Local e-commerce: Blooming florist

Blooming florist is a success company in Malaysia by using e-commerce method to deal their business. This method brings a lot of competitive advantages and led their business throughout the world- globalization. Selling flower is their main business via online and sort to few types such like congratulation, happy birthday, new baby, wedding flowers, condolence and so forth. In order to fulfill the customer needs, blooming florist also provide add-on item such like wines, toys, cakes, cookies and so on as long as achieve every customer satisfaction.

Besides that, packages are provided by following seasonal and each cultural festival. All can search from blooming.com.my. Foreign customer can purchase flower via blooming florist or interflora because blooming florist is one of the member of Interflora and the delivery is provided globally which show in blooming florist website.

The site design and layout are very simple but detail. All type of flower and item are classified in simple form in order the customer can search easily. Each type of flower is disclosed by photo clearly and attached with code and price in Malaysia ringgit. Shopping cart is provided in order the customer can purchase all kind of flower that he or she need in a time and attach the card message. Customer can pay by using Visa and master card and some credit card is given promotion such like discount on flower such like Citibank and Hong Leong bank.

E-government In Malaysia

Malaysian e-government initiative started in 1997 and is one of the flagship applications of MSC which aims to transform Malaysia into a knowledge-based economy and society towards Vision 2020. E-government seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility, and quality of interactions between citizens, business and government sectors. Malaysian e-government was reported to rank 25 out of nearly 200 countries in year 2007.


E-government offers application such as e-Filling, Renewing Road Tax and Driving License Online, KWSP’s i-Akaun and E-Perolehan. LHDNM e-Filling service was introduced to corporate taxpayers and individual taxpayers in 2003 and 2004 respectively. It provides a channel for taxpayers to file their return. Now, we can renew road tax and motor insurance policy at http://www.myeg.com.my/. It also provides a list of about 100 insurances companies to choose from. Besides that, we can also renew driving licenses and pay traffic summonses online through http://www.jpj.gov.my/.


Other than that, KWSP's i-Akaun is an EPF account which available on the internet. Members can use it to check account's status or history of transaction, and also to calculate amount eligible for withdrawal. Employer can use it to submit form and make payment online, it is also convenient to update correct and complete employees' information. E-perolehan is an online procurement system that allows suppliers to offer their products or services online to government. They can receive, manage and process purchase order and receive payment via the internet.

Malaysians are still skeptical to trust electronic transaction, such as paying bills online. Some citizens may face language problem to use government websites as they may not be Bahasa Malaysia or English literacy. As consumers are seemed likes “forced” to comply with government’s requirement in implementing e-government’s plan, they may be unwilling to use or participate in it. Besides that, broadband services is not very satisfactory, many citizens still do not have the internet access at their home.

Government should make sure the decision and policy they made are keep pace with the technological change and progress in ICT and multimedia industries. To be successful, e-government needs marketing expertise to better promote awareness, encouragement and dissemination of information on the benefits that can be obtained by citizens and other users.

In my opinion, our government is doing very well in implementing e-government, especially with the introduction of various government website, such as http://www.gov.my/, however, more effort should be put to increase the usage of it.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies.

Now is 11.55pm, want to write down what I did for today first. Today, I woke up quite late and went to into the class late about 15 min, wonder why my alarm cant wake me up and I felt so frustrated because I rushed to class like that. What a fool I am? Haha… anyway, after finished class, I went to Pj Utar campus to be the judge of the audition of the dance battle competition which im holding the vice chairman position in this event. Felt so nervous and glad while I be the judge for the first time, more panic than those participants. Haha…

Well, is time to talk about the topic for E commerce? Today the topic im going to talk about is corporate blogging which is a new marketing communication tool for companies. What is corporate blogging? Corporate blogging used by organization to communicates among the managers, employees and users and it consider as a powerful tool to reach the goal set by organization. Corporate blogging can be divided by 3 types which are internal, external and CEO Blogs. Internal blogging usually participated by employees by sharing the information and discuss the important issues in the organization which may help the organization to collect the intelligent and have a better understanding within the employee’s category. External blogging is a web blog which allow employees, team or spokesperson to share their views. It usually used to promote or announce the latest products or services provided by that particular company. The last type of corporate blogging would be CEO Blogs which only used by CEO in the organization to share and discuss the important issues.

