An example of an E-commerce failure and its causes

Although there are hundreds of EC success stories in specialty and niche market, but failures of EC initiatives are fairly common. Furthermore, during 2000-2002, large number of dot-com companies failed.


One example of EC failure is Kozmo.com. It was founded in 1997 by two young Wall Street professionals, Joseph Park and Yong Kang. Park had been an analyst in the corporate finance division of blue-chip investment bank Goldman Sachs & Co., while Kang was an assistant vice president at societe generale in the media and communications group.

Kozmo.com's catalogue featured 5 main product categories :
- entertainment
- meals
- grocery
- drugstore
- gift shop
Customers choose from 30,000 different products at the Kozmo.com site, running from magazines to CDs to food. If you want to have further understanding on the Kozmo's products, here is the link : http://www.businessweek.com/ebiz/9908/ec0831.htm

Why Kozmo.com will fail in the e-commerce ?
The reasons are :
(i) targeted customers base
Kozmo's greatest error with their customers occurred when they stopped catering to their main client base of middle class college-student. The reasons behind of this change is they could target more upscale clients who would order expensive products. Indeed, the college-student customers who made up almost 76% of their business that pay a premium to have thousands of items.
(ii) Cost
Kozmo offered free delivery and charged competitive prices to their customers when it launched in New York. In real, the cost of delivery were high but they though the customers loved the services they offered. Burdo, Kozmo Chief Executive, slashed Kozmo's overhead, instituted a delivery fee and oversaw several round of layoffs. Since everything goes worse, therefore the company closed operations in San Diego and Houston.
(iii) Investor's withdraw
Investors promised to give a private funding of $30million but later on the company learned that an investor has withdrawn from a $6million commitment. This have caused the merger deal with Los Angeles-based PDQuick collapsed when the funding that was promised to PDQuick did not materialize.

Besides the Kozmo.com, there were some well-known B2C failures include eToys, Drkoop.com, Boo.com and etc. Does the large number of failures mean that EC's days are numbered? Individuals and companies that wish to engage in the e-commerce business can learn more about EC failures by visit www.whytheyfailed.com or www.techdirt.com

Disscuss how E-commerce can reduce time sysle, improve employees' empowerment and facilitate customer support.

E-commerce is the electronic system that allows seller and buyer to sell and purchase products or services by using internet. Nowadays, many people, for example, student who needs to use computer with internet enabled to surf information for doing their homework and assignments, they will spend a lot of time to stay in front of computer. Therefore, they have learned a pool of surfing knowledge from websites. For employees as well as employers, they communicate with each others or contact with clients and suppliers for efficient business transactions.

Cycle time
E-commerce cycle

By using internet, E-commerce helps a company to reduce the time it takes to perform a repetitive task. A company can purchase an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system from an IT-based company, and they will set up a system for your company which the system enables customers to order goods from you, and make orders from suppliers when the stocks are running out at specific level. Beside that, E-commerce also reduces the irritation of customers for searching the product they want by visiting shop by shop or even mall by mall. It actually smoothed the transaction of business by saving a lot of travelling time and lower cost to be incurred. For example of Nike, a famous sport brand which enables customers to design their own pair of shoes on their website, the company will estimate the price and period to have the shoes made, the shoes will be delivered to them by post accordingly after payments are made. Therefore, the time of processing the products or services until they are sold is cutting down by using E-commerce system.


Improve employees’ Empowerment

Employees are the most important stakeholders of a company. They are also a potent resource for most of the organizations, their contributions to a company have a large impact to the performance of a company. E-commerce encourages employees to have different roles in completing a task, and not just work as stick to a particular job. Company gains competitive advantages by having multi-task oriented employees. Evidently, with more knowledge and authority given, many task-related decision can be made without refering to higher level of management, therefore, the timeframe to complete a task is shortered. By giving suitable authority to employees to handle or serve a particular customer may give good impression to the cutomer and the company may retain customer through the familiarity of services. The exploitation of employees' potential is carried out adequately and they will feel more confident when answering the question raised by customers on their own field if having the authority. From this, empowerment of employees is exercised and improved through the advantages that are given, to the growth and continuous evolvement of a company.


