methods. Once a phisher has collected this sensitive information, it can be used to take money from an account or simply shuffle money back and forth to make it harder to audit where money flows.

There are some methods of anti-phishing. The followings are:

• Do not use the links in an email or instant message if we suspect the message might not be authentic or we do not know the sender or user's handle. Instead of using the links, we should call to the company or log on to the website directly by typing in the web address in our browsers.
• Besides, we should avoid filling in the forms in email messages that ask for personal financial information. The account information or credit cards numbers should be given via a secure website or telephone from the authority company.
• In addition, we are encouraging to make it a habit to enter the address of any banking, shopping, auction, or financial transaction website our self and not depend on displayed links because phishers are now able to spoof or forge both the “http://” that we normally see when we are on a secure web server.
• Furthermore, we must regularly check our bank, credit, and debit card statements to ensure that all transactions are correct. If anything suspicious or the transactions are not recognized, we must contact our bank and all card issuers immediately.
• Moreover, user education is also important. If users been educated about how to detect a phishing mail or site and how to securely access the website, a lot of phishing attacks will not succeed. At the mean times, related authority could put the security tips and advises up on the user’s login page or send it as emails. The method varies depending on the type of business and channels available to reach the user.
• One of the best ways to prevent a phishing attack is to use phishing software. There are many products on the market and many come with or are included in anti virus and anti spam software. Most anti phishing programs works by using a filter, much like an anti spam filter. The program filters through our incoming emails searching for any content within the message or in URLs that may be phishing related or carries phishing software. If such emails are found they are deleted while the normal email gets filtered through to our inbox.

Lastly, although phishing is not as popular as it was before, it is still around and can cause us a lot of stress and even money loss, so it is always important to take anti phishing methods to ensure we will never fall victims to their attacks.

The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

Online security issues becoming more and more concern as technology improved. Without denying also the popularity of online business transaction is becoming a major portion of most of the enterprises and companies. For instance, customers and dealer’s privacy on bank account number, credit card number, personal information and other private information are all shown once register and transaction has made. No doubt that every users feel as what the online security expert claims "One of the biggest challenges of 2008 will be, how do you do business online when you know there's a bad guy in the middle?" says Chris Rouland, chief technology officer in IBM's Internet security systems division.

There are a lot of threats surrounding and saturated in the website by the hackers. Technically, one of the most common threats is the use of malicious software in tracking and exploiting the trust and confidential information in between the transaction. The typical malicious softwares are virus, worm, Trojan horse and rookit. As viruses become more sophisticated bait, even the messages containing virus payloads are getting slicker There is also Denial-of service crash computers or issue floods of commands to overwhelm websites to swipe personal information, such as bank and credit-card numbers. Distributed denial-of-service comes into picture to gain illegal access to multiple of computers and send a flood of data packets to the target computer. Spam is being release to monitor user’s email or personal database for other illegal purpose usage. Social engineering and phishing are also often used to trick customer into providing their information on the fake website. Social networks, Internet calling systems, and smart phones could be more vulnerable to hackers in the coming future as shown in network security expert research by Aaron Ricadela.

To promote safety of users data in online transaction, the Symantec had enclose worldwide security intelligence data gathered from a wide range of sources through their products to ensure security. Future more, it attracts email from around the world to measure global spam and phishing activity to provide an extensive antifraud community of enterprises and consumers; and receive fraudulent Web site addresses for alerting and filtering across a broad range of solutions. There is more products and services provided by Symantec to secure data and reduce the risk of being attack by hackers. For safeguard of non technical threats, enterprises are given advice to secure their own data and customer data by setting up an outside personal storage device and well manage their web based asset.

Therefore, certain degree of data safety can be ensured by accompanying the step proposed by online security expert as shown in http://www.symantec.com/business/

A review on a post on Internet Secuity from My E-commerce blog.

