The internet brings people together from every country in the world. It reduces the expanse between people in lots of ways. About 60 of all electronic commerce sites on the web are in ,English. Although sites in other language and in multiple languages are appearing with growing incidence, once the language obstacle is rise above and the technology exists for any business to conduct electronic commerce with any other business or consumer anywhere in the world. The main technology development that has allowed electronic commerce to develop beyond its beginning in bank EFTs and business to business EDI is the emergence of the internet and the web
Origins of the internet:
In the early 1960s, the U.S department of defense became very worried about the possible special effects of nuclear attack on its computing facilities. The defense department realized that the weapons of the future would require powerful computers for management and control.
Although the goals of the defense department network web still to control weapons systems and transfer research files other uses for this huge network began to appear to early 1970s .in 1972 a researcher wrote a program that could send and receive messages over the network email was born and became widely used very quickly . the numbers of network users in the military and education research communities continued to grow the network software included to tools for the performing this task. File transfer protocol [FTP] enabled users to transfer files between computers and telnet let users log on their computer accounts from remote sites. Both FTP and telnet are still widely used on the internet today for the file transfer in remote login.
Commercial use of internet
As personal computers turn into more authoritative, inexpensive and available during the 1980s.companies increasingly used them to put up their own in-house networks. although this networks included email software that employees could use to send messages to each other, business wanted their employees to capable to speak with people outer their company networks .large firms built their own networks that used smallest amount telephone lines to connect field offices to company head office .
In 1989, the NSF permitted to commercial email services, MCI mail and CompuServe, to set up some degree of connection to internet for the only purpose of exchanging email transmissions with users of the internet. These connections allowed commercial enterprises to send email directly to internet addresses and authorized members of the research and education community on the internet to send email directly to MCI mail and CompuServe addresses.
Brief History of the web
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire, now called European Laboratory for particle physics) began the web project. The goal of the project was two-fold:
(A) To develop ways of linking distant documents (hyperlink)
(b) To find ways of enabling users to work together (collaborative authoring).
While the second goal has been indefinable, the first has had incredible impact on the computing industry. In 1995, the market for networked computing software was rocked by the web’s movement from “networking technology” to “social phenomenon” in the last half of the year. And the year was marked by a tidal wave of first-time events that bordered, occasionally, on hysteria. To enable its continued development without proprietary influences, the web project moved from CERN to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1995, and is now called the W3 Consortium (www.w3.org ). This Consortium coordinates the development of WWW standards to ensure certain uniformity and minimize repetition of effort.
Components of the web Architecture
To use the web, in addition to an internet connection, a user needs a special piece of software called a web browser (Such as Netscape Navigator). The browser acts as a graphical interface between the user and the internet- it sends the essential commands to request data from other computers and then formals them for the user’s screen. Documents that are formatted using hypertext markup language (HTML) contain taglines that inform the browser how to format them.
The web is based on three-part structural design:
HTML—Hypertext markup language provides both formatting and hyperlinking.
HTTP—Hypertext transfer protocol, the protocol for connections between web servers and browsers.
CGI—The common gateway interface, for invoking programs from web servers.
Web Software Developmental Tools
Development tools technology for the internet is in it is early years. However just software development has requires sophisticated tools to make programming more creative the delivery of dynamic content on web will also require sophisticated tools and techniques.
Web applications developers are realizing that choosing the proper tools is essential. Many issues faced by developers during the early days of client/ server are being revisited with the internet and understanding this issues will help ease the transition to this new model. Internet development tools are still unverified.
However developers stay on hard pushed to find a complete environment that includes database access, interface components. And interactive features, fortunately tools required to build database-driven web application will grown-up quickly because they will be based basically on verified technology from the client/server era.
Need for Better Programming Languages
Historically, programmers have used two classes of tools to develop software applications: third -generation language (“3GL”) tools such as C++ and COBOL, or fourth -generation language (“4GL “) database tools. The 3GL tools have been used for mainframes and for mass-marketed PC products.
the class of tools that has developed for database application generally does not allow access to multiple to build complex enterprise- wide business applications that reach a global audience of employees, customers, and suppliers.
One new language that is becoming very popular in developing web application is java. Java represents all of the significant elements for a successful web programming: it is easy to use, it runs on multiple platforms, and it is compact. Additionally java solves critical bandwidth and processor bottlenecks through its design and opens a completely new world of interactivity for content developers and end users.