One of the pros for this tool is it plays the effective part in orders to replace the conference or printed memos and it be more accessible. Besides that, the top manager could communicate directly with customer, suppliers and investor and employees as well to help disseminate and explain strategy. In addition, the comments or the feedback of the products or services could help the organization to have a better message of the acceptance of the users towards the products or services.

However, there are some cons in fact of using corporate blogging which is the user of this kind of tool have to master this style of communicating to make sure the blogging done nicely and attractively. Besides that, some of the company may control the comments or feedback which may causes some bad reputation towards company and it is bias.

One of the successful example of company using corporate blogging is Microsoft, Microsoft set this corporate blogging in their company home web page. Inside Microsoft corporate blog, the company encourage their employees to write the latest technology and information of the company and introduce by blogging. Besides that, this will benefit the employees that encourage the employees in the company have a better understanding towards the latest products or information by blogging. On the other hand, these blogs would provide the users insights and opinions about using Microsoft technologies and software.

Lastly, in my opinion corporate blogging is a very useful tool for any company or organization, it provides the user the latest information and could publicize the latest products to the user as well. However, there are still a lot of people who not used to the blogging function yet and it need more time to develop on it. for more info, you may log in our lecture blog http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/2007/08/corporate-blogging-new-marketing.html
thank you..

E-Auction Fraud Prevention

Auction is a bidding market mechanism where buyers bid and sellers offer in a competition manner to get a products or something which the final price is reached. Thus E-auction is a electronic auction that done through the internet.

There are many types of e-auction fraud. For example

Shilling: It is a place where placing fake bid on auction items. The main purpose is to rise up the bidding price.

Bid shielding: there is some phantom bidders bid at a very high price at the start of an auction and pull out at the last minute and this will cause a bidder of a much lower price to win.

Beside that, there is also a lot of way of fraud can happen. Some will charge with a high shipping costs and handling fees, misleading the description like put on the fake picture of the products, failure to ship to the products and many more.

From the above statements, it is important for everyone to prevent e-auction fraud. There are some ways to be taken to prevent fraud:

User identification verification - it encourages users to provide information for online verification.

Authentication Service- it is a service to determine whether an item is genuine and described in proper manner.

Grading service – a service that determines the physical of the product whether is in a good manner

Feedback forum – this is a forum that provides users to express out their experience dealing with e-auction.

Insurance policy – there is some insurance policy that provide to customers or users like the insurance policy by Ebays with no cost at all.

Buyers also need to take note when they are dealing with e-auction. Buyers are advise to read the company reputation whether the company can be trusted before making any transaction with them. Some of the company who deals with the e-auction will provide some forum to let users to read on the other users comments towards their company image and products.

Nevertheless, check the courier services provided by the company to make sure the delivery are delivered on time without any problems. On the other hand, buyers should be smart enough and bear in mind never bank in money to other people account easily cause there are some fake accounts created to cheat buyers.

“Caution to users: Never give out your bank account and your personal information”

Hope that can help you to prevent fraud during transaction is being made.

Alert for online investment

Every investor is looking for high profitable investment, when they discover low or zero risk and high return via internet. They will take all their property and cash for the investment in order to not miss out the chance. They may not have realized that they are entring an illegal investment website and thought have a big “free lunch” in this world, investors will lose their money eventually.

