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

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods and services by offering them, taking bids and selling the item to the winning bidder. Nowadays, E-commerce has also provided E-auction service. E-auction is an electronic “reserve” auction where sellers use internet-based software bid to provide goods and services.

Recently, there have many fraud cases rising in e-commerce especially in e-auction. Therefore, a buyer should protect himself when he is participating in an e-auction
These are the ways to prevent the e-auction fraud:

1. User identity verification
Identify user personal information is important because it serve as evidence to proof whether the user has made the transaction. It can prevent people using other people account to make improper transaction.

2. Insurance policy
The e-auction should provide insurance policy to protect buyers who buy goods especially in higher price. By providing insurance policy, buyers are encouraged to purchase more products because the risk of fraud maybe reduced by compensates insurance and it will gain buyers confident. Therefore, it will win the buyer’s royalty on the company.

3. Escrow services
This service involved an intermediate third party between seller and buyer. It should be trusted because it serves as intermediate party to regulate the transaction between seller and buyer. It will make sure the transaction process is performed under the auction rules. Normally this kind of service required high value of transaction.

4. Feedback forum
Feedback forum provides users with the ability to comment on their experiences with other individuals. Feedback forum allows users to read the comments that left by previous buyers on the seller or particular website. Users may evaluate the performance and eliminate the fraud risk without using the same website or same seller.

Buyers are advised to check the security of e-auction regularly because it will get better understanding about what types of fraud are occurred.

E-Goverment In Malaysia

E-Government is refer to use of internet technology as a place for exchanging information, providing services and transacting with citizens, business and other department of a government.

Application of E-Government in Malaysia

1. E-filling – one type of application provided by government Malaysia to the citizen, business, and other government by enable or allow them to fill up there income and expenses and income tax form through online. By having such application it would help Malaysia citizen save more times.
2. Renewal Driving license – government provided service that enable citizen to renew their driving license through online payment and then collect their new license at selected JPJ branch or other selected area choose by customer. Having such implication, it help citizen to avoid queue at Post office to renew their license
3. Check and pay traffic summons – enable the citizen to check either them have any summon through a website and make payment for those summon through online.
4. KWSP online account – which enable the citizen to check their balance of money inside their KWSP account through online and doesn’t have to purposely run to KWSP centre to check their balances.
5. E-Payment – which enable citizen to pay off their tax owe to IRB (Inland Revenue Board) through online by using credit card or debit cards.

Problems that encounter by Citizen to use E-government

1. Not all citizen know how to use computer and some citizen house doesn’t have internet
2. Citizen not much believe in online payment because doesn’t have any record of the transaction can be keep by the citizen
3. Sometime when the citizen making payment through online, them may scare their credit card password gets hacked by other people.
4. Slow loading page will make citizen frustrated to waiting. Because sometime got a lot of citizen accessing a same webpage then the server will slow down hence it will make the consumer become less patience to wait for the page load.
5. Not most of the citizen have credit card because for older people them doesn’t have any credit card hence them will be unable to using e-government.

Method to encourage Citizen use E-government applications

1. By providing a discount for those citizens who make their payment of tax through online or other payments through online.
2. Set an expensive transaction fee if make payment at post or other places. But if make payment through online then will not be charges any transaction fees.
3. Make a seminar to educate the citizen about the benefit of E-government to encourage them for using E-government
4. Build a centre that providing computer which allow citizen to online and make use of e-government applications. By having such centre, it can solve the problem that no internet at home
5. Put some e-government consultant at post office or other area that can make payment to consult those citizen who make payment through offline and inform them about the benefit of e-governments and encourage them to use e-payments.

week 6 ~ Corporate blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Corporate blogging is occurred when a company creates a blog for achieving its business objectives, and it also used for internal and external communication. For internal communication, organization used it as a part of company Intranets and it also helps the organization to promote the sharing of information of work-related matters for the employee conveniences. Organizations use the corporate blogging as a medium to distribute information and inform on the current happenings to all the employees.