Electronic commerce (EC) also known as e-business, describes the manner in which transaction take place over network. Mainly the internet it is the procedure of electronically buying and selling goods, service and some information on Electronic commerce application such as buying and selling stocks on the internet are upward very fast. Electronic commerce is not just about buying and selling it is also about electronically communication, discovering information and collaborating, it is about E-government ,E-learning, and much more.
E-Business is more than just doing business on the internet
Many different meaning of e-business
Selling
Internet enabled supply chain integration (EDI)
To many people the term electronic commerce means shopping on the part of the internet called the World Wide Web. even though consumer shopping on the web is expected to exceed $300 billion by 2004, Electronic commerce is very extensive, and many more business activities than just web shopping .actually the total volume of all business activities on the web exceed $4 trillion by 2004.Some people and business use the term electronic business (or e-business) when they are talking about electronic commerce in this broader sense.
Although the web has made online shopping possible for a lot of business and being in a broader sense electronic commerce has existed for many years for decades bank have been using electronic funds transfer (EFT) also called wire transfer .which are electronic transmission of account exchange information over private communication networks.
Business also have been engaged in a form of electronic commerce known as electronic data interchange (EDI), for many years electronic data interchange occurs business transmits computer-readable data in a standard format to another business.
In the 1960s, businesses realized that much of the document they exchanged related to the shipping of goods-such as invoices, purchase orders and bills of lading and included the same set of information for almost all transaction .they also realized that they were spending a good deal of time and money entering these data into their computers, printing paper forms and then re-entering the data on the other side of the transaction.
Businesses that connect in EDI with each other are called trading partners. The standard formats used in EDI contain the same information that businesses have always included in their standard paper invoices, purchase orders and shipping documents, firms such as general electric have been establish in using EDI to improve their purchasing processes and their relationships with trader.
E-commerce has some great advantages like lower cost, better and quicker customer service, quick shopping, information sharing and control of them but it has some limitation like System and data integrity, system scalability, product search in not efficient, etc…
Types of e-commerce application
(1)B2B (Business to Business)
(2)B2C (Business to Consumer)
(3)C2C (Consumer to Consumer)
(4)C2B (Consumer to Business)
(5)B2G (business to government)
(6)C2G (consumer to government)
(7) G2C (government to consumer)
(8) G2B (government to business)
(9) G2E (Government to employee)
(10) G2G (government to government)
Literature Review
Some use the term E-government to means an extension of E-commerce to government procurement. This use of the term views e-government only in the realm of b2g transaction.
According to Steffen Wittenauer (2002) E-Commerce must be seen as a part of the economical process of the Internet-area. It’s the first step of direct communication between users through the Internet. Before this, web sides only were created for presentations of companies or other publishing activities today, the two parts “Business-to-Business” (B2B) and “Business-to-Consumer” (B2C) are the leading-markets of E-Commerce. B2B is the trading between companies on a direct way or through developed E-platforms. This E-market will be future’s fastest growing sector.
According to David Linthicum (2000) e-Business is no longer a buzzword, it is a reality in which internal and external business systems financial partners, customers, suppliers, and support operations communicate and execute transactions automatically and immediately. These rising electronic business-to-business (B2B) relationships require new type of integration technology that is dependent on intelligent, databases, and processes together.
According to Arthur B Sculley and W William A Woods (2000) B2B exchanges help bring together disjointed buyers and sellers, reduce costs of operation, offer more efficient price discovery, offer dynamic price setting mechanism, and many others. In short according to authors B2B exchanges will change the way of business.
According to M.Brian Blake (2001) large majority of this effort is toward commerce where businesses have direct transactions with consumers (B2C). However, the transactions that occur between businesses (B2B) are far more common than B2C.
According to ELIAS M. AWAD (2002) The Internet is changing the face of the world economy. And it is superior impact on B2B e-commerce. An effect on the ways companies of strategic deal and relationships with suppliers. The increased volume and speed of the rise B2C e-commerce and the promise of effective supply chain is driving demand in B2B companies that have to decrease the cost of usage and development of the speeding up of business processes in the supply chain who take advantage of the efficiency B2B booth to become market leaders in their segment savings they achieve cost supply chain can be transmitted in improving operations IT and ultimately for B2B customers.
The difference between B2C and B2B e-commerce is larger than the retail and wholesale purchasing. B2B market is estimated to be more than 10 times larger than the B2C market.web based B2B companies’ profit a number of ways they can help other companies set up sites where clause goods or services can be sold. They can act as a broker at auction and receive a percentage of each fare. They can generate income by companies to advertise their entire websites. The search engine Yahoo! Entered the B2B hope that rides the wave of success.