The Securities Commission, together with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission and CyberSecurity Malaysia, has blocked access to another two websites offering illegal investment schemes to the public in Malaysia. The two websites, which have been blocked are:
www.danafutures.com
www.planet.time.net.my/KLCC/danafuture

this also can find out from lecturer blog: http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Legal and http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/2007/06/2-more-internet-scam-sites-blocked-by.html
Investors are strongly advised to check on the licensing status of any investment scheme that they intend to invest in, with the relevant local or foreign authorities. Some websites claimed to be legal but the SC advised the public to check the list of licensed intermediaries available on the SC website: http://www.sc.com.my/ .

Malaysian police conducted major raids in Kuala Lumpur area and succeed to arrested more than 30 foreigners who operate illegal website to snared victim across the Asia-Pacific.

For those who are guilty of illegal deposit takong face jail up to 10 years or a fine of RM10million, or both. However, a person convirted of money laundering will be fined RM5 million or jail up to 5 years , or both.

in my opinion, when we are looking for the investment, we should concern about the particular investment must supported by Securities Commission strictly and not looking for the low or zero risk and high return investment that shown on internet.

Mobile payment systems in Malaysia: Its potentials and consumers' adoption strategies.

Mobile Money is a PIN-based Mobile Payment Solution designed by Mobile Money International Sdn Bhd to overcome the limitations created by cash, cheques and credit cards. It unlocks the power of the mobile phone to make payments, allowing registered users to pay for goods and services at anytime and anywhere using only a mobile phone coupled with a 6-digit security PIN via Short Messaging Service. This gives the freedom to shoppers to buy products online and pay the merchant using his or her mobile phone without being physically present at the store.
Mobile money will encourage more consumers to shop online. This will definitely be a great benefit to the e-commerce industry in Malaysia. It will surely encourage more merchants to adopt online selling as an extra sales channel which complement perfectly with their offline sales channel to help them SELL MORE of their goods and services. Realizing these needs of merchants in Malaysia, we are the 1'st shopping cart software provider who has integrated Mobile payment as a method in our webShaper e-commerce software. This feature allows merchants to accept payment via Mobile payment and process the payment in real time within clicks!
The Bank together with Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission will work towards providing the appropriate environment for economic development and to catalyze the transformation of the mobile initiatives. This will also include engagement with the market participants, payment service providers and industry players to collaborate in these important areas. In order to pay using Mobile payment, a shopper must have either a savings, current or credit card account with participating banks. It functions like a Credit Card if a shopper applies for a "Pay by Mobile Phone" credit card account such like Hong Leong Mobile Credit Card. The shopper will be billed by the bank accordingly by month's end.

In addition, it functions as a Debit Card if it is tied to shopper's savings or current account. The amount will be deducted instantly from the account upon successful transaction. Please take a look at the screen shots to see how it works and interact with our online storefront solution.


In my opinion, we no need bring wallet or purse in future. We can go anywhere at anytime by just bringing few cards. the mobile payment system is not active in Malaysia recently. Government should do a lot of promotionss and advertisements in order to encourage Malaysia citizen aware the benefits of mobile payment system.

Electronic Currency

Electronic currency, which also known as e-money or digital currency, is the money that holders use to buy goods and services that the vast internet offers. It involves the use of computer networks, internet and digital stored value systems. In general, e-currency can be classified as indentified e-money and anonymous e-money. Identified e-money contains information revealing the identity of the person who originally withdrew the money from the bank. However, anonymous e-money that withdrawn from an account can be spent or given away without leaving a transaction tray.

Now, let’s have a look at one of the E-micropayment system. In 1990, Professor David Chaum formed a Dutch firm called DigiCash. With its patented advances in public key cryptography, it has pioneered development of electronic payment mechanisms for open, closed and network systems that provide security and privacy. At the moment, DigiCash provided a new concept in payment system, combined the computerized convenience with security and privacy that improve on paper cash. It offered a variety of products, including Blue, CAFÉ, DyniCash, ECash and Facility Card. Throughout the history, DigiCash has developed leading edge products and partnered with many companies to provide advanced payment system technology to the market.