Facilitate customer support

With the establishment of E-commerce, it facilitates customer support by providing a website for customers to shop, ask questions about products or services and give feedback after purchasing. This feedback from customers are important, it could help a company to improve the quality of products and services in order to satisfy customers. For example, a credit card company, if we make call to ask for some details about our credit card, the customer service answered our question politely, then we might feel happy to continue using it and may recommend to our friends to apply for it. On the other hand, if we don't satisfy with the services, we might be frustrated and stop using the credit card services provided by the company. Enhancing in customer support is one of the most important objective of a company, E-commerce assists to achieve goals of a company with the technological advancement provision and benefits a company with thousands of business chances.

The History and Evolution of E-Commerce

Electronic Commerce, or otherwise commonly known as E-Commerce, is defined as the process of buying, selling or exchanging products, services and information via computer networks ( Turban, 2006 ).

Since the spread of the Internet, a wide variety and amount of trade has grown by leaps and bounds, encouraging inovations such as electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.

With the emergence of the World Wide Web (WWW), e-commerce has become more accessible and affordable, especially for small businesses to gain competitive advantage over the bigger businesses. By providing its user-friendly interface, the Web has significantly altered and improved the way the internet organizes, presents and accesses information.

Over the last 30 years, the meaning of e-commerce has changed significantly. Originally, e-commerce referred to the electronically facilitated commercial transcations introduced in the late 1970s. Techonologies such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) allowed busineeses to send and receive electronic commercial documents, such as electronic purchase orders or electronic invoices. This led to the introduction and growth of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

It took approximately 5 years after the Internet became popular worldwide in 1994, to introduce security protocols and DSL, which allowed continual connection to the Internet. By the end of year 2000, many business companies all throughout the world started offering their services through the Web. Eversince then, the word "e-commerce" has been associated by the world with the ability of purchasing and seeling various goods and services through the Internet using secure protocols and electornic payment services.

Below is the timeline of the summary of the evolution of e-commerce (Wikipedia):

• 1990: Tim Berners-Lee writes the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, using a NeXT computer. - 1992: J.H. Snider and Terra Ziporyn publish Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change The Way We Shop and What We Buy. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312063598.
• 1994: Netscape releases the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Pizza Hut offers pizza ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opens. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. Adult materials also becomes commercially available, as do cars and bikes. Netscape 1.0 is introduced in late 1994 SSL encryption that made transactions secure.
• 1995: Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com and the first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio start broadcasting. Dell and Cisco begin to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay is founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb.
• 1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.
• 1999: Business.com sold for US $7.5 million to eCompanies, which was purchased in 1997 for US $149,000. The peer-to-peer filesharing software Napster launches.
• 2000: The dot-com bust.
• 2002: eBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion. Niche retail companies CSN Stores and NetShops are founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains, rather than a central portal.
• 2003: Amazon.com posts first yearly profit.
• 2007: Business.com acquired by R.H. Donnelley for $345 million.
• 2008: US eCommerce and Online Retail sales projected to reach $204 billion, an increase of 17 percent over 2007.

Clearly, the speed of the evolution and progression of e-commerce is undeniable. Many have benefitted from the usage of e-commerce and have not looked back since. Although with the introduction of this ever advancing technology, unethical and immoral things have also been done, this does not mean that e-commerce is bad. In actual fact, e-commerce is merely a tool. It is up to the users like us, who will decide whether we want to use this techonology for good or bad.

Therefore as a conclusion, I urge everyone who is benefitting from this technology, called the e-commerce, to use this technology wisely for the good of the public. Let us not exploit what is originally intended to be good, and turn it into something that is bad for the public. The future of e-commerce and the impact on the present and future generations lies in our hands...

Links:

1. http://www.klein.com/dvk/publications/ecommerce.pdf
2. http://newmedia.medill.northwestern.edu/courses/nmpspring01/brown/Revstream/history.htm
3. http://ict.cdimm.org/man/engleza/ecomm03.pdf
4. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1282104
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce

Here I am!

Hi all, I'm Loh Jia Yuan From tutorial group 1 of BAC. And my name 'Rachel', is always used in my friend circle and I'm the last to join this assignment group due to the strange number of people in my group. We are a group! Welcome to our blog, this is going to be a nice place to share with you all about some e-commerce information.