According to mohini singh online environment is fast moving power to consumers who can switch to a new provided with a simple click of a mouse, this requires that companies offering online services and creating extraordinary customer success stories. It can be seen that a focus of the organization to compete in e-services supported by the suitable electronic technology is important to improve operational efficiency, sustain loyal customers and increase revenues.
The increased efficiency achieved when the contact with customers are managed by web technology relationship with back-office systems like order processing, procurement, integration of payment and after-sales service, An integrated response and e-business is then able to report to the consumer as online store.
Customers then receive the service successfully from one end to customers opening a contact through the project cycle of taking orders or delivery and after-sales service. In a market where many players are focused on client organizations considering the web as an entity entirely independent of its back-end system functions and customer service may not get success.
Research methodology
Today EC is going through a period of consolidation in which interest for new technologies and ideas is now being accompanied by careful attention to proper strategy and implementation, most of all people be familiar with that e-business has two part it is not just about technology it is also about business.
Research questions:
Research on various types of e-commerce applications and how much the new E-commerce technology is beneficial for organization.
Analysis
What is B2C e-commerce?
B2C stands for “business-to-consumer” and it is applies to any type of business or organization that sells its stuff or services to consumers using the Internet for their own use.
B2C has grown to include services such as online auctions, online banking, health information, travel services and real estate sites.
Customer service applications in the E-commerce are more important than in usual sales, since merchants and customer do not meet to each other, only click of a mouse is enough for an online customer to choose new supplier.
B2C e-commerce is applications that provide an interface from the business directly to consumers. The most common example of a B2C application is a site featuring retail business products or services can be purchased directly from the consumer, such as www.amazon.com the basic model of the B2C e-commerce, is illustrated in Figure
Buyer search and browse e-commerce site buyer select goods and gives
Credit card information
Seller sends confirmation to
Buyer
Seller delivers goods to buyer seller checks buyer’s credit card
Information
B2C electronic commerce transaction may involve electronic marketing, order and payment after sales service and in the case of virtual or intangible property and services, and even delivery, B2C e-commerce is used by customers for the convenience of purchasing goods or services through the website. Use in B2C e-commerce business to attract new customers to reach new markets and promote products and services.
B2C e-commerce also called consumer-oriented e-commerce .in consumer-oriented e-commerce companies deploy virtual shops to sell their products and services directly to customers.
Shopping can be faster and more comfortable. Call centres can be integrated with the site. Offers and prices subject to change for a while. Broadband telecommunications will increase the purchasing experience. Two major challenges faced by B2C e-commerce to build traffic and keep customers loyalty. Because the winner-take all nature of B2C structure, many smaller company find it difficult to enter the market and remain competitive.
E-commerce is exponentially rising the accessibility of information, giving customers access to more knowledge of better quality and faster than before. Businesses online supply an information-rich background by which competitors can recognize, match and develop product modernization.
A Corporation that can reply to the needs of customers, hold their requests on time and maintain their buying decisions creates value and wins customer reliability.
The Online customer expects high quality, fast and friendly service and also they want ease, choice and a quick to respond service with an individual touch.
Popular online facilities such as search products and services, electronic payment systems maintained to resolve the transaction, provision of product specification to reduce the cost of communication, update product delivery information and immediate response to customer demand is key to winning customer continued to line and make them come back to the site to purchase more.
B2C Electronic commerce has not only allowed existing merchants to raise their potential customer base, but also has produced a number of successful companies operating only online.
Companies from all business sectors, from travel insurance industry has created the online B2C commerce is the way of effective and cost-effective business, Successful Company conduct online B2C commerce include Good traders bricks and mortar, like Barnes & Noble, where the Internet has Other channels complement existing sales channels and a new group merchants such as Amazon, the Internet is just a sales channel.
B2B and B2C e-commerce share at least two main objectives. One of these major objectives is to complete the transaction in time. For example in the case of B2C e-commerce, the seller must reduce the time between the dates of purchase when the buyer receives their goods. Another main objective is to complete the transaction without considering the distance and time to provide more satisfaction to customers. But there are also differences between these two classes of electronic commerce. The main difference is how a company performs. This is similar to the real world. In B2C transactions people can give credit cards, cash or checks to make a purchase. In the web world, credit cards are used more frequently. B2B transaction, the companies have company accounts and accounts that remain are collected at certain times. It remains valid in electronic commerce.