For external communication, corporate blogging also is an effective way to use to communicate with the public, which include the clients, media, and customer, especially when all of them come from different places or country. Organization can use this blog to conduct the public relations activities, public can post their opinion about the company’s new product and services in the blog.

There have some successful corporate blog, which are:
1. Kodak's Ofoto.com: Ofoto Blog
- It is used to get feedback and resolve issues with Brownie, a new beta Mac application (found via BeConnected)
2. PerceptionAnalyzer: Dial.log blog
- It has a nice mix of posts on their product and on relevant news & information for their target audience

Pros of corporate blog:

• Company can directly communicate with customers, suppliers, and employees, helping disseminate and explain strategy and reach more employees with a single message
• Be more accessible and give the writer an opportunity to answer critics in a controlled forum
• Create a searchable archive of thoughts and ideas
• Employees' questions and feedback will be permanently recorded on a blog

Cons of corporate blog:

• Poor written blogs can look fake, they might reveal incompetence on the part of the writer
• The writing can be difficult unless the CEO loves to write (in which case this becomes a positive)
• Ill-judged comment could be seized upon the media, investor and related party
• Puts the CEO “out there” and writing ability and though process will be scrutinized

written by ~siew wan~

Review a Local E-commerce Site

Blooming Florist become more famous in Malaysia for the past twenty two years. It started the business in 1981 and managed by May and Martin Cheah. They provide floral fresh cut flowers for all occasions such as Roses, Tulips, Gerberas, Lilies and Heliconias. They also provide services like fruit baskets, hampers, gifts, cakes and candies to the customers. Blooming Florist has six retail outlets that links with 75,000 florists worldwide through its membership in Interflora Pacific Unit Limited. Their commitment is to provide QUALITY FLOWERS and QUALITY SERVICE to the customers.

The design of the website of Blooming Florist is very attractive because there have colorful layout that consists of different type of flowers. From the top of the website, there have icons such as, home, hand bouquets, flowers and gifts, baskets, congratulations and seasonal. Under the congratulations category, there have products such as ‘twin happiness’ (RM190), ‘prosperity always’ (RM265) and ‘success all the way’ (RM210). For the seasonal purchase, there have products like ‘gong xi gong xi’ (RM408), ‘yam seng’ (RM828) and ‘golden success’ (RM828).

The website also provide search engine for the convenience of the customers to search the certain products such as flowers, hand bouquet, cookies, wines or fruits baskets. Moreover, there have some payment methods that provide by the Blooming Florist. It includes online credit card payment, online banking, mobile payment, pay using Kawanku ATM, open bill payment and cash payment.

From the website of Blooming Florist, there also have icons of ‘shop by products’ and ‘shop by occasions’. It makes the customers to shop the website in more convenient way. Under the ‘shop by occasions’ category, there have occasions such as ‘happy birthday’, ‘wedding’ and ‘new baby’.

As the conclusion of overall, the website of Blooming Florist is well design enough to gain the attraction power of the users that view on the website. The website also categorizes all the products in systematic way and it helps customers to search the product they want easily.

A review on a post on e-tailing from E-Commerce blog

E-tailing is known as electronic retailing which deals with selling products and services via the Internet. That are many companies using e-tailing to sell their products through Internet.

Walmart.com is the website created by Wal-Mart. It aims to provide consumers to easy access to Wal-Mart store. Walmart.com provides online shopping feature to bring customers the best shopping experience on the Internet. It provides a great selection of high quality merchandise, friendly service and low prices on purchase product.


http://www.walmart.com/

Walmart.com has launched a new program “Site-to-Store” in the website. This program allows customers order products via Internet and have the orders being delivered to the nearest Wal-Mart store for free. Therefore, customers can get the product in shorter time.



