Internet And E Business example essay topic
It is just like a net, entangled together and hard to make it clear. The amazing thing is that that concise poem accidentally, however, exactly delineates the life of the present information age. The word Net here does not simply express the conventional meaning, but a completely new thing, the Internet. Nowadays the Internet has stretched its antennae to every corner of this world. More than three hundred million people surf the Internet now. The Internet contains so many things that no one on this planet has ever doubted that it will dominate the whole world in the future.
No one can live without the Internet. In one word, it has already merged into people's daily life. Among the numerous fields that the Internet covers, one of them recently has become so popular that everyone seems to pay attention to it. This is E-Business. It is no longer a creation, but it has changed the way people live.
And, this paper will focus on this topic, introducing the features and development of E-Business and expressing my personal opinions about it, about its past, about its present and about its future. E-Business During the past few years, the Internet has evolved from a scientific network only, to a platform that enables a new conception of business. The first wave of electronic business was fundamentally an exchange of information. But as time passed, more and more types of businesses have become available electronically. Nowadays, we can buy goods online, book holidays or have texts translated over the Internet in an instant. Home banking, for example, is one application that is already provided by most banks around the world.
Looking up your balance, transferring money and other transactions are done every day by millions of people. Public administration has discovered the Internet as a means to talk to the general public at election times. And it will not be too long a time before we see general elections decided on the Internet. Defining E-business Before we talk about E-business, we must first make the definition of E-business clear. What is E-business? Only talking about the things mentioned above is too general.
Let's listen to a story first. A student who graduated from a high school was leaving for the university where he was going to spend the next four years. His mother got everything ready for him and saw him off at the railway station. Suddenly she remembered that she had forgotten to buy him a new bicycle. Then she immediately ordered one online. And when her son got to the university, he received the bicycle at the same time.
From this story, we may conclude that, briefly speaking, E-business means doing business electronically or buying and selling goods via the Internet. One of the first to use the term E-business was IBM in 1997. At that time they launched their first thematic campaign built around the term. Until then e-commerce was the buzzword. The shift in terms also means a shift in paradigm. Until then selling was the only business that people did on the web.
Broadening the approach to allow more types of businesses on the web created the new term e-business. E-commerce is just one aspect of e-business like e-franchising, e-mailing, e-marketing. E-business is about using the convenience, availability and worldwide reach to enhance existing businesses or create new virtual businesses. IBM defines E-business as "a secure, flexible and integrated approach to delivering differentiated business value by combining the systems and processes that run core business operations with the simplicity and reach made possible by the Internet technology.?
Going online Why are today's companies so keen, so enthusiastic about going on the Internet and doing business online? Why are there so many dot-com companies coming out like the bamboo roots after spring roots? Here are some of the important reasons. Expanding market reach One of the major advantages to the Internet is its global availability. If you have a little company, it is quite simple to expand the market reach beyond your geographic location and your current customer segment. Barnes & Noble, one of the largest chains of bookshops in the United States were forced to open a branch on the Internet, because they felt the pressure of Amazon. com, which is selling books over the Internet only and attracted more and more people who traditionally went into the shops of Barnes & Noble.
Generating visibility Another important goal, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (the so-called SMEs) is to gain more visibility. Generating visibility is a substantial gain for every company. The better known your company is, the more people will be interested in doing business with you. The Internet allows a company to present itself at very low cost.
All you need to do is setting up a new web page and include prices, products and any necessary information, which costs very little and the cost for reproduction is practically zero. You do not need to replicate a catalogue, a brochure or a flyer. Put it onto the Internet and it replicates itself. Responsiveness The Internet can easily support increased responsiveness to your customers. Increasing responsiveness to customers and partners is very important in tying customers to a company. Being responsive gives customers the feeling that they are treated well by the company.
Responsiveness also means that when you give out e-mail addresses to your customers, somebody needs to answer these e-mails fast and competently. Although this feature nowadays is must for all companies, it was something revolutionary a few years ago. Instead of calling your logistics partner and asking what happened to your goods, you could just go to their web site and check yourself, which means a cost reduction for yourself. Offering new services Offering new services is also a reason for going online. Introducing new services in traditional markets is difficult and expensive. The Internet on the other hand offers the possibility to introduce new services with very little start-up costs.