However, DigiCash which did not have a clear marketing strategy was unable to survive for long. With failure in cooperation with a few banks and domination of credit card in electronic payments market, DigiCash was filed for bankruptcy in 1998. (How DigiCash blew everything)

The story of DigiCash has not ended yet. In September 2005, a team of software industry veterans and members of elite technology units of the Israeli Army founded DigiCash again. Based on patent-pending technology, it aims to provide a digital implementation of online offers and digital currency empowering business to convey tangible and persistent incentives to customers instantly and in online context.

Here are some other example of e-micropayment system:

Closed down operation:

Still in operation:

More information is available at http://www.geercom.com/emicropayments.html

As credit card is very common and popular nowadays, E-currency operators should differentiate themselves with it and let customers know what makes them better than credit card. In other words, they have to create more competitive advantages over credit card in order to compete with it.

Causes and prevention of credit cards debt

Now is 2.18am, I just came back from my cousin brother weeding dinner, feeling a bit drunk. Haha, dun misunderstand that I like to drink those alcohol drinks, I forced to help my cousin brother in fact because my cousin brother cannot drink much. As his cousin brother, all of us have to help to “serve” his friend who can drink much. At the end, most of us were drunk (I just help a little bit only, haha…) while my cousin brother still in good condition. Anyway, we complete our task…..

Well, is time to do my homework again. Today the topic I’m going to talk about is causes and prevention of credit cards debt. Nowadays, credit cards already became a very convenient and useful tool for everyone. Most of the person may think that credit card= money? Does everyone agree with this statement? I would say no because credit cards can be used to buy something rather bring lot of cash money but it doesn’t mean is the assets u having now. Debts of credit cards in our country keep increasing year by year because of the users spending their money by using credit cards without a proper planning and budget. Because of the amount of the debts became higher and it bring in the higher interest charged will cause to the burden of the users more heavy. Another issue would be the age of the user of credit cards decreasing which means there is more and more youngster using credit cards. Among the youngster category, we found out that most of them lack of the clearly understanding of the interest rate and some of them lack of the financial management skill as well which may cause this category having the large credit card debts.

To avoid this kind of problems happen on yourself, you may check out the following ways of prevention. First, think before u purchase a good or a product. Before users purchase the product, the users should think properly is that good useful or necessary for them. Another way is planning, planning playing a important tool in any life management. The users may plan the future usage or spending budget before they go for a shopping. Besides that, whenever a user purchased a product, the user may keep the receipt of the transaction and record it down to further refer. It may useful to give a notice how much they had spent for this period of time.

In conclusion, credit cards really a useful and convenient tool for our life but just depends on how the user using it. Use it smart and dun let this small plastic card become a burden for yourself or your family. Thank you…

Last but not least, I would like to wish my cousin brother have a sweet wedding memory and stay happily forever. ^^

The Application Of Pre-Paid Cash Card For Consumers

When talk about credit cards everyone know about the application and usage of credit cards. Average every person who is working has one credit card but nowadays a new prepaid cash card introduce in the market or in other words “Debit Card”. A pre-paid cash card system enables customers to make purchases, calls, and to participate in a survey using an authorized card. One of the famous prepaid cash card in Malaysia is Touch & Go. The Touch & Go cards are frequently use in highways. Secondly are the ATM cards. They are designed for payment transaction and withdrawal of money. It needs a secured entry of PIN at the booth.

Other countries like Hong Kong, the peoples in Hong Kong used the octopus cards to pay the public transport fees except for taxis and some public mini buses. Just wave the cards even the cards are inside the wallets of handbags the payment will be deduct instantly.

Besides that there is signature of full function of prepaid debit cards that used for transactions at every respective point of sale terminal carrying the Visa or Mastercard logo.

It can be used for paying bills and the function is same with the credit card. There are many benefits of using the prepaid cash cards where consumers who make debit card purchases are free of interest charges associated with credit cards. Consumers can transfer funds to friends and relatives everywhere and anytime and un-banked consumers can pay bills and purchase products and services on-line or through phone call and consumers may no need to carry cash to go for security reason.
I think that the pre-paid cash cards are benefits to all people besides using credit cards. People may know how to manage their expenses well without using credit cards as we can see that many people are going bankrupt because of credit cards debt.

