E-Commerce E-commerce: E-commerce, in the popular sense, can be defined as: the use of the Internet and the

he Web to conduct business transactions. Buying and Selling over the Internet is called e-commerce Digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among organizations and individuals E-commerce technology is different, more powerful than previous technologies Such as Radio commerce, Tv Commerce etc. Traditional commerce: o Passive consumer->who did not participate but force by salesforce to purchase products Sales-force driven Fixed prices Information asymmetry Information asymmetry refers to any disparity (gap) in relevant market information among the parties involved in a transaction. It generally applies to information about price, cost, and hidden fees.

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E-business: Digital enablement of transactions and processes within a firm, involving information systems under firms control Does not include commercial transactions involving an exchange of value across organizational boundaries. Example: A business has online Inventory System. An Inventory goes from one department to another; there is no transaction in terms of exchange of value. More formally we can say A companys online inventory control mechanisms are a component of ebusiness, but such internal processes do not directly generate revenue for the firm from outside businesses or consumers. Its true, that a firms e-business infrastructure provides support for online ecommerce exchanges. Difference b/w E-Commerce and E-Business E-commerce differs from e-business in that no commercial transaction, an exchange of value across organizational or individual boundaries, takes place in e-business. E-business is the digital enablement of transactions and processes within a firm and therefore does not include any exchange in value. E-commerce and e-business intersect at the business firm boundary at the point where internal business systems link up with suppliers. For instance, e-business turns into e-commerce when an exchange of value (money) occurs across firm boundaries.

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E-Commerce

E-commerce primarily involves transactions that cross firm boundaries. E-Business primarily involves the application of digital technologies to business processes within firm.

Unique features of e-commerce technology

Eight unique features of e-commerce technology that make it superior than Traditional Business. UBIQUITY: It is available just about everywhere and at all times. In traditional commerce, a marketplace is physical place you visit in order to transact. For example, television and radio typically motivate the consumer to go some place to make a purchase. E-commerce, in contrast, is characterized by its ubiquity. It liberates the market from being restricted to a physical space and makes it possible to shop from your Desktop Computer at home, at work, or even from your car using mobile commerce, the result is called a marketspace. A marketplace extended beyond traditional boundaries and removed from a temporal and geographic location is called marketspace. From a consumer point of view, ubiquity reduces o Transactions costs- the costs of participating in a market to transact, it is no longer necessary that you spend time and money traveling to a market. o At a broader level, the ubiquity of e-commerce lowers the cognitive energy required to transact in a marketspace. o Cognitive energy refers to the mental effort required to complete a task. Humans generally seek to reduce cognitive energy. When given a choice, humans will choose the path requiring the least effort- the most convenient path. Examples: o Accessing a bank account from your computer/laptop/mobile, transfer of money from one account to another. o Purchasing a Laptop from Hafeez Centre required more time and cognitive energy as compared to purchase from dell.com o Easypaisa o Paying Utility Bills from your Bank Account o Forex.com online money trading -> Buying and Selling in various types Dollar, Euro etc. GLOBAL REACH: Reach: the number of user or customers an e-commerce business can obtain o E-commerce technology permits commercial transactions to cross cultural and national boundaries far more conveniently and cost-effectively than is true in traditional commerce. As a result, the potential market size for e-commerce merchants is roughly equal to the size of the worlds online populations over 1.6 billion in 2009 and growing rapidly . The total number of users or customers an ecommerce business can obtain is a measure of its reach. Page 2

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E-Commerce In contrast, most traditional commerce is local or regional it involves local merchants or national merchants with local outlets. o Television and radio stations, and newspapers, for instance, are primarily local and regional institutions with limited but powerful national networks that can attract a national audience. o In contrast to e-commerce technology, these older commerce technologies do not easily cross national boundaries to a global audience. Examples: o Facebook users are more than 35 million in just less than 10 years. o Alibaba.com, a China based web platform now have millions of customers / suppliers around the Globe. o UNIVERSAL STANDARDS: Standards that are shared by all nations around the world o o o o The technical standards of the Internet, and therefore of conducting e-commerce, are shared by all of the nations around the world. Unique Feature of e-commerce technologies is that the technical standards of the internet, and therefore the technical standards for conducting e-commerce are universal standards they are shared by all the nations around the world. In contrast, most traditional commerce technologies differ from one nation to the next. For instance, television and radio standards differ around the world, as does cell telephone technology.

The benefits of universal standards are:

Reduced search costs for consumers the effort required to find suitable products. Becomes simpler, faster, with more accurate price discovery Lower market entry costs for merchants- the cost merchants must pay just to bring their goods to market.