New services should not only be provided to customers and partners, but also to employees. Cost reduction This is one of the preeminent reasons for going online. The cost for real estate, service support and production can be reduced greatly through the use of Internet. Printer manufacturers such as Canon and Epson use the Internet to distribute printer drivers and updates. The cost for replicating of printer drivers and updates they sell is a very large sum in the end. The replication cost on the Internet is nearly zero.
This results in more content customers and less overhead. Strengths and advantages of E-business E-business has become very popular recently. Then why on earth is it so attractive? If you pay a little attention to it, you may easily find some advantages to E-business and these cannot be matched by the conventional approaches to doing business. First of all, by doing trade via the Net, businesses can expand their customer base, and even expand their product line. The limitations of factory are now negligible, for the whole world has become a big workshop.
You do not need to produce the goods in one factory at one place and then transport them to various places all over the world. Nowadays seldom are products made of parts from only one country, but instead, from quite a number of countries and territories. Secondly, business-to-business sellers can grow closer relationships. The procedure of doing business can be greatly simplified.
They do business one to one through the Internet and all the middlemen can now be canceled. The major result of this is the enhancement of efficiency. Third, products can be sampled via the Web fast, easily and free of charge. Highly developed as the modern advertising is, its influence is still quite limited. Therefore it is by no means an easy job for corporations to expand their market, even for those powerful multinational corporations. In this way, E-business can assist to do the advertising, for the Internet can reach every corner on this planet, provided there is a computer.
Last but not least, the Internet reduces the number of media transfers that are necessary to transport information. The conventional mass media, to some extent, is really inefficient. The Internet can overcome this problem without difficulty. For a corporation, it only needs to post all the information on the Net, and customers all over the world will obtain this information easily. Concerns on the Internet However, in this world, nothing is perfect, and the Internet is not an exception.
There do exist some drawbacks to the Internet that cause great concern and impede its swift growth. Here are some obvious and influential ones. First the competition is growing from a local to a worldwide one. Now by doing business on the Net, what a company faces are no longer the local rivals or the domestic ones, but those from all over the world. You compete with the international competitors openly. In addition, a customer can compare the offerings of a certain company with another one much more easily.
So the pressure is much heavier and numerous small companies may be driven out of business due to the fierce competition. Next that once information has been published on the Internet, it becomes easy to copy it and use it for another business. Since the information is right there on the Net, everyone can download or duplicate it without payment, and illicitly copy a company's method of doing business. Therefore the initiator may suffer a great loss, or even worse lose its position in the market. The best example of this in China may be the imitation of Dell by the computer manufacturer Legend. Legend copies the direct mode of doing business from Dell and has received a very satisfactory return.
Although Dell has made a remarkable achievement in China, now it must face the challenge from Legend. Then we need to pay attention to the fact that many companies are afraid that their customers won't accept the new media. Fast as the Internet and E-business develops, still there are many people who are resistant to this new thing. Therefore the effect of product advertisement on the Net may be exerted at a discount. Next, the New Economy makes it easier to compare prices. Prices will drop, so quality and extra services become more and more important.
Because of the fierce competition, companies have to reduce the prices in order to maintain a substantial market share and to attract customers. Then when the price can no longer be reduced, the quality and extra services become their only weapons against competitors. This will impose a high standard requirement on companies and only those that can perform well will survive, exactly the same as the law of nature proposed by Darwin-Nature selects. Finally, most companies are very concerned about security on the Internet.
Actually this is not the only the concern of the companies, but also of the customers. For when you do business on the Internet, everything is open. Besides this, most of the payments are done through the credit card. As a result, there is a possibility that the password can be stolen and the loss would be extraordinarily great. What makes it worse, there are now innumerable hackers, most of them experts at computer technology, who can easily destroy a website. This can do great harm to the normal business order on the Net.
Most countries, especially those developing ones, have not established effective legal regulations to supervise this field of industry. Amazon. com The legend of this online kingdom Ok, so far we have talked about so many tedious things about E-business, about its features, advantages and concerns. Now let's see something more concrete and interesting-the famous online bookshop, Amazon. com. If you walk the streets in the United States, and randomly ask people one question: Which company do you know is famous for E-business, nine out of every ten people will definitely give you the answer: Amazon. com. That's for sure.