Malware is software designed to harm or damage a computer system without the owner's consent. Nowadays, there are more than one million types of worms, Trojan horses, computer viruses, spyware and dishonest adware in the computer network. The virus issues are very serious in our life, this is because they might corrupt or erase all data in a computer, spread viruses to other computers through our e-mail program, or even delete everything on hard disk. Most common way is spread by attachment in e-mail message or instant messaging message or attachment of some funny images, greeting cards, video and audio files.

Users can use protective tools like firewalls, anti–virus such as AVG Free Anti-Virus, Panda Software Anti-virus product, anti spyware and others to protect or secure against Trojan Horses, Worms, Spyware, Adware and theft of your identity. Other than that, users can keep their computer virus database updated with the latest updates and antivirus tools. Most virus scanners try to deal with common Trojans with varying degrees of success. That is also called as “anti-Trojan” scanner.

Besides that, there are some methods to prevent malware problem.
For example: (1) user must keep their computer’s software patched and current. The operating system of computer and anti-virus software must be updated on certain period of time. (2)Install and operate firewall. Firewall is hardware or software which block outside users from getting into your computer.

(3) Always think before install something to avoid risk. (4) Do not click on Web links sent by someone you do not know.

Moreover, there are still some pieces of malicious software which was so selectively spammed and remains undetected by the majority of the antivirus product on the market. Now according to VirusTotal.com, online tools contain more than two-dozen antivirus programs to scan for new malware. For example, a victim’s machine passed a complete software scan from an up-to-date version of Symantec’s Norton Antivirus.

Besides the few tips on “how to protect blog from hacker” in my E-commerce blog, there are still other methods to prevent it.
The methods are following:

- Do not have an online profile.
Normally blogger will provide their personal details in the blog such as things which they

dislike or like, habit, location and so on. This will be easier for "someone" to pursue their

individual's desire.
- Users should not post any photos in the blog. Photos can invite trouble or unwanted

attention especially for female.
- Users can post the blog anonymously. In order to protect our personal detail, user

should manage their blog anonymously or adopt an alias for online posting.

- Users should avoid providing personal or identifying details. Consumers should not post any

personal or identifying detail in the blog such asw your location.
- Blogger can create different email and login addresses.
For example: blog name: blogname.blogspot.com
Login name: notmyname@gmail.com
Email address: anothername@gmail.com
User: screen name
If email and login address are the same, it will be easier for hackers to figure what your login name is and they can use program to crack the user’s password.

Finally, if bloggers follow the methods as above, it will make the users safer and more secured in the blog.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data

It is important that our personal and financial data to be safeguarded. There are several ways to keep our data safely. Memorize your number and passwords. Do not write your Social Security number or passwords on paper and store them in your wallet or purse. Moreover, do not share identification numbers, passwords or PINs with other people. For example, if you shop or bank online, change the passwords regularly, sign off the Web Sites when you have finished using and only transact business over Web Sites that provide a secure connection. Furthermore, do not give your Social Security number, credit card number, or any bank account details over the phone unless you have initiated the call and know that the business that you are dealing with is reputable. Sign up for direct deposit of payroll to prevent paper checks from ending up in the wrong hands. Prior to discard a computer, make sure all personal information is deleted from its hard drive. If you have any personal or financial data stored in computer, then individual has to protect your computer security. It is better to use as many tools as you can such as anti-virus software, spyware, firewalls, and passwords to guard your computer information. When individual choosing his PIN numbers, do not choose something that is easy to remember such as birth date or child`s name. Individual is better to choose a combination of uppercase and lowercase, numbers and symbols that more secured. Review for monthly statements are to avoid any possible fraudulent charges, individual may also find legitimate charges for services that are either redundant or no longer necessary. The financial supervisory Commission said that in order to prevent their personal identification data from being used by unlawful figures for illegal uses, people should keep their receipts, bank account statements, credit card bills, or even addressed direct mail. If people want to throw away these documents as trash, they should shred them first. Shred old documents also one of the best ways to protect you against potential fraud or identity theft. A basic desktop shredder can work for a few sheets at a time.