Review on a post on e-tailing

Now is 2.23am, just came back from Gary’s concert, what a fantastic concert it was. Last few weeks, my friend asked me to go with her for this concert and want to buy the ticket on the spot, I considered for a long time and not so desperate to go actually. However, my friend bought the ticket for me and I have to go. In the concert, his singing was so fantastic and it just like I’m listening to his CD. One word can descried the performance, perfect~ well done, Gary…

Anyway, have to come back to work. This week I’m going to write two blogs which are causes and preventions of credit cards debts and a review for e-tailing. After read trough the post of my lecture blog which the title is Using Touch n Go card to buy fast food in Malaysia will be reality, found out that the usefulness of Touch and Go(touch n go). In Malaysia, Touch ‘n Go had become very popular and very convenient and useful card, most of the residents of Malaysia know what this card is although some of them do not use it. Touch ‘n Go can be used to pay for the toll at highway which can be considered as one of the main function of this card. It helps the users avoid queuing up for paying cash money. It takes times due to the workers of the toll have to pay back the balance with the receipt. If all of the residents in Malaysia using this kind of Touch ‘n Go service and it will be very efficient and effective with cutting a lot of cost and time either indirect or direct way.

Besides paying for toll, Touch ‘n Go provides the services such as public transport and parking paying device. The Touch ‘n Go’s users could see Touch ‘n Go device at parking entries or any public transportation which bring much convenience to the users. The users no need to queue up for buying tickets and they just need to use Touch ‘n Go cards touch on the device and check out the balance then they can entry.

Lately, Touch ‘n Go come out with latest function which is the users can use Touch ‘n Go cards to buy any items in these 21 outlets in Klang valley. The outlets mentioned are A&W, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donut, 7-Eleven, Carrefour hypermarkets, Caltex convenience stores and Cineleisure. Not long after that, Touch ‘n Go hope to increase the number of retail outlets by 20 a month and reach the target of 150 such outlets throughout the country by year end.

Although Touch ‘n Go having such competitive advantages in the market but there are some disadvantage of using Touch ‘n Go card. One of the disadvantages is the Touch ‘n Go users currently just using this Touch ‘n Go to pay their transportation such as toll, public transportation fees. Besides that, lack of reload center is a main problem the users facing and it will affect the growing of the product. Moreover, Touch ‘n Go card in user’s wallet can be treated as cash money, once it get stolen the credit inside the Touch ‘n Go card can be used by anyone due to this card is not registered. This problem causes the user not wishes to top up the Touch ‘n Go card with high amount of money.

In conclusion, Touch ‘n Go still is a potential product and could be successful like the Octopus Card in Hong Kong. To reach that goal, Touch ‘n Go still have a lot place to improve on to make it competitive enough in Malaysia market.

The threat of online security: how safe is our data?

The threat of online security divides into two types of attack- nontechnical and technical. Nontechnical attacks are using chicanery or some other form of persuasion to trick people into disclosing sensitive information that can be used to compromise the security of a network. Nontechnical attack also known as social engineering, it preys on an individual’s desperate to help and fear of getting into trouble.

They are two categories of social engineering – human based and computer based. Human based social engineering relies on traditional method of communication such as communicate over phone. However, various technical ploys are used to encourage individuals to provide sensitive information in legitimate email form.

In contrast, software and systems knowledge are used to perpetrate technical attack. An expert hacker uses a methodical approach to conduct a technical attack and expose a system’s vulnerabilities over internet easily and freely. In year 1999, common (security) vulnerabilities and exposure (CVE) is established and one of the goals of the CVE list is to assign standard and unique names to each of the known security community throughout of the world.

Since year 2000, National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) has produced a document summarizing the two top 10 lists: the 10 most commonly exploited vulnerabilities in Window and another one in UNIX and Linux. Distributed denial-of-service(DDoS)attacks and malicious code attacks are well know in CVE and NIPC lists and have affected million people.