In order to know the favorable products of customers, Walmart.com was introduced “Products and Merchandise Rating and Review Systems”. These systems allow customers give rating and review on the product that they had bought. The rating systems were implemented as a strategy to increase customers’ loyalty and stickiness of the website. The larger website such as Amazon and eBay also implemented these systems because these systems enable Wal-Mart to interact with its customers and understand their needs.

Besides that, Walmart.com also provides a “Wish List” system. The purpose of using wish list is allowed the customer’s family and friends are able to buy a perfect gift to the customer that he wants and the guests are able to get the lower cost in buying the gift. Wal-Mart will allow the customer’s guests access to the wish list either online or through a Wal-Mart store in order to get better understanding on the customer need.

Walmart.com is a successful website that has implemented e-tailing. These systems have help to increase the sales of Wal-Mart.

Week 5: Mobile Payment System in Malaysia

Mobile Payment System is getting more and more popular in Malaysia as the frequent of using mobile phone is increasing in this technology world. Mobile payment system is the system that people make the money payment transaction such as utility bills, credit card bills, and loan repayments through a mobile device. The most famous mobile payment system in Malaysia is MobileMoneyWallet.

For more information, link to: http://www.mobile-money.com/

Mobile payment system becomes a practical means for merchants since users will only need to enter their mobile phone during checkout from merchant e-commerce website.

Encouragement of consumers to adopt this payment system:

1. Mobile Money helps to reduce the bottlenecks that created by cash, cheques and credit cards. Users are only using mobile phone to make payments, allowing registered users to pay for goods and services at anytime, anywhere via SMS.
   
2. This gives benefit to users to buy products online and pay the merchant using their mobile phone without being physically present at the store.


3. Mobile payment system is user friendly, it is safe and secure. User do not need to worry about the cheque or credit card handling problem and fraud, the system will conforms to the stringent requirement set by participating bank.


4. Mobile payment system also help user to avoid the trouble for long queues and looking for car parks. User can enjoy the super fast payment process by just make their transaction via SMS, website, or point-of-sale system. It helps user save up a lot of time.


5. There are no minimum monthly transactions or no any rental fees required. Users only need to pay very low transaction fee compare to what actually charge to credit card.

~wriiten by siew wan~

Credit Card Debt : Causes and Preventions

Credit card is a system of payment by using a small plastic card issued by the credit card company. Credit card flow by issuer lends money to the user of the credit card to purchase items from merchant then users pay backt he credit card company later.

Credit card debt arises when the customer has use credit card to purchase items or services. Besides that, there are some causes for credit card debts:

1. Consumer overspent because they keep thinking them can pay off back the debt in future by monthly installment hence it has increase the debt owe
2. Consumer keep late payback the debts and causes the interest charged on the debts keep accumulated until the consumer unable to clear off the debts
3. Poor money management, consumer doesn’t plan their money spending carefully and simply spend their money on something unnecessarily.
4. Consumer can get more than one credit card because credit card was easy to apply. Because of this, the consumers can unlimited use the credit card to purchase item which causes its debt keep increase.
5. High interest rate charge by credit card company has caused the rise of credit card debt because the user unable to pay off the debts

Prevention method from credit card debts:
1. Keep good record which means consumer should make sure them don’t take on more debt that them can safely afford to pay back.
2. Don’t overextend which means consumer must make sure that their debt to asset stay within manageable levels. Many professionals recommend that your level of indebtedness should not exceed your cash on hand
3. Budget carefully which means consumer should anticipate levels of indebtedness and plan your monthly payments. Whenever them make budget must make sure include of “Balloon Payments to pay off large amount of debt at once.
4. Carefully select credit card which offer advantageous interest rate because it will help the consumer keep their payments within manageable limits.
5. Consumer should make payment on times because late payment can reduce consumer is credit rating and put them in default on some type of loan and it may trigger an increase in interest rate consumer pay on the debt and cause their cost of borrowing increases. In order to avoid such problem consumer should make payment in times.