The history and evolution of E-commerce

The history of e-commerce is a history of two information technology has transformed business processes. EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is widely viewed as the beginning of e-commerce if we consider e-commerce as the networking of business communities and digitalization of business information. EDI is a set of standards developed in the 1960’s to exchange business information and do electronic transactions. The evolution of e-commerce has change rapidly from unprofitable good idea to a profitable good idea. In year 1984, an EDI was standardized. This guaranteed that companies would be able to complete the transactions with one to another reliably.

In year 1992, the compuserve has offered online retail products to its customers. This has gives people the first chance to buy things through their computer. After two years, Netscape has been arrived in year 1994. It has provided users a simple browser to surf the internet and a safety online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer.

In year 1995, two of the biggest names in e-commerce are launched. There are Amazon and eBay. There allow users to shopping through online. When it comes to year 1998, there has come out the DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). It provides a fast, always-on internet service to subscriber. This encourages users to spend more time and money to online.

In year 1999, there has a new channel called business.com. This allows people to have a quick find anything for the business such as construction, health care, technology, and so on. There are over 65,000 business categories. All these are the evolution year by year. There is increased confidence in online order fulfillment, the security of personal data, and easier online return option. Nowadays, the evolution of significant changes as wireless e-commerce has been grown.

An example of an E-commerce success and its causes

E-commerce contains buying and selling of product or service information, exchanging the product over computer network such as internet and the World Wide Web. An example of an E-commerce success is eBay. It is the world’s largest and most prevalent online marketplace which can buy and sell easier locally, nationally, and globally. Business and individual can perform their business such as buying and selling mobile phones, computer, clothing, shoes, accessories, camera and so on through the internet and web so that business can make profit and individual can earn a great living from selling on eBay.

eBay succeeds because it takes advantage of the internet opportunity, targets the right customer need that is by providing online auction at the right time. Before that, auctions are not popular among people but it has then become common at eBay. Now eBay has created customer need that is by creating an auction for everyone at anytime and anywhere. Auctions are just one click away from the mouse and this is also the time when number of internet users increases tremendously. This is why we say eBay targeted the right market at the right time.

The cause for eBay’s success is because it has taken the same role as the government that plays in the wider economy. For example: eBay sets the rules for commerce and implement them in order for transactions to be fair, cheap and foreseeable. Majority of the consumers can buy and sell with reasonable confidence as well as they will also get what they were promised, even though eBay still have flaws that are not perfect such as fraud and irregularities. Nowadays on the eBay marketplace, they continue to innovate and amalgamate the policies and technologies that make day-to-day activities even more faithful, honest, and efficient.

An example of e-commerce failure and its causes

Pets.com was one of examples out of hundred dot.com businesses that failed. The company was a pure-play Internet business with no bricks and mortar presence and its failure occurred on a large scale, with the businesses burning through hundreds of millions of dollars in just a few years. There were few causes regarding the company failure. From the perspective of market positioning, there was little to distinguish one competitor from the next. In the case of pets.com, its experience proposition was that it would combine the convenience of running to the local supermarket to purchase pet products with the knowledge and advice offered by a visit to the local vet. The company failed to differentiate itself in any substantial way from the other online pet retailers. All of the online pet retailers offered similar products; similar services and similar sounding names (pets.com, petstore.com, petsmart.com).As such, consumers had difficulty telling them apart and thus did not develop any sense of loyalty. They could search for the better price, or just go with a familiar, trusted company such as PETsMART, which already had an established bricks and mortar presence. In addition, the speed of growth played a huge role in the failure of this business as well. If a business grows too quickly, it is more likely to fail. Pets.com grew to 320 employees in just 25 months。Granted, the company was experiencing growing revenues, so the staff increases were necessary. In fact, the businesses were growing so quickly that it may not have been possible for management to make effective decisions on how to manage in the dynamic environment. Besides, Channel management was an important issue in the dot com world. When many of the businesses started, they did not give adequate thought to things such as shipping or inventory control. For example, in the case of pets.com, shipping costs were huge in comparison to the value of the goods being shipped. Therefore, it was very hard for the company to make huge profit and grow heavily. As a conclusion, to be successful, businesses had to do more than get consumers to recognize them. Once consumers identify a product or service provider, they must also be confident once they visit the site. Having a value proposition in place is essential for any business. The most successful businesses were characterized by having consumers who understood the reasons why they wanted to shop there, whether price, convenience, experience or product selection.

