Chapter 6: E-Business and E-commerce

Section 6.1

1. Define e-commerce and distinguish it from e-business.
Electronic Commerce: describes the process of buying, selling, transferring or exchanging products, services or information via computer networks through the internet.

B-Business: includes the buying and selling of goods and services, as well as collaborating with business partners, conducting e-learning and conducting electronic transactions with the public sector.

2. Distinguish among B2C, B2B, C2C and B2E electronic commerce.
Business 2 Consumer: the sellers are the organisation and the buyers are the consumers
Business 2 Business: both the seller and the buyer are the business organisation
Consumer 2 Consumer: an individual sells products or services to other individuals
Business 2 Employee: the business uses electronic commerce internally to provide information and services to its employees.

3. List some benefits and limitations of e-commerce.
The benefits of e-commerce include:
- National and international markets are easily penetrated and more accessible
- Lowers the costs of marketing, processing and distributing information among networks worldwide.
- Increased customer access to the products and services through the internet. They can compare prices, and the availability of the product
- Ability to easily and conveniently deliver information, services and products to people in cities, rural areas and in developing nations.
The limitations of e-commerce include:
- Slowed the growth and acceptance of products and services
- Lack of universally accepted standards of security telecommunications and is expensive.
- Insecure, and lacks an amount of critical sellers and buyers.

Section 6.2

1. List the major issues relating to e-tailing.
E-Tailing is the direct sale of products and services through electronic shop fronts or electronic malls, usually designed around an electronic catalogue format and/or auctions.
The issues of e-tailing include:
- Channel conflict: they sell directly to customers on line and have the potential to alienate the distributors and other intermediaries of the organisation.
- Price and resource allocation: the greater influence of logistics services provided by the online services. This can contribute to the fact that the companies multichannel and therefore increase expenditure.
- Order fulfilment: when a company takes orders from customers it must perform the actitivites in a quick amount of time. The expectations of customers wanting these products in fast time can make it difficult for the organisation to carry these effectively and efficiently

2. What are spamming, permission marketing and viral marketing?
Spamming is the indiscriminate distribution of electronic advertisements without the permission of the receiver.
Permission marketing asks consumers to give their permission to voluntarily accept online advertising and emails.
Viral marketing online word of mouth marketing. The effect of this marketing is the fact that people forward messages on to people suggesting that they should “check it out”.

Section 6.4

1. List the various electronic payment mechanisms.
Electronic payments systems enable the consumer to pay for goods and services electronically, rather than writing a cheque or using other payment methods.
The types of electronic payment mechanisms include:
- E-checks
- E-credit
- Virtual, single-use credit card number
- Purchasing cards
- Electronic cash
- Loyalty cards

2. What are micropayments?
Micropayments are small payments for a few dollars or less

Section 6.5

1. List some ethical issues in EC.
Some of the ethical issues of the E-commerce include:
- Threats to privacy
- Issue of tracking which take the forms of cookies that raise privacy consernc.
- Compromising employees privacy which may eliminate the need for some of the firms employees

2. List the major legal issues of EC.
Some of the legal issues of E-commerce include:
- Greater chance of dishonesty and fraudulent undertakings
- Creation of virtual banks that take persons information, money and other crimes like embezzlement
- Cyber squatting
- Intellectual property- trademarks, patents, brand