With e-commerce technologies, it is possible for the first time in history to easily find many of the suppliers, prices, and delivery terms of a specific product anywhere in the world. RICHNESS: the complexity and content of a message o Information that is complex and contents are rich can be delivered without sacrificing reach. o Traditional markets, national sales forces, and small retail stores have great richness: they are able to provide personal, face-to-face service using aural and visual cues when making a sale. o The richness of traditional markets makes them a powerful selling or commercial environment. o Prior to the development of the Web, there was a trade-off between richness and reach: the larger the audience reached the less rich the message. o The internet has the potential for offering considerably more information richness than traditional media such as printing presses, radio, and television because it is interactive and can adjust the message to individual users. o Chatting with an online sales person, for instance, comes very close to the customer experience in a small retail shop. o The richness of the web allows retail and service merchants to market and sell complex goods and services that heretofore really did require a face to face presentation by a sales force. Complex goods have multiple attributes, are typically expensive, and cannot be compared easily, such as used cars and even diamond rings. Example:

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E-Commerce As on certain event(Eid) a shopkeeper do not brief much about product feature due to excess customers lead to less Richness but in E-commerce always remain rich. INTERACTIVITY: E-commerce technologies allow two-way communication between the merchant and the consumer. o Unlike any of the commercial technologies of the 20th century, with the possible exception of the telephone, ecommerce technologies allow for interactivity, meaning they enable two-way communication between merchant and consumer. o Traditional television, for instance, cannot ask viewers any questions or enter into conversations with them, and it cannot request that customer information be entered into a form. o In contrast, all of these activities are possible on an ecommerce web site . interactivity allows an online merchants to engage a consumer in ways similar to a face-to-face experience, but on a much more massive, global scale. Examples: o Online chat between merchant and consumer o Feed back o Emails , Newsletter INFORMATION DENSITY: The total amount and quality of information available to all market participants consumers, and merchants alike. o o o o The internet and the web vastly increase information density. Ecommerce technologies reduce information collection, storage, processing, and communication costs. At the same time, these technologies increase greatly the accuracy and timeliness of information- making information more useful and important that ever. As a result, information becomes more plentiful, less expensive and of higher quality.

Growth in information density could result in:

Greater price transparency: Consumers can easily find out the variety of prices in a market. Greater cost transparency: Consumers can discover the actual costs merchants pay for products. Greater opportunities for marketers to practice price discrimination: since marketers are able to gather much more information about their customers, they can segment the market into groups based on willingness to pay different prices for the same or nearly the same goods. Merchants also have enhanced abilities to differentiate their products in terms of cost, brand and quality. Examples: o Go to Amazon store you can find verity of products and prices. o Segmentation: Gold member, Silver member, Brown member on serversea.com Office suite with some extra feature for premium customers PERSONALIZATION/CUSTOMIZATION: o Personalization: The targeting of marketing messages to specific individuals by adjusting the message to a persons name, interest, and past purchases. o Customization: changing the delivered product or service based on a users preferences or prior behavior Page 4

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E-Commerce E-commerce technologies enable merchants to target their marketing messages to a persons name, interests, and past purchases. (Personalization) o This allows a merchant to change the product or service to suit the purchasing behavior and preferences of a consumer. o Given the interactive nature of ecommerce technology, much information about the consumer can be gathered in the marketplace at the moment of purchase. With the increase in information density, great deal of information about the consumers past purchases and behavior can be stored and used by online merchants. o But in tradition with existing commerce technologies for instance, you may be able to shape what you see on television by selecting a channel, o but you cannot change the contents of the channel you have chosen . o In contrast, the online version of the wall street journal allows you to select the type of news stories you want to see first, and gives you the opportunity to be alerted when certain events happen. o Personalization and customization allow firms to precisely identify market segments and adjust their messages accordingly. Examples: o Gmail Welcome Message (Personalization) Welcome: Name o Change your Gmail background color scheme/ fonts (Customization) o Customize a laptop on Dell.com (Customization) o SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY: o User content generation and social networking technologies In a way quite different from all previous technologies, o The internet and ecommerce technologies have evolved to be much more social by allowing users to create and share content in the form of text, videos, music or photos with a worldwide community. o Using these forms of communication, users are able to create new social networks and strengthen existing ones. o All previous mass media in modern history, including the printing press, use a broadcast model 1 to M. o The telephone would appear to be an exception but it is not a mass communication technology. Instead the telephone is a one to one technology. o The new internet and commerce technologies have the potential to invert this standard media model by giving users the power to create and distribute content on a large scale. o The internet provides a many to many model of mass communication that is unique. Examples: facebook, youtube, myspace, buzz(a new social network by google) etc. Blogs- Wordpress is most popular blogging tool to create a blog in minutes. http://www.wordpress.com

Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is a set of applications and technologies that allows users to create, edit, and distribute content; o share preferences, bookmarks, and online personas; build online communities. Page 5

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E-Commerce o In other words, Web 2.0 is the set of new, advanced applications that have evolved along with the Webs ability to support larger audiences and more involved content. Including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Photobucket, Google, Wikipedia, Second Life, Digg, and WordPress, among others, as example sites. Google Recently introduced a toolkit called Google Gear. Using this you can integrate Eight Google Applications in E-commerce web like web search, Chat, Maps, Calendars, Scheduling, and advertising etc.

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Types of E-commerce
There are variety of different types of e-commerce and many different ways to characterize these types. Business-to-Consumer (B2C) E-commerce
It is the direct trade between companies and end consumers. This is the direct selling via the Internet. For example: selling goods direct to customer and anyone can buy any products from the suppliers website. In this mode is intended to benefit the consumer and can say business to consumer (B2C) Ecommerce works as retail store over internet.