Several years ago, when Bill Gates, king of the Microsoft Empire, was fomenting the whole world with his advanced Windows, a young guy from Wall Street in New York was driving his shabby van to the west, seeking his own dream of tomorrow. This was Jeff Bezos. Several years later, the Amazon. com has reached a market value of 22 billion US dollars and as the founder and CEO of this online company, his personal value is estimated to be approximately 7 billion US dollars. The whole world is excited by the success of this young man and a new epoch begins. But before we start to talk about this legendary person, let's first see some anecdotes about his childhood. Triggered by his grandfather, a retired Atomic Energy Commission manager, Bezos dreamed at age 14 of being an astronaut or physicist and filled his family garage with science and engineering projects.
By age 16, he could fix windmills, use an arc welder and castrate cattle. In his late grade school years, Bezos became fascinated with the Infinity Cube, which used a set of motorized mirrors to let the user stare into "infinity". When his mother said its $20 cost was too expensive, he bought the pieces cheaply and built it himself. Maybe in some people's points of view, these are quite ordinary and a lot of young people can do it, maybe even better than Bezos.
However, it is just these trivial things that fostered Bezos? personality and capability, and foretold his successful future career. Actually, Bezos was very outstanding even in university. He received a bachelor's degree of Electronica l Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University. Then he began his career on Wall Street. He used to develop computer systems and acted as hedge fund manager for Bankers Trust Co. and D.E. Shaw & Co. on Wall Street.
He attained two posts of vice managers in four years, proving that he was a genius at doing business and managing. However, a small thing changed his whole life, and even the way of life of the world. One day, when he discovered that the Internet was growing at 2,300 percent annually, he knew it was his opportunity and he needed to do something. He and his wife, MacKenzie, moved to Seattle and began online business out of their rented suburban house.
History always seems incredibly alike and interesting. Just as Yahoo. com was founded by Michael Yang and the Hewlett and Packard Company was founded by Hewlett and Packard, Amazon. com was also born in a small and shabby garage. Located in Seattle, Washington, Amazon. com opened its virtual doors in July 1995 with a mission to use the Internet to transform book buying into the fastest, easiest, and most enjoyable shopping experience possible. At the very beginning, Amazon. com only sold books online and no one paid any attention to this newborn baby. Those Internet companies considered it just another negligible vendor on the Web and those mega-bookstores ignored it, thinking that it was only a trivial button on a brilliant evening gown. However, reality has the last say.
Because of its considerate service, inviting price, large variety of books and tremendous convenience, more and more customers were attracted to visit this website and buy books online. Only four years after its foundation, this online bookstore had grown beyond the two biggest bookstores in the United States, Barnes and Noble and Borders, with a market value exceeding the total value of these two. Being cornered by this giant, Barnes and Noble had no choice but to establish its own bookstore online. But how could it compete with Amazon. com?
Today, Amazon. com is the place to find and discover anything you want to buy online. Its range of products sold on the Internet is not only limited to books, but has extended to many other products, from toys to CDs, from DVDs to gifts, from medicines to cosmetics, so on and so on. Or in other words, we may buy almost everything that can be found on this planet. The miracle lies in that whatever Amazon. com does, it turns out to be very successful.
Only four months after it began to sell CDs online, two giants of audio and video products in the United States were so scared that they merged with each other to compete with Amazon. com. There were many other cases of this. Thus Jeff Bezos has become the new idol of many young Americans and the Godfather of E-business. However, Americans are not interested in skin-deep descriptions, they are more enthusiastic about facts, or rather, numbers and statistics. Well, now let's see the following chart. They may give you a more profound and concrete understanding of its success.
Profile of Amazon. com Date of foundation July, 1995 Date of issuing of stocks May, 1997 Biggest individual shareholder Bezos (41%) Total volume of books online 3.72 million (the year 2000) Increasing rate of books 20,000 per week Personnel 9,000 (the year 2001) Market value 30 billion Net assets 7 billion Customer accounts 6.2 million Number of customers 13.1 million Countries visited More than 160 Number of copartners 0.26 million How they do Before we look into it, let's first examine two completely different ways of going shopping. You take a bus to the nearest supermarket, wandering among piles of goods and looking for what you want. You walk from one aisle to another. Sometimes the assistant's help is necessary, for quite often you may get lost in the huge variety of goods. When you finish, the most annoying thing comes, you have to wait in a long queue for a long time to pay, growing impatient and destroying the good mood of going shopping. Then after paying the money, you, carrying bags full of your harvests, big and small, go back home on an overcrowded bus.