The focus of this e-commerce application is on the consumer’s use of a merchant’s web. Storefront or website consumers anywhere can browse and order goods or services online anytime. This approach is modelled on the traditional shopping experience. Found in store like Safeway, kronger and k-mart.for e.g. a shopping cart is used to hold goods until the customer is ready to checkout. Checkout is order and payment processing .b2c is the electronic equivalent of the traditional mail order or telephone based ordering system.
This segment is growing rapidly as demonstrated by the rise in online trading sites such as Schwab and eTrade and virtual bookstores such as Amazon, The growth of this section has been extremely fast and once it assumes critical mass. Real world traders will find themselves experiencing problems. In the travel industry, margins are so thin that a loss of only 3 to 5 per cent of the market to the internet would push large numbers of bricks-and-mortar travel firms out of business. However, online travel agents may also face the same fate because of oversupply, a study by bear Stearns of 1000 online travel sites predicts that only 20 percent will survive in the longer term, principally the large and financially sound companies such as Travelocity.com.
What is C2B?
C2b stand for consumer to business, it is model involves transactions made between customers and businesses. This is similar to the B2C model, however, the difference is that in this case the customer is the vendor and business organizations are the buyers. In such transactions, the customer determines the price of certain products rather than the supplier. This category includes individuals who sell products and services to organization. For example, www.monster.com is a website where customers can post bio-data for the service he can offer. Each business organizations interested in developing services the consumer may come into contact and then take him if appropriate.
There are some companies that exchange directly to consumers, this rate to include into the consumer to business under e-commerce, For example, assume that any charity of the film viewer as if to tell the owner that cinema can provide spectator ticket most economical rates. In this care if the owner of salon accept such proposed then will the C2B business. In this case the consumer can offer directly to the organization. They invite a kind of company the air line to visit their website. Over time that can determine the type of ticket to different cities.
Customer service provides businesses with the pattern of internal and external customers to access company resources. This business pattern is particularly relevant for companies dealing with goods and services that cannot be listed and sold through a catalogue, this business pattern can be decomposed into the following two patterns:
(1)Customer online purchasing
(2)Customer information service
Customer online shopping: this represent online buying/ selling through a catalogue with a shopping cart, electronic wallet, or a similar tool, includes both consumers buy products online and buy a single provider. It may also include links back-end system to update inventory and credit check. One example is e-commerce shopping
Customer information service: this essentially covers user to business interaction not covered by the customer online purchasing .example are web based advertising and customer relationship management (CRM)
The traditional retail model is the largest vendor-centric, it means that consumers should know what each vendor can offer. With the advent of Internet, a buyer centric model becomes feasible. In contrast to the seller centric model in the buyer -centric model each seller needs of each seller to determine what consumers want. A representative example is pricleline.com (http://priceline.com)
Which gives the names of your price service for the use of illustration, the basic operation of the service imagine that traveller wants to book a five star hotel in a city. To use the service, he/she should provide information and reservation, most importantly the required value; he/she must also expect the number of credit cards for payment. Under the requirements of, priceline.com looking for a hotel (the supplier) that can satisfy his/her needs while meeting the required margin. After finding the supplier, the price difference as profit priceling.com service charge. If, as the supplier cannot be found, the negative repetition returned to the customer, the basic rule the use of the service is that once a supplier has found. The buyer cannot disagree with that the credit card that the consumer will be charged, Products sold through priceline.com has a specific time-price relationship in essence; Suppliers operate with high fixed costs but relatively low-cost variable. Moreover, if a product can be sold before a certain deadline, the resource will be wasted (e.g. empty hotel room).
What is C2C e-commerce?
C2C stands for “consumer-to-consumer”.
Recently, the family of e-commerce has taken a new member to
form of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) trade, which creates new opportunities
Along with opportunities come some unique challenges to C2C commerce, challenge the findings and connects buyers and sellers, trust and reputation problems and challenges of customers of financial transactions of all different-and, in a sense, more complex in C2C trade from other forms of e-commerce.
In recent years, a new type of e-commerce has entered the mainstream market: customer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce also referred to the person-to-person (P2P) e-commerce.
C2C is an Electronic internet means which enabled transactions between consumers through third party. The most common example is a C2C online auction. In this form of C2C, consumer post items for the sale and other consumers offer for the purchase. The third facilitate C2C transaction costs generally a flat fee or commission. These sites act as intermediaries and usually bear no responsibility for the quality of the goods sold. C2C model is suitable because the products are at a time when consumers are ready to find and buy them.