E.g. An online pharmacy giving free medical consultation and selling medicines to patients is following B2C model. Dell.com selling to individual consumers/customers is a business to customer relationship. Gap.com Selling to individuals a b2c relationship

Business to- Business (B2B) E-commerce B2B e-commerce, in which businesses focus on selling to other businesses, is the largest form of e-commerce. It is the largest form of e-commerce involving business of trillions of dollars. In this form,
the buyers and sellers are both business entities and do not involve an individual consumer. It is like the manufacturer supplying goods to the retailer or wholesaler. E.g. Dell sells computers and other related accessories online but it does not manufacture all those products. So, in order to sell those products, it first purchases them from different businesses i.e. the manufacturers of those products.

Dell.com Selling Products/services to 1. Small business 2. Medium Business 3. Enterprise Level Business to Government (B2G) e-commerce can be considered yet another type of ecommerce. For the purposes of this text, we subsume B2G e-commerce within B2B ecommerce, viewing the government as simply a form of business when it acts as a procurer of goods and / or services. Example: Dell Selling Products to Public sector is a B2G relationship. Consumer to Consumer (C2C ) E-commerce C2C e-commerce provides a way for consumers to sell to each other, with the help of an online market maker such as the auction site eBay.

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E-Commerce In c2c e-commerce the consumer prepares the product for market, places the product for auction or sale, and relies on the market maker to provide catalog, search engine, and transactionclearing capabilities so that products can be easily displayed , discovered, and paid for.
It facilitates the online transaction of goods or services between two people. Though there is no visible intermediary involved but the parties cannot carry out the transactions without the platform which is provided by the online market maker such as eBay.

Seller Display Products on Seller(Receive Ebay.com money regarding (Intermediary or the selling of market creator) product on ebay Ebay.com Charge and pay Transaction fee transaction fee For example: $.99 for to ebay.com ) minimum/small transaction Peer-to-Peer (P2P) E-commerce Ebay receive

Buyer(purchase product by directly(on fix price) or by auction) and pay transaction fee to

Though it is an e-commerce model but it is more than that. It is a technology in itself which helps people to directly share computer files and computer resources without having to go through a central web server. To use this, both sides need to install the required software so that they can communicate on the common platform. This type of ecommerce has quite low revenue generation as from the beginning it has been inclined to the free usage due to which it sometimes got entangled in cyber laws.

To date, the most widely used p2p networks are Bit Torrent (which is used for downloading large video files, and accounts for nearly 25% of all internet traffic) and eDonkey (used mostly for music files). Together these two P2P network programs account for 50% - 70% of all internet traffic worldwide- a startling figure. Some of this downloading and sharing is legal, but most is not. The business models that support p2p commerce are unusual, in many cases illegal, and under constant attack by authorities. Napster, which was established to aid internet users in finding and sharing online music files, was the most well-known example of p2p e-commerce until it was put out of business in 2001 by a series of negative court decisions. However, other file-sharing networks, such as kazaa, quickly emerged to take Napsters place. These networks were also put out of business by variety file-sharing networks in June 2005. Examples: Kazaa, Nepstar,FastTrack, Shareaza, BitTorrent, Limewire Mobile Commerce (M-commerce) Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, refers to the use of wireless digital devices to enable transactions on the web. M-commerce involves the use of wireless networks to connect cell phones, handheld devices such as blackberries and PDAs to the web. Once connected , mobile consumers can conduct transactions, including stock trades, in-store price comparisons, banking, travel reservations, and more, thus far m commerce is used most widely in Japan and Europe . Where cell phones are more prevalent than in the United States. More on

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E-Commerce
It refers to the use of mobile devices for conducting the transactions. The mobile device holders can contact each other and can conduct the business. Even the web design and development companies optimize the websites to be viewed correctly on mobile devices. Examples: Yahoo Mobile Amazon Mobile services

EASY PAISA Money Transfer

Using Money Transfer from easypaisa, you can now send and receive money to and from family, friends, etc from any easypaisa shop in the most efficient, secure and convenient way. You do not have to own a Telenor connection, nor do you need to have a mobile phone at all. The best thing about the service is that any person in Pakistan can use this product and that no registration is required! Any person with a need to send money from one city to another can use this service from any easypaisa shop. For example, household staff, drivers, guards, etc. can all now send their monthly salaries home to their families from urban cities to rural villages. Similarly, parents can send funds to their children at educational institutions in other cities for tuition fee, monthly pocket money etc. And people who travel frequently, who don't want to carry cash can use this service as Travelers Cheques by sending money to themselves from one city and collecting the money in another city.

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Product Features
-Any person with a valid Nadra CNIC can send money or receive money -This service is not limited to Telenor subscribers; other mobile network subscribers can also use this service -There is no paper work or form filling required -An instant SMS message will be sent to both the Sender and the Receiver on sending/receiving money -Sending/Receiving can be done from more than 4,000 easypaisa shops all over Pakistan -No more waiting in queues - a Money Transfer transaction can be done at even late hours. -A secure encrypted transaction based on GSM standards -Approved by the State Bank of Pakistan.

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