DoS is an attacks on a Web site in which an attacker uses specialized software to send a flood of data packets the target computer with the aim of overloading its resource. With DDoS attack, the attacker gains illegal administrative access to as many computers on the internet as possible and uses the multiple computers to send a flood of data packets to the target computer. However, malicious code is classified by the way in which it is propagated such as viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. Some malicious code rather than benign, but it all has the potential to do damage. furthermore, we can get some current issues and cases about the internet security in detail from lecturer blog http://ecommerze.blogspot.com/search/label/Internet%20Security.

In my opinion, no matter how confidential and secret of data or information, the criminal can get it easily by using nontechnical or technical attacks if our safeguard or online security is very low, our data no longer safe anymore. A strong online security is needed in order to prevent or minimize the unwelcome person enter our computer or database.

Phishing example and prevention method

What is phishing?

Phishing is the action of assuming the identity of a legitimate organization or website, using forged email or web pages to convince consumer to share their personal information. The purpose is to commit fraud and also referred to as identity theft. The message or web page generated by phishers may look so official and authentic, resulting up to 20% of unsuspecting recipients respond to them.
The legitimate businesses that might be used are banks such as Citibank, online organizations such as eBay, PayPal, and EarthLink, internet service provider such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo.

How does it works?
Here is a prime example of how phishing works. On 17 November 2003, many eBay customers received email notified that their accounts had been compromised and were being restricted. After clicking the hyperlink provided in the email, a web page which just looked like the same as eBay’s home page appeared. To re-register, the customer were told to provide credit card data, ATM personal identification numbers, Social Security number, date of birth and their mother’s maiden name. However, the problems was eBay did not send the email and the webpage did not belong to eBay.

How to prevent it?
Treat all email with suspicion, the email body, sender’s address, return address, email header can be forged. Can call the organization and ask if it is legitimate or check its legitimate website. (See difference between spoof and genuine email).

Never use a link in email to get to any web page, type the URL directly to the browser’s address bar. Never send personal or financial information to anyone through e-mail. Regularly log into online account, do not leave it for more than a month.

Do not use same password for more than one site and use reputable firewall and anti-virus software. Ensure that all computer software is up to date.

If receives email refers to a web site, look carefully at the URL, beware of the @symbol and long URL which people usually not beware of. For example,

http://jd778823985225howf8shfMHHIUBd889yK@MIllerSMILes.Co.Uk">www.ebay.comSECURITYCHECKw8grHGAkdj>jd778823985225howf8shfMHHIUBd889yK@MIllerSMILes.Co.Uk

If you found out that you have been a victim of email phishing, call your credit card company, call your bank, change password, contact website involved, and make a report to the police and report to anti-phishing authority.

With the incresing cases of phishing over the past few years, we should always be careful and keep ourselves away from any potential lure and prevent ourselves from becoming the prey one days. Hope you all be good, be careful and be aware.

To get more information about phishing, please have a visit at http://www.millersmiles.co.uk/identitytheft/gonephishing.

How to safeguard our personal and financial data

Now is 10.57pm, just came back from music club annual general meeting, I’m still haven’t take my bath yet (smelly ah ~). Haha… anyway, now want to write my 3^rd blog for this E-commerce subject again.

Today the title I’m going to talk is how to safeguard our personal and financial data. Nowadays, every people using internet very often and some of them even cannot survive without their lovely tool which is computer including me ~ haha.. However, there are many threats of online transaction which may steal or copy your personal information even your password of your login account.

However, there are many ways to prevent or safeguard your personal or financial data that online users no need to worry so much. One of the ways is using firewall to protect the process of storing data on our system and prevent those unauthorized access online. What are firewalls? It is software and hardware that are intended to define, controlling and limit some access of a website or networks.