The Application of Pre-paid Cash Card for Consumers

Pre-paid cash card is a payment card that allows users to pre-load any amount into it and make purchases up to that amount. Most of the pre-paid cash cards are issued under Master Card and Visa Electron. The examples of pre-paid cash card are Touch n Go card and Octopus card.

As we know, pre-paid cash card provides wide acceptance since it can be used internationally. In UK, the personal information such as owners’ name will be printed on the card. Moreover, pre-paid cash card is not like credit card, the users still can apply for the card even they have bad credit record, it is a great option for those people that have poor credit history before.

There have some advantages provided for the using of pre-paid cash card. Firstly, the pre-paid cash card would not get users into the debt because the transactions only will be made up to the amount that they load into the card. It can prevent users in overspend the money since the users can only spend what they have paid in. Most of the card enables users to manage their account through online or via an interactive voice response telephone service, they can check the balances easily. In case the card is lost or being stolen, the remaining balances will be transferred to a new account and the users will get a replacement card.

However, there also have some disadvantages for the using of pre-paid cash card. It is important for the users to aware of where they shopping because some websites will befool the users and the users may pay for the products that they never receive. As a result, online shopping through the pre-paid cash card is not encouraged unless the users having sufficient security information about the website.

As a conclusion, pre-paid cash card make the users more convenient in their daily routine life, however it still bring some disadvantages to the users. Users should be more careful in using the pre-paid cash card, especially for the online shopping. Sufficient security information about the website is needed when the users are consider to make purchases through the website.

The application of 3rd party certification programme in Malaysia

Third Party Certification program is a program to identify identity of a user in a company to prevent information of the company to been hack by other people.

The applicaton of 3rd party certification program in malaysia was shown or used by MSCTRUSTGATE. MSC TRUSTGATE is is a licensed certification authority operating out of the multimedia super corridor. It was incorporated in 1999. Trustgate was licensed under digital signature act 1997 hence the core business of Trustagate is to provide digital certification services.

Trustgate was implemented Managed Public Key Infrastructure (MPKI) service. MPKI is a system designed to help company to secure intranet, extranet, and Internet applications by maximize the company performance, and scalability with high availability and security.

The MPKI allow company to efficiently establish a robust Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and Certification Authority (CA) system with complete control over security policies, PKI hierarchies, authentication models, and certificate lifecycle management. Trustgate’s high-availability certificate processing services, the service enables faster deployment and lower operating costs while providing an open platform that integrates with off-the-shelf solutions. hence it allow the company to save cost from providing own PKI.

Organizations can set up their own multiple digital certification program quickly, easily and economically, through our flexible managed service. With Managed PKI, you can issue 250 or more digital certificates to customers, suppliers, partners, or employees. This solution helps to protect on-line transactions, digitally sign them and control the access to intranets and extranets.

By providing 3rd party certification program it will enhance customer trust because of:

1. Efficient of management of digital certificates.
• Customer authorization for digital certificate and certificate issuance is done via Web-based service. Both customer and administrator services are browser-based and accessed via the Web. hence it will boost customer trust because them can access our the digital certification and can inquiry about the certificate through online.
2. Complete control over digital certificate issuance, usage, certificate content.
• By having this application customer would have complete control over the service level and certificate unlike other public CA deployment model which customer only can rely on the public CA. in addition by providing such services it will enhance customer trust because customer can know what is
  
3. Easy to use and manage with Web-based user and administrator services.
1. Customer can register or apply for extra certification through via web hence it will enable the customer to more believe on the third party programme because so easy to used and doesnt have huge procedure to follow in order to register it.
   
4. Scalability.
   
• Customer will have a better solution provided by the administrator if got certain or any threats happen toward the company system. then the customer can contact the administrator hence the administrator will provide a solution to the customer to solve the problem. hence it will increase customer trust because efficient and effective managed of the program.
  

Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods

Phishing is one of the 21st century crimes. Phishing is an online fraud technique used by criminals to acquire sensitive or private personal information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details. It uses social engineering to create a misrepresented electronic identity to attack individuals. It is typically carried out by e-mail and often directs users to enter their details information at a website to steal users personal identity data financial account information. Online credit card banks, e-commerce online shopping site, or bank charity are the target of phishing.

The table below shows the example of how phishing attacks users to get their personal information:

1. Example of phishing e-mail attacks PayPal users.

The clues to know the phishing attempt is the spelling mistakes (http://www.paypal.com/securitytips) in the e-mail address and the presence of an IP address in the link under the yellow box. As we know, the e-mail address should include the symbol of ‘@paypal.com’. Moreover, there is lack of personal greeting and the threat of ‘account suspension’ if the recipient fails to comply with the message requirement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Paypal_Phishing.png

2. Example of phishing scam e-mail message attacks Woodgrove bank.

From the table below, there is also the spelling mistake of e-mail address and the URL address which will link the users to the ‘spoofed’ websites (copycat sites) and the people who sent the fake website will have the users account information.


http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/identify.mspx

In order to prevent the disclosure of personal information, there are several ways to protect our information from the attack of phishing:

1. Users are advised that never reply to e-mail messages that request your personal information. If you do reply the message which has the characteristics of the table above, you are allowed the people to have all of your account information.
2. Do not click links in suspicious e-mail if you have doubt the website is fake. You should visit the website by typing the URL address into browser and be avoided that do not copy and paste the links from the suspicious message into the browser.
3. Make business transactions with the companies that we are know and trust. A well-known, established company will set up the privacy security tools to protect their customers’ information access by others.
4. Monitor your transaction. Users are advised that to review the bank statement or the order confirmations as we have received them. This is to make sure that the amount charged in the statement is the transaction that we made recently.

This is some of the ways to protect users’ personal information. There is still having many ways that can avoid the attack of pushing. The most important way to prevent the phishing is the awareness of users when they are using their e-mail.

The Threat of Online Security: How Safe Is Our Data?

Nowadays, the internet activities like e-commerce are become more popular in our country; it brings a lot of advantages to the users, such as instant delivery and cheaper products and services. However, in some cases the organizations are experience cyber attacks from inside and outside of the organization.

The threat of online security includes viruses, phishing, Trojan horse, denial of service attacks (DOS), hacker, cracker, and identity and data theft. Virus is a piece of software code that inserts itself into a host, including the operating systems to spread over and harm our computer. Anti-virus software can help to prevent viruses by scanning new files and emails, and also check existing files and folders regularly. Different viruses need different removal methods, users should get a suitable virus scanner to help them.

Phishing is a technique used by those attackers to gain other personal information such as account numbers and password through fraudulent email messages. Trojan horse is a program that appears to have a useful function but contains a hidden function that presents a security risk, it will try to plant virus into the computer. Spyware is the software that can monitor online activity and sends information to a remote server.

Denial of service attacks is an attack on website in which attacker uses specialized software to send a flood of data packets to the target computer with the bad intentions. It becomes more sophisticated compare to the previous years; it starts to involve multiple computers to attack another computer. Hacker is individual who intends to gain unauthorized access to a computer system. However, cracker is individual who intends to gain unauthorized access to a computer system with criminal intentions.

The threat identity and data theft is a major form of online fraud, it becomes more common nowadays. Attackers will try to get other personal information such as credit card numbers to apply for the loans, purchase products through the internet and so on.

As a conclusion, as a user we need a good back up system to safeguard our data. Anti-virus software also needed for the scanning process, users should update it regularly in order to ensure its effectiveness.

Week4: How to safeguard our personal and financial data

Nowadays, technology has become more and more important in our life. People use the computer systems and networking to record, store and retrieve their personal and financial data. This advanced technology has made the data processing faster and efficiently. However, there are many unauthorized people are trying to hack into the system and steal the private information. In order to avoid private information being stolen, we have to safeguard our personal data.

