An Example of an E-Commerce success and its Causes

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American electronic commerce company in Seattle, Washington. Amazon was one of the first major companies to sell goods by Internet.

The key to Amazon.com's success is a strong focus on customer experience.Amazon.com seeks to be the world's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they may want to buy online. For example, Amazon.com's All Product Search scours the Web to help customers find merchandise that is not available at Amazon.com, Amazon.com Auctions, or Amazon.com zShops, making Amazon.com the shopping destination to find anything.

By the way, Amazon.com also understands customer profiling without invading customer privacy. In other words, Amazon.com will suggest books and products that might interest the customers based on the purchasing behavior of customers -- yet the customers will never get spam or a bunch of junk mail from Amazon.com that is off topic. It is a form of permission marketing that greatly respects the customer and their privacy. Amazon.com has found exactly the right balance between customer profiling and customer privacy.

Beside that, Amazon differentiates itself by making sure that it offers the same quality products as any other company with a noticeably lower price. In order to make this happens, Amazon.com is doing great effort with wholesalers and tends to “connect to resources that give it scale rather than adding internal physical mass.” In addition, customers do not have to pay sales taxes on their purchases. In effect, Amazon has been allowed to set itself up as a virtual tax-free shopping zone.

In fact, Amazon has build up trust that it will deliver orders on time. Amazon always make improvement to increase the company's stocking and shipping capabilities and reduced the time it took to fill customers' orders. Any goods that are ordered by customer will be shipped on time and customer is able to track that shipment easily through the web.

In conclusion, Amazon has won over the masses with its straightforward web design and friendly interface, and most importantly the unique shopping experience. Therefore, Amazon is able to develop an extremely loyal customer base.

History and Evolution of E-Commerce

Electronic Commerce is very important in today business world, which commonly known as e-commerce and it consists of selling and buying of products or services over electronic systems such as the internet and other computer networks. Nowadays there are a lot of buyers prefer to shop online. Modern e-commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for the transaction system. Ecommerce became possible in 1991 when the Internet was opened to commercial use. Since that date thousands of businesses have taken up residence at web sites.

The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

Amazon and Ebay were among the first Internet or E-Commerce companies that allow electronic transactions. Thanks to their founders, we now have a successful ecommerce sector and enjoy the buying and selling advantages of the Internet. Currently there are 5 largest and most famous worldwide Internet retailers: Amazon, Dell, Staples, Office Depot and Hewlett Packard. According to statistics, the most popular categories of products sold in the World Wide Web are music, books, computers, office supplies and other consumer electronics.

Below are the clip video on E-Commerce Evolution

An Example of an E-Commerce Failure and its Causes

Although the E-Commerce had been known of its successfulness after being implemented it but still there are some failures of it. The Pets.com was a key example of companies which plummeted in the Dot.com crash. Pets.com attempted to sell pet accessories and supplies directly to the customer over the web.

Pets.com was started by Greg McLemore in November 1998. It was then purchased in early 1999 by a venture capitalist firm. Amazon.com backed Pets.com raised $82.5 million in an IPO funds in February 2000. However, Pets.com was gone into liquidation in November 6, 2000.

However, lack of experience in management and poorly constituted business plan led to the downfall of Pets.com. Company had raised more than $100 million in supporting only for the advertisement. Besides that, the CEO and the managing body had little or no experience in running the company. This consistent deficiency of experience led to the lack of a sufficient business proposal. Moreover, the company was loosing money on every shipment it made.

Furthermore, the idea of Pets.com was inadequate. The company was choosing a business that is not profitable. Via internet, the customers just can view the picture of the pets but cannot touch the pets by themselves. This makes the customers loss confident to trust on the quality of the pets and also the pets’ health condition. However if customers really want to order for the pets, they also have to wait for several days before the pets delivered to them. Purchasing online offered no real benefit whether it is regards to price or convenience.

That is very important to identify the demand and needs of the consumers as well as understand the market and the needs of the consumers. Before begin the business, Pets.com never survey for the market demand of the pets. The inability to define clearly and to understand the market demand and the needs of the customer and their buying habits also causes the failure of e-commerce.

Although Pets.com shows the failure of e-commerce, but there are also some transactions showing the success of e-commerce such as amazon.com, eBay.com, and Dell. Thus, lots of strategic planning has to be done before implementing e-commerce.
There are few more others website that facing E-Commerce failures. View the link below.

http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6278387-1.html?tag=feat.2

How E-Commerce can reduce cycle time, improve employees’ empowerment and facilitate customer support

E-Commerce is basically an electronic system that enables all the suppliers, manufacturers or even the consumers to sell or purchase the products or services through a convenient ways. Besides that, they also can communicate through this web site.

Cycle time is the time where a process needed to complete from beginning until the end of it. This system can help to reduce the cycle time by creating a fast and direct system without wasting any valuable time. Example like the customers can get immediate responses from the dealers or the supplier once the customers request to purchase the items on the system. From the system, it will immediately get to the suppliers without wasting time and money to go to the shop and they can make the payment online through credit cards. After the company receives the orders and payment, they will prepares the items accordingly and send it to the customers. Thus, the e-commerce can reduce the cycle time of this process.


When conducting the E-Commerce, the company will need the employees to check on the system and process any transactions that requested by the customers. This allows the company to give more power and responsibility to the employees and thus, they have more flexibility in conducting their works. Nowadays, by having this system, the employees even can work at their own house and can provide a quick response or feedback to the customers through the internet.

Moreover, the E-Commerce allows the owner of the system to facilitate the customer support by provides a special place for the users to place their comments, complaints or question on any of their doubt on the system through online. Example like most of the E-Commerce website, there are the “Products Frequently Ask Questions (FAQ)”. The systems also can provide the contact information of the company. All of these can enhance the customer support.