In comparison, you stay at home, sitting in front your computer on a comfortable chair, with soft music on. What you need to do is to surf the relevant websites, browse the lists of goods and look for what you like. Then you click the mouse and pay by your credit card, and then it is done. You just wait at home and your goods will arrive at door in several hours or for certain product several days at most. Obviously, the later one is much better than the former. Due to its unmatchable advantages, this has become the trend and this is the very way by which those online companies attract customers.
Amazon. com is the expert at this. Starting from a small online bookstore, now it is a matchless giant of E-business, with its business range covering almost every field. Its mode of business is completely different from those conventional companies. Instead of buying products from manufacturers first then selling these goods to customers, Amazon. com turns the order around. Customers first order the goods online and then Amazon. com will buy these goods from those manufacturers accordingly, with which it has already set up a very good relationship. In this way, the cost can be greatly reduced.
Amazon. com has two big distributing centers in the United States. When the goods arrive at the centers, packers pack the goods and then porters will send them to customers. This is the basic sequence of how an online purchase is made. Although Amazon. com declares that it is totally different from other companies, for it does not have factories and shops, it still has to establish distributing centers and the goods must by sent manually.
So far this cannot be changed. What they offer Selling books has already made Amazon. com famous and successful. However, Bezos was not satisfied with this. He saw far beyond this and believed that more and more opportunities were waiting for him.
Therefore, he gradually enlarged the range of products and services, merging and buying other companies without any hesitation. Now you can buy almost anything you want at Amazon. com. Besides books, you may search for CDs, DVDs, gifts, toys, medicines, cosmetics, clothes, electric appliance, so on and so on. The variety is definitely beyond imagination and is incomparably more varied than conventional stores. Along with the extensive catalog of products, Amazon. com also offers a wide variety of other shopping services and partnership opportunities. For instance, the customers may see an online movie.
What makes it different is that you can choose any movie and see it at any time. Some other services cater to different demands of customers and make this website outstanding. Here are some examples to make you clearer. You may sign up for Special Occasion Reminder service, and then you " ll never forget to get a gift for that special someone again. You may become an Amazon. com Associate and earn money by selling books, CDs, DVDs, videos, and many other products on your website. You may sign up for Delivers and E-mail subscription service, to receive the latest reviews of exceptional new titles in categories that interest you.
Maybe the following sentence will make you understand better: Opportunities are just waiting for you there; it is your affair whether to grasp them or let them slip through your fingers. What they believe Just like any successful companies around the globe, Amazon. com has its own corporation culture. Here are the basic principles that all the employees value and lead them to greater success. First of all, the customers are King. So the company makes every effort to improve the services they offer to retain the old customers and to attract new ones. Still let's see an example of how they make buying convenient.
If you want to buy the book Godfather, you just need to type the title of the book, then all the latest information, the contents, the price, the discount and even the price on other websites, will be listed in front of you. If you cannot remember the title, you can also type some keywords mentioned in the book, although this seldom happens, then the website will list all the relevant information in detail. Or even worse, if you know nothing about the book, but the color of the cover, this will do. Isn't that amazing?
Mistakes cannot be avoided. Sometimes if it is not the company's fault, the shippers will also apologize to the customers. Even more, if you are not content with the contents of the book, you can even send the book back and get the refund. Why do they do all these things that others do not? Because they believe that the company will not survive without the support from customers.
Actually what they compete for with other companies is nothing but customers. So they will do whatever they can to attract them. Secondly, they understand profoundly that the most precious assets of a company are the employees, the talents. So the company tries every means to retain these talented people. Bezos himself is famous for being kind and intimate to his employees. They can chat equally.
They can exchange opinions freely. All the staff is satisfied with their working environment and in this Bezos? personal charm plays an important role. He makes the employees feel that they are all masters of the company and have done something or have contributed something to the success of the company. Of course, it is difficult to enter this company. Anyone who wants to become a member of Amazon. com has to pass very strict tests and interviews. We can say that all that work there are elites.
