Amazon.com Success Factor.

Amazon.com has a leading edge in the e-commerce world. It was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and was one of the first American e-commerce companies to sell product over the internet. According to the research conducted in 2008, the domain Amazon.com attracter about 615 million customers every year.

Why is Amazon so success? This is due to it combines multiple factors to achieve success. These factors include strong customer base, branding, quality assurance, competitive price, and convenient &ease of use.

Convenient & Ease to use
By providing a good customer service, customer will most likely to return to you. In Amazon.com it has superior service representative, easy search, e-mail confirm, no hassle return and customization. For example, it provides the customer with the service of submitting their reviews and rating any product. Beside that, Amazon.com has clear and user-friendly advanced search facility which allowed visitors to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the database. Amazon.com also provides its visitor with many useful information. Large variety of item in Amazon is also one of the factors to attract customer. Amazon have variety of goods such as electronics, software, DVDs, video games, music CDs, MP3s, apparel, footwear, health product, etc.

Branding
Name recognition is also a key factor for e-commerce to success. How does Amazon.com brand itself? Amazon.com uses cross marketing, high advertising and co- branding to brand itself. The other reason is that it was one of the first American e-commerce companies to sell product over the internet. Short and clever name also causes Amazon.com to be fame. With a short and clever name /URL/ tag line will help the customer to remember better.

Quality Assurance
Quality assurance helps to enhance the customer confidence on purchasing the goods. Amazon.com gave quality assurance on the product it sold.

Competitive Price
Amazon.com set a lower price for its product compare to other competitor. Amazon.com is able to set a low price due to it have a low overhead cost by having lesser employees, real estate and low inventory. On the other hand, the ability for people to search multiple websites and services in this modern era has allowed Internet users to shop based on price. If a person in search of a particular goods is able to find it, for example, on 20 different web sites for a lower price, there is a high chance they will choose Amazon. With the changing economy, low-price mentality, and awareness of people towards the limitlessness nature of internet shopping, price can be a leading determining factor in someone’s purchase.

Strong Customer Base
Thanks to the long history of Amazon.com, it has a large customer database. It is vital for a company to have a large number of customer databases. This is because Amazon.com can use this information to enhance and expand its business.

In e-commerce the most important key point is to gain customer confidence and trust. The above factors help Amazon.com to increase its customer loyalty and trust. Due to that, the customer will return back to Amazon.com.

References
http://www.ecommerce-land.com/history_ecommerce.html
www.ehrlichorg.com/s99ibm/ret0217.ppt

Identify and compare the revenue model for Google,Amazon.com and Ebay

This week my topic is “identify and compare the revenue model for Google, Amazon.com and Ebay. Before I start my topic, I would like to explain what revenue model is. Revenue model is the different method that used in generating income from the publisher website. Types of revenue model include:

1) Sales- sales of goods, merchandise information and services provided in the publisher’s website
2) Transaction fees- publishers earned the commission based on the volume of the transaction or fee per transaction conducted in the website.
3) Advertisement fees- publisher earned the advertisement fees through allocate some advertisements spaces in their website for other companies to place their banners or advertisements.
4) Subscription fees- customers would have to pay a fixed amount of fee either monthly or yearly when they are subscribing to contents and services offered by the website.
5) Affiliate fees- companies receive commission for referring customers to other website. This technique become more popular nowadays especially for blogger.

Google generated the income through earning the advertisement fees. One of the main revenue model used by the google is Google AdWords. Google AdWords is a pay per click advertising that designed to allow the advertiser present their advertisements to the people at the instant the people are looking for the information related to what the advertiser has to offer. The relevant words of the advertisements are shown as “sponsored link” on the right side of the screen or above the main search result when the users using google search engine. Google generated most of their income through Google AdWords. Other revenue model used by google include Google AdSense, Google Answer, Froogle and etc.

Amazon.com generates their income through sales of goods. People can buy the mp3, books, notebook, camera and others goods which offer by Amazon.com. Besides that, buyers also can get the product specification, detail of the product, rating of the product or even the feedback of others buyers in the website in order to make a right choice. Amazon.com also generates revenue by Affiliate revenue model. Amazon was one of the first online businesses to set up an affiliate marketing program. AStore is an Amazon.com affiliate product which website owners can use to create an online store on their site. The store does not allow website owners to sell their own products directly. Website owners pick products from Amazon’s store and earn referral fees on the products purchased by their readers. The fee structure is currently the same as for the other affiliate links and ranges from 4% to 10% of the product price.


eBay is an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses sell or buy goods and services worldwide. eBay generate the income from earned the insertion fees and final value fees. Insertion fee is the amount of money eBay charges to the seller for listing an item for sale. Final value fees are the fees that charged to the sellers when the item is sold, ends with a winning bid, or is purchased. eBay also generated the advertisements fees which allow the advertiser promote their advertisement at eBay.