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

E-commerce able to reduce the time cycle from the inception of an idea to its implementation on the trading market in the sense of the ability in providing customers with a service faster than other competitors and gaining competitive advantage. For instance, organization which sells digital product are providing electronically delivered products with supporting raw intelligence data to customers to reduce the time and effort and increase the quality of reporting. This may reduce the inconveniency and time to setup a retail store to make the sales. E-commerce effectively helps the salespeople and customer service employees who are being empowered to increase customer loyalty by making customer feels convenience, fast and happy. Customers no longer need to wait the agent to call up the higher management level for negotiation and customer can satisfy with every negotiation done by empowered agent for instant. Especially these days, the truth of empowerment to employee cannot be denied. In fact, Terrence Foran, chairman and CEO of the Cleveland-based Lake West Group, shows that business-to-business sales is important in this century and retails managers must accept e-commerce business with the employee who can meet the creative, technological and strategic demands of setting up a site to be delegated the authority. E-commerce fac ilitates the customer support where it can be used to properly collect and analyze the relevant customer data. This helps in studying the document online customers or visitors patterns to acquire and retain users. In relations, customer support system is being setting up in most of the organization for providing the customer support service with respect to a consumer product and helps in storing product-related information database to be used. The customer support service system setup for e-commerce helps customer grant access to acquire the product and make application through electronic application form rather than a hardcopy of form.

Self-introduction-ah may

My name is Chia Hui Gan. My nickname called Ah May. I have a dark color skin, a pair of big eyes, and a short height. I have 5 family members. They are parents, sister, brother and me. I was the youngest and my sister was the eldest. My lovely mother and sister was the most closet people to me. We are always sharing the happiness and sadness. My hometown was at Tanjung Sepat, Selangor. There was a very nice and peaceful place. The people in my hometown all are very friendly and the food there are also very tasty like ‘ba kut teh’, ‘seafood’, ‘bao’, ‘ban mee’, and so on. Then, my hobbies are traveling, shopping, listening to music, and chatting. The website that I most frequently visit is http://www.msn.com/ . I often chat with my friends and sister through the msn messenger. It helps me save a lot of money instead of by making a call. Besides, I can receive the email from my friends which can be a file contained of photos or information regarding the assignment. In addition, the website that I second frequently visit is http://www.google.com/ . I search information very often through this website. It is very useful for me because I can get the searching in a very short minute by just typing the keyword of the title that I wanted to get. Subsequently, I was able to grab a lot of knowledge and information from the sources that I found from the searching. Moreover, I used to visit http://www.youtube.com/ . In this website, I can watch many video clips which are very funny. Besides, I also can watch Hong Kong movie series by without buying any DVD at outside stores. Indirectly, I can save a lot of money and can enjoy the various types of movies at the mean time. In addition, the website that I quite often visit is http://www.utar.edu.my/ . I enter this website to check my examination results, looking for journals, downloaded the past year questions and so on. Sometimes, I will also visit http://www.matta.org.my/ to have a look for when is the matta fair been held. The reason is because I like traveling and I hope I can get a cheap package to go for vacation during my holidays.