There are some of the ways to safeguard our personal and financial data:
Firstly, we can use password. Password is the most popular and traditional method that used to protect our account. However, we should avoid using the password that easy to guess by people such as birth date, phone number, family name and so on, and we should never try to disclose our personal information to anyone.

Secondly, when the financial data is transmitted from one location to another, we should encrypt the information before send it out. This is a secure ways to protect our data from stolen by others, because the outsiders are unable to read the encrypted message, only you and the party who received your message can read through the information.

Online-shopping is getting more and more famous today, before you decide to buy something online, users have to login to their registered account to make an order; registered account contains of all the user’s personal and financial information, therefore, users must remember to log out their personal account after using it in order to avoid other people misuse of your private data.

Besides that, we also should protect the personal and financial data that store in our computer. We can use many tools to safeguard our computer information such as firewalls, anti-virus software, antispyware and etc. These security tools will help to prevent any unauthorized people to hack into our computer system.

Also, we should keep our credit cards and ATM cards properly. Check clearly to ensure that it is always with you. If you realized that your personal cards are disappear, must make report to polis and the related bank immediately to cancel off your service, this is to avoid the other people misuse your account money.

There still have many ways to protect our personal and financial data. We should work together to protect our private information so that can decrease the magnitude of harm which resulting from loss, misuse and unauthorized access.

~~written by siew wan~~

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

There are many benefits created by using e-commerce. Cycle time reduction is one of the benefits of e-commerce. Cycle time is defined as the time is being taken from start to finish producing one unit product or the time it takes to provide a service from beginning through completion. Cycle time can help companies shorten its delivery time. This is how a company worked to serve customers by using of e-commerce. A customer was decided to buy goods and placed an order on the online transaction server. At the same time, the customer is able to check the status of their order within seconds. If we are using traditional manual order entry, it takes a few minutes to complete the task because it needs to go through a few of departments to ensure the quantity of the goods. E-commerce helps to reduce the cycle time by eliminate use of phone, fax or other paper-based ordering processes and all the requisitions and purchase orders are generated and transferred in real time online. Reduction of cycle time can speed up the ordering process.

Employees are the crucial stakeholders in every company. Therefore, it is important to give employees’ empowerment on the business process. Employees’ empowerment means giving employees responsibility and authority to make decisions regarding all aspects of product development. E-commerce can help to improve employees’ empowerment by providing employees greater and easier access to information through intranet. Any updated information or other departments’ information will be viewed by employees. This enable employees to make better decisions for the company. Besides that, online training is also a part of the employees' empowerment. Employees can be trained without taking leave and travelling to the place. It can help to save company's training cost.

Customer is the important element for a company to be success. So that customer services should not be ignored and it should treat as core business of company. E-commerce can help to facilitate customer support by implementing a wide range of technological solutions and communication opportunities. In the past, customers would view the updated products list in the printed catalog sent by seller in a period. Furthermore, customers also placed an order via the phone and wait until the company’s purchasing department processed and shipped the order. Nowadays customers not only can frequently view the updated products through online, the order also can be placed faster in a few of minutes and the product required can be delivered faster to the customer.

An Example of an E-Commerce success and its causes

Blooming Florist is one of the e-commerce shop which are provided a services of selling and delivery flower and other around the world. Blooming florist was found in Malaysia, Petaling Jaya on 1981. Until now Blooming Florist have 75000 retail outlet within their network coverage. Blooming Florist was managed and found by May and Martin Cheah.

Blooming florist website provided a various type of flower, bouquet, cookies, cakes, wines and others. Blooming Florist website provided various type of choices for the user of the website and make customers life easier because the customers doesn't have to work shop to shop to find the flower them want to buy. By having the blooming florist website it allow a user to purchase flower or others items through online at anytime and any date. Besides that, Blooming Florist is success because it allows the user to make payment in various types of methods.