Third, they believe that the scale of a company is critical. That is the very reason why Bezos always pours huge amounts of money to expand their company and enlarge their business. He ignored the fact the company is still in the red, yet it never hesitates to annex the companies that they think are promising and profitable. The ambitious Bezos wants to stretch his tentacles to every field.
And the miracle is that whatever Amazon. com does, it turns out to be a success. Besides, the company highlights its brand. They believe that it is easy to establish a brand but difficult to popularize and maintain it. As a result, Amazon. com will spend 30% of their annual income on advertisement to increase the influence of their brand and make customers much more familiar with the website. This has been proved a complete success.
Insubstantial or prosperous No doubt, Amazon. com has done a splendid job. However, many people see it with a critical eye. They are doubtful and concerned about its future. Many experts say that this entire prosperous scene is nothing but a mass of foam, whose bubbles will sooner or later burst and then nothing will remain. These doubts and concerns are not groundless. Let's have a look at its stocks.
Amazon. com first listed its stock on NASDAQ in May 1997, at a price of about $9. Then by the beginning of the year 1998, the price rose slightly, no more than $10. However, after one year's advertising and expansion, the price rocketed to $300 by the end of 1998. Everyone was shocked. However, this was not the stop. The price once exceeded $400.
People began to doubt. Could this be true? Was this real or insubstantial? Even Bezos himself advised people not to buy its stocks; for it was so risky that no one could tell what would happen the next day. The fall in price at last arrived. Now its price is less than $20.
Most people hold a wait-and-see attitude. They hope Amazon. com can squeeze out all the foam and come to ground again. Besides the inflated value in the stock market, one thing cannot be ignored. That is the fact that the company is always in the red. So far Amazon. com has had a deficit every year. And the company's business is so broad that it almost covers every single field.
People wonder that if things go on like this, whether the company will soon collapse. On the contrary, Bezos is quite confident and optimistic about the present situation. He says that now it is not yet time for them to make a profit. They must continue to invest to reach a large enough scale and Amazon. com will have a profitable future.
The Amazon is the longest river in this world and has the largest drainage area. But what will become of Amazon. com? Will it be the largest and most successful online company? Will it become the real Amazon in its domain?
We do not know. But one thing is undeniable. Amazon. com is the pioneer of E-business and will leave an ineffaceable footprint in history. E-business in China Present Situation Maybe my view is not correct, but to me, E-business just looks like a kind of cancer, vigorous and diffused.
China, as the world's largest developing country, cannot say no to it. Actually, E-business, a new thing from the west, reached China several years ago. However, the situation here is a little awkward. People, from experts to entrepreneurs, all admire E-business and believe that it will have a promising future. But the present development is not yet satisfactory. Or in other words, it is so weak that people can do nothing about it.
In the United States, the total annual trade value has now reached billions of dollars. However, in China, it is only millions of RMB. What a disparity! The website, 8848. com, may be the most noted online company doing E-business in China. With its headquarters in Beijing, it is now the biggest in the field and Junta o Wang, the CEO of the company says that they want to be the leader of E-business in China and are making every effort to achieve this goal. Maybe from its name, 8848, the height of Mt.
Everest, we can see his goal quite clearly. But first let's see what you can do on this website. 8848. com mainly deals with the business among enterprises. Companies can apply to appear on this website, to which they can add links to their own official websites and more importantly; they can directly publish the latest information about their companies and the products online. In this way, more opportunities and convenience can be provided to companies, so these companies can do business more easily and efficiently. This is one of the modes of E-business.
What 8848. com is endeavoring to do is to promote the modes of B 2 B (business to business) and B 2 C (business to customer), which respectively means that enterprises do business with other enterprises and enterprises do business directly with individuals. These are the trends of E-business nowadays all over the world and C 2 C (customer to customer) is also the ideal mode of doing business in the future. Difficult as it is now in China, it is developing at tremendous speed and experts predict flourishing prospects. Another well-known online company is Eguo. com.