Okay, let start off with the place where i'm born, Mantin. It's a small town near to Seremban, it was peace......but, there is always a 'but', there was actually some cases happened nowadays. So, If you want to visit Mantin, please be careful or bring some weapons for your own safety. I'm born in 21/10/1986, year of tiger. This doesn't mean that i'm fierce, but a typical 'libra' girl, always fighting for fairness and impartiality.

My hobbies are :

1. Reading novel - science fiction during leisure.

2. Online - surfing, blogging and chit-chatting with my friends, I'm already addicted to it, because or it powerful searching engines, and the cost is affortable, and the most important things is I started to use internet since I was standard 5, and I've got used to 'hang' on the internet most of the time.

3. Sport - Swimming and playing badminton are the two activities I liked the most.

4. Music - All the types of music, including pop and classical.

5. Movie - For movies, I'm more into remedies,and horror movies, so that we can laugh together and sharing with friends without tears.


Top 5 websites for me are :
1. Google (http://www.google.com/) - This is the homepage of my internet explorer, and I think many of others will have the same preference with me as this is the most 'coolest' and powerful search engines, anything can be found by using this.

2. ChinaPress (http://www.chinapress.com.my/) - As for the effect of my family members, they used to buy this newspaper. I'll read this at home, but in Sg Long, I'll go for its website, in order to save cost and place to store it.

3. Springer (http://www.springer.com/) - For this website, I'll use when I need to find journal or articles. I think it'll replace google website to be my homepage throughout this semester.

4. Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com/) - This is the mailbox for me to get in touch with all the important and updated events as well as my friends.

5. Blogger (http://www.blogspot.com/) - I have a blog on this website where I can share some special things with friends and other bloggers. It'll be updated only when something new happened.

That's all for my introduction of myself. Curious about how I look? just scroll down...



Yeah, this is me and Mr Donald when visiting to NiuZeShui, Damansara, Malaysia.




Look forward to our blog, GUYS!

I am....SIXUAN

Hi guys! Welcome to this cool blog! This blog is going to be a part of me and my team members' live for this semester, as we introduce ourselves and provide the latest news on e-commerce topics.

To start things off...we are to introduce ourselves. So as for me, here it goes...

My name is Goh Sixuan. I am borned in Malacca but grew up in Penang, as my dad is attached to Penang Port Sdn Bhd as a civil engineer. My birthdate is on 30 April 1988, and every year I am very proud of by birthdate..why? It is because the next day is always Labor Day, which means I can enjoy myself and celebrate my birthday as much as I want :) My family consists of my father, mother, me and my sister who is 2 years younger than me.

I came to UTAR right after my SPM and did 1 year of Foundation In Arts before I continued my Accounting Degree. Right now I am already in my final year....wow! I am someone who loves God, my family and friends with all my heart. I used to be quite impatient last time when people did not live up to my standard especially when it came to doing work on time and well. Now, I am able to control my temper much better. In these few years in KL, i have been attending City Harvest Church, KL....It is through here that I have met really good friends, whom i call my Family. These are the ones whom i can turn too in times of troubles. Right here, we always work hard in our studies and career, yet at the same time really play hard when it comes to having fun.

Among my hobbies would include the following:

1. Listening to music - almost all kinds of genres except for rock and heavy metal ( my ears can't stand them )

2. Watch movies especially comedies. I seldom follow any series but right until now, my personal all time favourite movie will be NODAME CANTABILE ! I absolutely love it!

3. Read books that relate back to different cultures especially Chinese and Japanese cultures.

4. Play piano. I have ben learning to play the piano since i was 7 and stopped at grade 5. After that, I learnt to play by hearing - which I enjoy much more than just simply following the notes.

5. Swimming. This is my favourite sport. I have been learning to swim since primary school.

I do often surf the net, either for pleasure or for work. These are the top 5 websites that I frequently visit:

1. http://www.thestar.com.my/ - As i do not purchase the hard copy of any newspaper, I will go to this STAR Online website daily to be kept updated on the latest happenings in our nation and the world.

2. http://www.chc.org.my/ - This is my church website, City Harvest Church, KL. Here, i get to be updated about the latest happenings, and updates in church. There are also tons of pictures on the many Big Days that we have had.

3. http://gsxuanriversongs.multiply.com/ - This is my personal blog, where I from time-to-time post pictures and information about what I have been up to.