Comparison between Google, Amazon.com and eBay

Different companies using different revenue modes to generate income. Google is the most famous search engine nowadays. There are many people access to google per day. The advertisement method is the most suitable for google because the advertisement will shown at the screen while people searching some information. Google did not sales the goods at the website. Whereas, amazon.com generated the income through sale of goods at the website. People can buy many things at amazon.com through the internet. It’s give a lot of convenience to people and enhance the speed of e-commerce. eBay earned many insertion fees and final value fees which google and amazon.com did not make it. This is because eBay provide a marketplace that enable the seller put their product to the website for bid.

An example of e commerce failure and its causes

One of the example of e commerce failure is eBay.

eBay.com, a website which manages by an American Internet company- eBay Inc. , is an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buying and selling goods and services around the world. It was founded as AuctionWeb in San Jose, California, on September 3, 1995, by a computer programmer – Pierre Omidyar. eBay is the world’s leading online marketplace and it went public on September 21, 1998.

However, the most significant e commerce failure met among all e commerce websites so far at the online auction house eBay on June 10-11, 1999. The site was closed for 22 hours. Before the June 10, 1999, eBay met other significant failures and has since suffered extra outages which totaled more than 70 hours of outages in the first seven months of the year. During the two day of June crisis, eBay’s stock was dropped for $47 to $137, $5.7 billion of market capitalization was wiping out. Before rising again to the $130 range, it had dropped below $80 in early August. During the crisis, there are lot of experts assess the cause of the disaster cite eBay’s failure to build a redundant, scalable web architecture. Besides that, eBay’s outage was taking a long period of time because the database files was corrupted, it required the files to be rebuilt then only the system could be used.

The outages at eBay echo the strain that outsized demand had placed on online brokerage firms. One of the consultant said that there are lot of e commerce websites can’t follow up with their growth as they don’t have sufficient skills to keep the site running all the time. This is the reason why eBay outages knocked the website four times out of five days in November 1999.

The history and evolution of ecommerce

What is e-commerce?

ecommerce is more than just buying and selling goods on the internet, it include internet process of developing, marketing, selling, delivering, servicing and paying for products and services. It is a modern business method to meet the organization, consumer, and supplier’s needs and to cut cost when doing business.


The history and evolution of ecommerce

In the late of 1970s, the electronically technologies such as Electronic Data interchange and Electronic Funds transfer enable the business companies and organization to send commercial documentation electronically.

In 1991, since internet was opened to ecommerce use, thousands of businesses take up residence in internet since that day. Come to 1994, the internet began to advance in popularity in within the general public, after develop the security protocol.

In May 1998, DSL expanded to California, this technology allowed people connecting to Internet at 50 times more speed than previously.

In Dec 1998, e commerce started famous as many online merchants success. Amazon.com was one of them. It generated 1 billion U$ in annual sales, AOL, generated U$1.2 billion in only 10 weeks.

In August 1999, an operating system “Linux” was created by Linux Torvalds and it was becoming very popular. This was a warning to Microsoft that there is come competition out there. And this made the Microsoft to invest heavily in regaining mind share among e-business and technology decision-makers. Or else, Microsoft will be substituted by Linux.

Another big thing in e-commerce was Napster. Napster allowed people to download music from Internet for free. After the people increasing using this website, Napster has met some legal problem. However, some researcher said that Napster make the consumers dictated how they want to related to industry.

On Jan 2000, AOL and Time Warner announced that they would be emerging. This merger brought together an old economy witan with a newer, online organization.

In Feb 2000, computer hackers attack the major players in the e-commerce which include yahoo.com, amazon.com, buy.com, and ebay.com. These organizations started to learn how to protect themselves from the attacks of computer hackers. A security upgrades were inevitable. However, this attack caused their customer lose confidence in shopping online. But U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, Greg Konezny felt this occurrence was “merely a bump-in-the-road type situation.”

On May 10, 2000 the US House of Representatives extended the moratorium on Internet-specific taxes until 2005. Many people feel that the e-business industry is so vulnerable that the US government should let it grow with being hindered by taxes.

E-commerce has now become a famous type of business in the whole world. It is fast and convenient to consumer. It enhance a business with unlimited business opportunity.

Cheong Qian Ming

Hello!! I am a student that first time starting a group blog. My name is Qian Ming. I am 21 years old and currently taking undergraduate programme in UTAR. Although my hometown is in Kuantan, I already stay in Kuala Lumpur for 8 years since I studied secondary school (Chong Hwa Independent High School). I normally spend my time on study and playing basketball. Sometimes I also like to play gym because it can tone up my body and also improve my health, just like my display picture. Haha. I wish I could be a succeed auditor or accountant in the future and work in big 4 audit firm. So this year I will try my best in study in order to get first class degree honors when graduated.