Besides that, encryption used more and more often nowadays to safeguard our data. Encryption is just like a document such as a sealed letter that the content cannot be viewed by anyone easily, and it needs a specific key to open it.

In addition, some of the users like to put a time out feature to reduce chance of data used by other user by automatically log you off of your current online session after a period of inactivity. For example, with the automated time out feature, if a user went out for a while, the feature will automatically log off the account and prevent other user from using it.

There are still many other ways to safeguard our personal data and I just choose some of the ways to explain. As an online user, we should protect our data more carefully and set the features which suit to our using style to protect your personal data the most. That’s all my blog, want to go out have some drink with friends ~

Haha………… bye

The Application of 3rd Party Certification Programme in Malaysia

Security is the main problem to be focused and concerned in entering into e-economy. The enhancement and ever changing environment in the internet market, needs a very well and high tech security infrastructure to increase the customer trust in doing transaction on internet.

Trustgate is the leading service provider of internet utility company, thus complementing the aspiration of the MSC to be a world-class e-environment.Trustgate has been licensed under the Digital Signature Act 1997 (DSA), a Malaysia law that sets a goal precedent for the mandate of a CA. They offer complete security solutions and leading trust services that are needed by individuals, enterprises, government, and e-commerce service providers' digital certification services, including digital certificates, cryptographic products, and software development. They provide the finest Public Key Infrastructure to companies that conducting their business through Internet for example MSC Trustgate.com Sdn Bhd. They provide secure open network communications and become the catalyst for the growth of e-commerce, both locally and across the ASEAN region with the 12 million in paid up capital.


Regarding to the increased phishing and spoofing attacks on internet, customer want to make sure that they are dealing with the trusted parties when they make transaction with each other. They want to make sure that the information given was channeled to the intended recipients and safe from intruders and Trustgate do provide the SSL certificates for server security of the transaction. Secure Site SSL Certificates protect the transfer of sensitive data on Web sites, intranets, and extranets using a minimum of 40-bit and up to 256-bit encryption. It includes VeriSign Secured Seal such as IBM, Compaq, Nokia and Maybank. For examples Maybank, the Maybank Group has adopted a combination of the following systems security and monitoring measures for online transactions.

Firstly is their firewall systems, strong data encryption, anti virus protection and round a clock security in their security systems in order to give security to their customers where it can detect and prevent any form of illegitimate activities on our network systems. Next is the regular review on the internal systems by the external security auditors. They also take every effort in ensuring collaboration with major vendors/manufacturers to keep abreast of information security technology developments, for possible and future implementation.

The third party certification programme will let people feel more safer to do transaction online because everyone will think that making online transaction is unsafe and by this it will change people's view.





http://www.msctrustgate.com/

A review on a post on Internet Security from My E-Commerce blog

The evolution of technology has benefits to the society like invention of robots to replace some human jobs, cars, computers and others but the enhancement of technology especially in internet has created a lot of security problems. For the past 12 months, according to the Symantec bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report and the review on the post more than 1million computer viruses in circulation now on 11 April , there are more than a million of Computer Viruses, Worms and Trojans in circulation. It seems the viruses has been planned to attack our computers. When our computers get infected by those viruses, worms and Trojans, our computer components will slowly destroy by them and we need to spend unnecessary money to replace the damages components.

Further more, I feel that we are no longer feel safe in using the internet. Our confidential information will be hacked by other people for their purposes and our so called privacy is no longer can be called private and confidential. Next is the cyber terrorism. Government spent a lot of money to fight against the cyber terrorism. Hackers nowadays are brave enough. They even try to get into the government to get some confidential data to be used for other purpose. For example Pentagon e mails are being attacked and it triggered the Pentagon to take off 1,500 e-mails accounts offline.

The hackers are trying to get some of the military information and you can imagine that, Pentagon being one of the most advance military organization in the world receives hundred of threats to its computer systems either from the young or adventurous hackers to the terrorist and how about us? Let talk about online transaction, there will be probability that our bank account will be hacked.