Other than that, Blooming Florist also provided a wide delivery service to the customers whom allow them to deliver flower to their most love or friends in Malaysia or outside Malaysia because Blooming Florist provided a delivery service for within Malaysia and Outside Malaysia.

Besides that, Blooming Florist enable to success because it provided a safe and secure online payment and purchase which enable the customer to have a record of the payment and track their record of purchase or order.

Besides that, Blooming Florist also provided a refund service if the goods receive doesn’t fit to condition. By providing such services, it has enhance more customer to purchase the goods through online because if the goods was not in good condition can be return and refund back.

Blooming Florist also provided a self flower decoration service which enable the customer to decorate the flower as their like. By having such services, customer can have more choices rather than just choose the flower which has already been decorated because customer can create the flower decoration based on their own creative.

Because of such causes, Blooming Florist was a success e-commerce shop

For more detail can visit to : http://www.blooming.com.my/blooming/

An example of an E-Commerce failure and its causes

Pets.com is an example of E-Commerce failure. Pets.com launched in August 1998 and it went into liquidation after 9 months its commerce its business.
The main cause of this dot-com failure is the inaccurately and inefficiency in managed its business. As in the case stated, Pets.com was never able to give the pet owners a compelling reason to buy supplier online. For example, when customers make an order of a kitty litter, Pets.com will delayed the order, customer had to wait for a few days only can get what they want actually. And try to think what if the use of kitty litter is emergent for them at that moment? One of the purposes of online business is the save the customer’s time and try their best to fulfill the customer’s needs. However, Pets.com did not concern on the customer satisfaction, that why it lost a lot of its customers.

Besides that, Pets.com keeps making losses on selling its products. It is because they want to attract more customers to join their online pet store, they make a wrong decision. They had undercharged its shipping costs to the customers in order to attract customers, it actually lost money on most of the products it sold, and they have to bear the loss themselves.

Moreover, people found that Pets.com is an immature online shopping world, it was risk taking investors and founder. Pets.com had throw many money in the investment of infrastructure, and the most significant investment was its warehouse. They have to make sure that the company must get to a certain revenue in order to support its infrastructure buildout. To get to the certain revenue, the company needing a critical mass of customers to break even and this make the Pets.com facing a critical time.

Because of these main causes mentioned above, Pets.com failed to continue its business.

(written by siew wan)

The History and Evolution of E-commerce

E-commerce plays a crucial role in this modern and competitive business world. It is a process of buying, selling or exchanging products, services and information via computer networks. With the e-commerce, the company conduct their business activities by using electronic data transmission technologies, such as those used on the internet and the World Wide Web.

E-commerce actually began before the existence of the personal computers and it has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. In year 1984, electronic data interchange (EDI) was being consistent through ASC X12. It gives assurance to the company that computer transactions will be completed with one another reliably. In year 1992, CompuServe offers online retail products to the customers; it creates the first chance to the customers to make purchases through their computer.

In year 1994, Netscape providing a simple browser, it allows users to surf internet by safe online transaction technology called Secure Sockets Layer. In year 1995, Amazon.com and eBay.com are launched and they are the two biggest names in e-commerce. In year 1998, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) provides fast and always-on internet service to users across California. According to Business.com, internet had make $20 billion trade in year 1999. In year 2000, the US government stop to collect internet taxes until year 2005.

While the internet was developed, World Wide Web actually exists more than a decade ago and it becomes the most widely used service on the internet. From that time, banks start to use electronic transmission, which is electronic funds transfer to exchange data and also information. Businessman also start to conduct electronic commerce, it also known as electronic data interchange. It occurs when the company transmits computer-readable data in standard format to other company. Those documents that have been exchanged through the internet include invoice and purchase orders. They try to create a set of standard formats to transmit the information through the internet because it can reduce errors and avoid printing and mailing costs.

Compare to the years before, people has make a lot of developments and enhancements towards the e-commerce. Nowadays, it becomes one of the essential tools for us in this competitive business world. As a conclusion, we should always using e-commerce services in our daily life.