The first website I mostly visited is http://www.google.com/. This is most common search engine for me when doing assignment and searches some unknown information such as articles, image, journals and others. The second website I mostly visited is http://www.acidyoga.org/. This is a forum that enables me to find out all the information such as news, video clips, songs and others about my favorite singer Yoga Lim. He is the champion of"super walk of fame" , which is a famous singing competition in Taiwan. Besides that, the third website I mostly website is http://www.facebook.com/. This website provides opportunity to me to keep in touch with some secondary school friends which are not same university with me and sharing some photo with them. The forth website I always visited is http://www.manutd.com.cn/. Manchester United is my favorite football club which I support since primary school. I can get all the news, wallpapers, match schedule and others information about Manchester United through this forum. Lastly, the website I mostly visited is http://www.tom.com/. This is a famous website in china which provide a lot news about sports, entertainment, cars, international issues and others information. .

My top 5 internet activities is searching information, playing forum, watching video clip, msn chatting and playing internet game.

Kong Wei Hong

Hi, I am Wei Hong. Some friends do call me Victor. Is good to have a Christian name, people can remembered your name easily. Don’t misinterpret, I am Buddhist. HAHA… I am 21 years old, currently studying in University Tunku Abdul Rahman (Bandar Sungai Long) still single and available. I normally spend my free time serving net, reading books and interacting with friends. Time is limited for me due to the commitment I put in Society such as accounting and wushu. Though these commitments cause me tire and busy but it gives me an enjoyable experience.

The website I usually visit is http://www.facebook.com/. I just started using this website recently. It was introduce by my “brothers” in Sg long. In this website I can get to know what my friend is doing, this website also allowed us to upload photo, post comment, make a short note and many other function. It is more convenient that friendster.com that I use previously. I am a person that believes in superstitious thing such as Feng Shui. Therefore I do visit http://www.wofs.com/. In this website, I have learned a lot of thing about Feng Shui. As a student, I will have to find sufficient information to complete my assignment. The search engine that I often use is http://www.google.com/. Beside that I also use it to search for knowledge that I interested in ( eg: food nutrient, IQ test, spiritual world…). I usually go for http://www.youtube.com/ and http://www.onemanga.com/ for entertainment. There are many video clip that I can watch in youtube. Onemanga provide me with lots of comic that I like to read.

The top 5 internet that I involved in are chatting through messenger, read comic, watch video clip, visiting friend profile in facebook and of cause obtaining knowledge.

Low Wei Shien

My name is Low Wei Shien, just Vincent will make us closer. 21 years old boy who likes to play badminton and basketball, swimming, mountain climbing and I’ve fall in photography too. Well, I enjoy my free time with books and art ,but everything is still in learning. Actually, many guys claim that i'm a weird stuff, but I couldn’t feel the “weird demeanor” in me that they mention about, as time passes, i do think they are right. I realize that I'm an anxious person who always worry for the whole world. Some might applaud it but some might not. Thus, a nickname for me appears: "Mr. Think a lot". As an accounting student, i would like to finish all the ACCA exam and have my own accounting firm, even the name is ready--"Low & Co", does it sound odd? Not a big deal…I will keep striving and heading to hit my grand target.

Surfing net is one of my favourable leisure activities too as i can get lot of news from it even i never stride over my doorstep. The website i visited the most is www.chinapress.com, it's a local newspapar's website, it provides a lot of global news which is really great. The second website i always visit is www.friendster.com, i started to get along with it since i was in secondary school, Frienster—a online society which provide us a space to make new friends without confrontation. Blogs, bulletin boards, photos make the website just great. Besides that, another website that own the same functions as friendster but with more with more amusing functions, which is www.facebook.com. The fourth website in my list is www.google.com, it's the best search engine which is amazing enough. No matter what info you need, the vast speed and abundant sear results will always provide you satisfaction. Undeniable, it helps me the most on my article and assignments. Finally, the fifth will be www.manutd.com, it's my favourite football team website, i always update my latest news about the team from it as I am a crazy soccer ball fans.

The top five internet activities that i always take part are chatting through messenger, reading the latest news, blogging, listening to music and wandering in forums.

Ng Kai Tie

My name is Ng Kai Tie, a 23-year-old boy that like playing basketball, Kobe Bryant is my idol, his basketball skills is undefeatable. I like reading, especially the historical book with a background of war, the book that I like mostly is 3 kingdoms. And another hobby is online. After online, I realized that the world is so big and we can travel all around the world with a small computer. I can get all the information I want with this computer. It is amazing.

The website that I visited mostly is www.nba.com, it provide the latest basketball information for me and the updated news about L.A Lakers, the NBA team that I like mostly and the team of Kobe Bryant. The second website that I visited mostly is www.fbm.mycnx.com, it is a web pages war game. This game is based on the history background of the three kingdoms. The third website that I always visited is www.google.com.my, this is the search machine that I use mostly, it helps me a lot to generate knowledge and doing assignment. The fourth webpage that I visited most is www.youtube.com, I can see whatever website I like with this website, I like it, and it is convenient and gives fun to my life. The fifth website that I used mostly is www.yahoo.com, same with Google, it is also I convenient search machine.

My top 5 internet activities are learning, watching video clip, generate information, chitchatting and gaming from internet.