There are many websites offer free classifieds, auctions, and the forum said individual can buy and sell online payment systems like PayPal where people can send and receive money online with ease. Auction service eBay is an example of where person-to-person transactions occur every day since 1995.
Ebay(www.ebay.com)is an example of a C2C e-commerce application that is popular with consumers. Everyone can open his own store and display and sell all of his items in the ebay world. Everyone can also search and buy books, toys etc.. In the e-bay store
The C2C e-commerce concerns the use of information and communication technology to enable online auction process.
The current e-commerce is mainly supported by the various kinds of company’s small and giant ones. C2C e-commerce is thus relatively negligible .however, C2C e-commerce is an interesting and relatively new piece of the e-commerce world. The development of the internet and the www makes the traditional distance zero and the communication free then the development of C2C e-commerce will become an important complementary part for facilitating B2B e-commerce and B2C e-commerce
The rapid growth of C2C e-commerce, perhaps, somewhat paradoxically, also spawned a series of highly successful commercial enterprises providing services that for C2C. While the key players in C2C commerce is a natural person (the buyer and seller), the presence of and trade is almost a necessity in C2C e-commerce; There is a need for reliable, third party entities to provide the necessary infrastructure for C2C e-commerce in order to solve these problems.
While C2C market has some obvious benefits like reduction medium of the value chain in a manner similar to how e-commerce affected commerce B2C, and it also brings some unique challenges.
First, it challenges the Prime connects buyers and sellers while traditional businesses can advertise and otherwise market their businesses; people cannot afford to buy the distribution by the same way. Once buyers and sellers are connected, there is a problem with trust is the individual buyers and sellers can trust and how it can be known? Lastly, there a problem with the actual financial transactions, in particular through the transaction via the internet, buyers and sellers can be geographically far from each other, even though the company is able to receive money using many different methods, and often unable to accept credit cards, get a financial transaction is much more difficult for the person.
What is B2B E-commerce?
B2B is stand for business-to-business.
In B2B e-commerce, commercial transition is between an organization and other organization
The B2B e-commerce concern the use of information and communication technology to enable terms of credit and repeat commerce between company and its suppliers
The examples of B2B e-commerce are many companies offering variety of marketing and product information on the World Wide Web.
B2B, or more specific business-to-business electronic commerce is the general term used to demote to a transaction between companies that are online, and networks of enterprises and supply chains that make these transactions possible, while inter- activity(B2B) always places the Internet brings with it a new B2B companies framework. B2B no longer depend on traditional one-to-one model for business transactions.
As well as enabling e-commerce vendors (such as Sony computers) to sell directly from their own e-commerce websites, their web ha s led to more sophisticated online shopping, where a number of buyers and sellers together in one place, these market-places, in theory at least, to broaden the range of buyers and lower price and make the process of buying and selling much more convenient.
Business are becoming networked enterprises using the web to hook up with suppliers ,distributors, resellers, consultants and contractors .these collaborative networks called extranets have revolutionized how many companies such as Cisco, Coles Myer and general electric , do business.
B2B Market referred to as either vertical or horizontal. B2B vertical markets aim to secure a large part of the transaction relating to the industry. Horizontal markets, on the other hand aims to serve a wide variety of truncation in order to function in order to function as one-stop shop from small businesses. Both the vertical and horizontal work in many markets in many databases and create huge networks of buyers and sellers.
Between one to one and many models are predictably a number of other frameworks such as B2B sites list, which writes for both suppliers and the global directories to attract a large audience and auction sites, where vendors gather to bid for activity is a major buyer.
The real power of e-commerce lies not in the direct sales of product to consumers, but in the integration of relationship among merchants and suppliers for prompts quality customer service.
However B2B is more than fulfilment there is the potential for the internet to become like a central computer system for all industries. Companies can check out their supplier’s inventories or make instant purchase quickly and conveniently.
According to Forrester report by 2003 more than 90 % of business that sell goods to other companies will be doing business on the web. B2B online sales also are predicted to jump to $6.3 trillion in 2005. Almost fifteen fold from the $1.1 billion in 2002. This is for larger than B2C the concept of supply chain management (SCM) means having the right products in right place at the right condition this is an integral part of the B2B framework
B2B transactions cover a variety of situations. They vary from the regular repeat transaction typified by a retailer restocking shelves or a manufacturer buying in standard components to irregular transaction such as an organization buying a new pc or office stationary. These purchases conform to differing trade cycles and are amenable to differing e-commerce solutions:
(1) Electronic market
(2) Electronic data interchange
(3) Inter organisational e-commer