4. http://www.heyaosun.com/default_eng.asp - Sun Ho is my favourite Chinese female artist by far. She's a philathrophist and also being there for those that need her. She's actively doing charity work everywhere especially in China.

5. http://comics.com/ - Yup! This si the website that I will visit when I like to just chill out and laugh at silly things especially when I am tired or tensed up.

As for my top 5 internet activities, they will include:

1. Chatting with my peers and relatives through msn. This is a great way for me to keep in touch especially with those whom I seldom get to meet.

2. Updating my facebook is also something that I frequently do. I used to use friendster, but now I seem to feel that facebook is really much more user friendly.

3. E-mailing important mails and forwarding funny e-mails is definitely something that I always do. Many times, this is the way in which I keep in touch with others as well as enjoying funny and heart-warming e-mails that will brighten up my day.

4. Blogging is what I will do from time-to-time when there are interesting things happening to me.

5. Checking out the latest news online will top my to-do list everday.

Here are some pictures of me:

My friends and I !

The Future CEOs...haha...

Wacky Steamboat gang...

That's all about for me now...Will be updating more soon.

ME

I and Singapore's film producer

movie shooting at my home ( crews, me , and Lim Tek Weng)

Temple Chatutchat of Thailand(visited Sept 2008)

Bukit Melawati

Bukit Melawati

Hi everyone....I am Ng Chai Ting but most of my friends will call me as Destine. I am a village girl who come from a small Chinese village which is located in Taiping, Perak. I am glad that I was borned in Taiping , because it is really a beautiful and peaceful place . Besides that , it is also famous with its "40 first". What does "40 first" means? Actually, Taiping is the pioneer in many fields in Malaysia such as the first Lake garden , police force, railway station and so on . Here is the link that can give you all a clear view about my lovely town. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping,_Perak#40_.27Firsts.27_of_Taiping

During my spare time I like to watch movie or series. Until now , the series I like the most is Prison Break which is about a guy who tries to save and escape with his brother from a high security prison. But I am only addicted to Season 1 because in the following seasons i found out that the author of this series does not has any new ideas that make me feels shocking and impressive.Besides watching movie, I also like travelling . Normally i will try to keep the budget at minimum because i only have the residue money from my PTPTN loan (after the completion of one semester) to cover all the expenses. Travelling also a way of awarding myself for all the efforts I put during the whole semester.

Actually this is the first time I am writing a blog. I think that it will be a challenging task for me as I don't really like any jobs that invloves using computer because it will take up a lot of my time due to my typing speed. Besides that ,I still can't find any reasons to spend my time online if I am really not interested to it. But don't worry , I still have the necessary knowledge of using computer although the time I spend with my Dell laptop is less than half an hours per day. Hope after the completion of this assignment , I can change my perception and will not ask others about reasons they love online again.

Due to the above reasons, the top five activities i do the most are reading newspaper through UTAR Intranet that links to other websites , checking mail and email on Yahoo mail and Hotmail , seaching articles or information using search engines such as google search and google scholar and chatting with my friends through Window Live Messenger once a while.I think the five activities i had mentioned above most probably already included all the activities I normally carry out online. It seem that my life is quite boring , but let me assure you that it is not boring at all because life is really dependanty on how you value, spend and enjoy it.

Following are the websites i visit the most:

• http://www.hotmail.com/
  
• http://www.google.com.my/
  
• http://www.utar.edu.my/


• http://www.yahoo.com/


• scholar.google.com.my

Introductory Piece

The most common of all first-encounter practices is to introduce oneself. Not wanting to disrupt this centuries-old tradition, I, too, shall begin my entries in this blog by telling you about myself.

My official name is Hah Hui Ying. I call it official because it is what stated on my birth certificate. It is by no means the only name I have, but is by all means the name everyone who knows me knows I have. I'm 22 going on 23, and my hometown is Ipoh, Perak.

I'm the middle among three siblings brought up in unconventional ways by my Malaysian father and Indonesion mother. The result is a contradictory person who seeks to see things the way normal persons are oblivious to. My bunch of crazy friends are a combination of strange personalities and weird interests, all of whom are among my favourite people. For some inexplicable reasons, me and my siblings are not very good at Mandarin despite being chinese educated all the way to Form 6. >_<.