Self-introduction-KYLLY

My name is KEE LEE KIAN from Sabah Sandakan. I have five family members. I have many hobbies. There are swimming, listening to music, watching Taiwan series, “yamca” with friends, sleeping and so forth. All these that I like is because of it is able to lead me relaxing my mind especially after take a nap. Swimming can make me healthy. However, I will not go to swim when the weather is very cold. The top five websites that I visited the most are http://www.google.com/, http://www.hotmail.com/, http://www.friendster.com/, http://www.youtube.com/, and http://www.nst.com.my/. The reasons that I visit http://www.google.com/ are to search information regarding to the assignments. Moreover, google engine can search music that I like, free softwares that I want. For the hotmail website, I always use it to reply mails when I received mails from my friends. The hotmail website has many advertisements and promotions from companies. I also can forward the important mails to friends so that I can share those mails with them. Furthermore, the friendster website is a website which quite enjoyable because I can keep in touch with old friends. Besides that, there are able to make new friends and upload my “beautiful” photos. For the youtube.com, I could find a lot of funny videos, clips and musics. For the nst.com.my, there are many news on what are happening around the world. This website has a lot of articles. When I read through the articles, I can gain a lot of knowledge from there. For the internet activities, almost everyday I will open my MSN to chat with friends. Via MSN, I can share my feeling to my best friends. In addition, I always online to watch television movies in 8TV when I have free time. Moreover, when there I new movies, I will use “xun lei” or flashget to download those movie. I also will use e-banking to pay electrical bills and telephone bills. Furthermore, online to listen MYFM is my favourite.

Self-introduction - wenwen

My name is Lim Hui Woon. Most of my friends will call me Tiffany. I come from Muar, Johor. My hometown is a small town which is renowned for its delicious and inexpensive food at the street of food greed. There are some famous foods such as otak-otak, asam fish, fried oyster omelette, wanton noodles and others.

I have quite a big family which consists of 8 members. They are my parents, one elder sister, two younger sisters and brothers. I always go back to my hometown during the weekends, but sometimes time does not allow me to go back every time. I love my family very much. Besides that, my hobbies are playing badminton, basketball, squash, and listening to music. I like sports very much.

The website that I frequently visit is http://www.msn.com/ . This is because I can chat or share information with friends during my free time. We can even discuss the assignment through the msn messenger which is a good way that benefits students. Besides that, I also use the webcam to video chat with my old friends or my love ones. Other than that, http://www.youtube.com/ is the website that I normally visit. I like to watch movies such as Taiwan’s drama and some comic movies when I am free. These types of movie will make me feel more relax and happy during my study life, but because of assignments, thesis, and midterm which are a lot at the same time, I am not able to watch them frequently. Moreover, I always search for information through http://www.google.com/ which is quite useful for my assignments and my personal knowledge. I can also know the latest’s world news in Malaysia and some entertainment news such as the latest movie available and so on. Other http://www.utar.edu.my/ is the website that I frequently visit. I can search the website for my examination results and new time table for every new semester. Besides that, I can also search for journals as well as renewing the library’s book which proves to be very convenient. The last website I always visit is http://www.friendster.com/ as this website can let me get know to a lot of friends and also uploading my photos.

Self Introduction-DingDongChuChu

My name is HAN NGEE TING from SANDAKAN, SABAH. My nickname is “eating”. There are five members in my family—father, mother, sister, younger brother and me. My hobbies are eating, drinking, watching movie, thinking, and playing piano. Unfortunately, all this can only enjoy in my hometown.
As for the websites and internet activities, http://www.airasia.com/ of course is the most I visit because my hometown is in East Malaysia and cannot like most of the friend in the university going back hometown easily, so I have to look for cheap flight fares. And I often buy the fare through this website by using credit card payment. http://www.google.com/ is also the website I frequently use to search information for personal use and for assignment purposes. There are many results which is need can be found by using this search engine. Other than that, http://www.gangqinpu.com/ is the website I normally visit. This is the website where there is melody sheet and melody from the most classic to the most modern, even the music we listened in the movie shows and popular music all can be found in this website. It is all in melody in notes without lyrics. So I will download what melody sheet and melody I want from this website easily. Without ignoring http://www.msn.com/ that is often look for the mail and newsletter sent by the external party, sometimes I also use to access the features available in the web page. The fifth website that is frequently visit is http://www.utar.edu.my/ where I can access to look for exam result, timetable, and link me to wble.