This is a completely online retailer, resembling Amazon. com to some degree. By surfing this website, you just need to click the mouse to choose your satisfactory goods, then someone from the company will telephone you to confirm whether you will certainly purchase the goods, then some porters in red we skits will send the goods to your door within the guaranteed time and collect the money. The company quite underscores the quality of the service that they offer to their customers, for they know that customers are much more important to an online company, compared with conventional companies. Consequently Eguo. com provides the customers with a special service-One Hour Service.
With this service, customers can get what they buy online in one hour's time if the goods are included in this service. This successful service has become widespread. Now the company has taken another step to expand its business and is building chain stores around Beijing city, thus combining E-commerce with conventional business. One more thing that makes Eguo. com advanced and popular is the online payment.
If you have a Merchant Bank visa, you can pay via the Internet and in this way cash is eliminated. Suppose you want to surprise your girlfriend with a gift, you can order it at Eguo. com, pay the money online, and then your girlfriend will receive the gift and you do not need to do anything else. Quite romantic, isn't it? Thus, more and more people have gradually accepted online payment. Problems No doubt, E-business is becoming the mainstream in China and more and more people have begun to appreciate its importance. However, there do exist some problems and obstacles that block or slow down the tempo of the development of E-business in this large country.
First is the lack of personal credit in China. Maybe you cannot feel it, but it does exist in our society, and the problem is quite severe. If you pay a little attention, you may find amazingly that almost everyone is cheating in some way. In order to satisfy their personal interests, especially financial ones, many people would do anything, including deceit or securing advantages through influence or relationships, a common practice in China and called in Chinese Zouhoumen. People have the self-serving goals, to achieve their own ends. Incredibility has already become the norm in China.
Parents always teach their children to suspect others before believing what they say. This may avoid loss, but from another angel, it shows the lack of public trust in China, ironically. This may be the sequela of the history, but it does become an obstacle to the growth of E-business in China. Credit, from the experts? point of view, is the elementary foundation of a market economy. Without it, normal business cannot go on. So what China needs to do first is to establish its own personal credit system.
Secondly, credit card is not popular in China whereas in the United States, cash plays a less important role in people's daily life. Instead, credit card like Visa is becoming indispensable. On the contrary, ordinary people in China use cash when buying goods. Most people cannot accept credit card, despite its considerable convenience, due to the lack of credibility and the immaturity of credit card system among the banks. However, everyone has reason to believe that in the not too distant future, credit card will replace cash and become quite common in China. Third, buying via the Internet is not still widespread in China.
Today, more than sixty million people surf the Internet in China, which is a huge figure in most people's eyes, but compared with the immense population of the country, we can by no means say that the Internet has already become popular in China. In some remote rural areas, many people, without exaggeration, still do not know what a computer is, let alone the Internet. So the Internet must be popularized before talking about doing E-business. Fourth is the incompetence of the online companies.
They themselves impede the development of E-business. The service is not satisfactory. Eguo. com has such a problem. Quite often, after you order the goods at this website, the company will telephone you to notify that the goods that you have ordered are not available, and the customers are discontented. Many other companies have only got the superficial meaning of E-business.
Sometimes what they do is restricted to the provision of relevant information, far from the core meaning of E-business. However, we cannot attribute all these to the companies. After all, E-business has just begun in China and there is definitely a long and rough way to go before its full development. Looking forward Tough as the progress is, most people are still optimistic about the future, for everyone has the reason to believe that based on the large population, the rapid national economic development, the establishment of personal credibility and the prevalence of the Internet, E-business will sooner or later fully merge into people's daily life in this old and modern giant. Conclusion So far we have talked so much about E-business and you now may bear an idea in your mind that E-business will be the dominant way of doing business and change people's way of living completely. However, you may overlook one point.
That is when one thing becomes public and utilized by the whole society; it will become so ordinary that no one will pay much attention to it. That is why, nowadays, E-business has constantly been the focus of mass media. Maybe one day, the Internet and E-business itself will become a certain kind of public utility, like water, electricity and gas, which everyone can use at any time and any place and only pay little. Moreover, when every field of our life is cyber ized in the future, the concept of E-business itself will disappear.
That is possible, definitely possible. The E-business Revolution / Daniel Amor? 000 by Hewlett-Packard Company, published by Prentice Hall PTR, printed in USA The introduction, the development and the characteristics of E-business Relevant websites web search engine for information about companies web information about this online company web the famous online company in China web a Chinese company dealing with buying goods online.