Topping my list of interests are languages and wordplay. However, like the fate that befalls many a Malaysian student, I am currently pursuing a field that was not my dream. This doesn't mean I regret my choice. In fact, I am far from regretting my choice, as I see now that I can go far with it. Writing, however, remains one of my most beloved hobbies, because I don't think that not pursuing a writing degree means the end of my writing dream. Other than the usual love for music, movies and books, I appreciate art and puzzles. I backpack once in a while and do many random things when opportunity arise.

On the internet, my top hobby is chatting with my friends, especially those in foreign places where financial concerns don't allow me to call or visit. I also keep in touch with my friends via friends network websites like Friendster and Facebook. Other than that, I contribute to a writing community called Fiction Press where amatuer authors like myself review each others' works to learn and improve.

I also am a member of the Angelworld forum, where I exchange views on everything and anything with people my age in other parts of the world. Angelworld also happens to be the most beautiful website I've ever seen. However, it takes a long time to load as it is a heavily graphical site and TMNet is never famous for speed.

Of course, checking emails can never escape as anyone's top internet activites, so I visit Gmail and Hotmail a lot. YouTube is also among my frequent haunts because I need to familiarise myself with cinematic trailers lest the customers where I work part-time at a local cinema find me incapable of explaining the plots of certain movies. Also, to satisfy my hunger for certain art, I visit Deviantart.

Lastly, I visit The Hunger Site to do some online charity, because one should always try to help others in need, and this site is suitable for busy (actually, lazy) students like me who can never find time to do proper charity work.

Thus, for the reasons stated above, the websites I visit the most are as follows:

• www.aw8.net
• www.fictionpress.com
• www.youtube.com
• www.deviantart.com
• www.thehungersite.com

Well, that's it from me for the time being. The next time you hear from me would be the time to get down to business, or in this case, the subset of electronic business - e-commerce.

Who i am ?

This photo was taken at the time of playing paint balls game organized by Wataniah society

These 2 photos were taken when i visited Bukit Tinggi, French Village (Colmar Tropicale) & Japanese Village

Nice to meet all of you who ever read my blog. I am Christina Ang from the pearl island, called Penang. Well, before i came to UTAR, i have been entered into USM by taking the course of Applied Science in Mathematics and economic. During the first semester in USM, I feel so disgust about the calculus and statistics. This is why you will meet me in UTAR. Now, I'm happy who I am. I like to think all the time, conservative minded, perfectionistic in doing everything and hygienic, a very typical "virgo" girl who enjoys listening to musics, watching Hong Kong dramas, dancing, singing at Green Box Karaoke, hanging out with friends and window shopping. I could be a chatter box at times, but mostly remains silencer. I have two definite extremely different characters: talkative to my family and close friends; quiet to strangers and new friends. Moreover, I'm striving everyday to practice the motto of "hope, joy, cheerful"...

What websites I visit frequently?
~ www.friendster.com - Well, I always visit my friendster account to update my photos, check my friends' comments and have a look on my friends' blogs.
~ www.sinchew.com.my / www.thestar.com.my - Since I'm not subscribe to any newspaper, visiting the newspaper websites become my daily activity so that I can be updated to the current issues like sports, politics, entertainments, and others.
~ www.fupa.com / www.orangeshark.com - When I feel bored, I'll go to these websites to release my stress and relax my self. This helps me refresh my minds.
~ www.gsc.com.my / www.tgv.com.my - With the interest of watching movies, I will visit cinema websites to look for the latest movie showing and make ticket reservations online.
~ www.moonstarlet.com - Most of the women will care about their outfit and look for the latest fashions' information. I'm one of them too, haha...... Thus, I will visit this fashion website to look for the latest dresses and sometimes make purchases online.

What Internet Activities I Conduct Frequently?
~ By using MSN Messenger, I can chat with my family and friends easily without any cost consideration. Besides, MSN has a tool of communicate with many people at the same time.
~ Surely, sending and checking emails by using the Internet become my daily activity. I will forward some interesting emails to share with my family and friends.
~ Next, I will play online games when I'm free or feel bored. There are a lot of games like puzzles games, strategy games, adventure games, and the games I played most are word games.
~ Besides, I will search information by using internet. E.g. journal articles, latest IT products, or up-to-date world news.
~ Sometimes, I will download some musics and video clips when I'm free so that I can play it next time.