The hackers will transfer out all our money in our accounts without knowing who did that. Not enough by that, mobile devices can also be infected with mobile malicious software (malware) now. There are always new threats coming up everyday. And, we can’t stop these things from happening. All we can do is just read and update ourselves about the threat in internet security to make sure we are safe.

History and evolution of e-commerce

There have been several evolutions in the history of e-commerce. Electronic Data Interchange ( EDI) is a set of standard developed in the 1960’s to exchange business information and transaction, company still might not be able to interact with each other due to different EDI was used. In 1984, ASC X12 standard became more stable and reliable in transferring large amount of transaction and information.
There was a great invention in year 1992, the Mosaic web-browser was the first 'point and browser'. It was quickly adapted into a downloadable browser, Netscape which allowed easier access to electronic commerce. The development of Red Hat Linux was another major evolution in electronic commerce growth. It gave users another choice in platforms other then Windows that was open source and reliable.

In early year 2000, AOL and Time Warner was merged and push the electronic commerce. In year2006, expectations of higher prices as well as larger profits for e-commerce business. Companies such as Wal-Mart will take this opportunity to mixed strategy of having stores online and offline in order to be successful.
There was a large growth in Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-commerce, which are businesses selling to individuals via online. Today the largest electronic commerce’s are Business-to-Business (B2B), Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) where consumer sell to each other, and Peer-to-Peer(P2P) which allows users to share resource and files directly.


In my opinion, e-commerce is being advance due to high technology. We must appreciate it because the evolution of e-commerce bring a lot of benefit to us and keep on fulfill the business and customer needs.

Amazon.com success and its causes

With the advancement in information technology and changing trends in globalization, e-commerce development has boomed in the past few years and become more popular nowadays.

Amazon.com Inc was launched in 1994 by Jeff Becoz and reincorporated in 1996 with principal corporate offices in Seattle, Washington. It offers Earth’s Biggest Selection and seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company and has become the first best known online retailer of the internet world.There are a variety of factors that contributes to Amazon.com success story.

Firstly, it offers competitive price to customer by putting great effort to connect and interact with wholesalers in order to minimize the cost and able to offer the best lowest price to customer. Despite of the low price offered, it also makes sure that the product is of the same quality as any other product offered by competitors with the same price.

Amazon.com is famous with its wide range of books related to a variety of subjects and topic. It also offers lots of products related to different ages, interest, field and areas, including video, music, cell phone, hardware, software, health care product, households and much other stuff. The strategy to work better and adopting a strong base of selling products makes Amazon.com different from other e-commerce organization.

The efficiency in dealing the customer and continuously focus on their needs makes Amazon.com on top of all the other e-commerce companies.In order to achieve success in the global market, the company hires local employees in foreign countries to help them gather information about the local market and demand of the local potential customer.

It also provides users friendly interface with convenience and ease of use and help to maintain customer royalty. It provides high customer service, such as easy search, customize option, e-mail confirmation and always add useful information related to product. Besides that, it also provides safe, convenient and reliable payment system to customer. Customer will be kept informed of the transaction processing system; it also provides guarantees and adopting return policy.

With all the benefits offered by Amazon.com, it will be able to get more customers and expands its operation to more placse in the world. However, to maintain its competitiveness, it should keep on updating and focus on what customers really want and provide more outstanding and innovative products or services.

Go's com failure and its causes

Hmmm… is time to pass up the second blog already, now the time is 12.17am, just came back from dancing and feel extremely tired. Anyway, works still have to be done, some more my group members started nagging me lo ~ haha
Well, let's start, let me have some introduction first, Kenny here.. Today the topic is an example of an E-commerce failure and its causes.



E-commerce is one of the best tools of the business nowadays by creating unlimited opportunities among consumers and it creates a successful stories. However, in contrast, it also has created a lot of failure example such as GO.com. Started in 1998, Go.com was a combination of Disney's online properties and Info seeks, in which the Mouse had previously acquired a controlling interest.



One of the causes that caused this Go.com became a failure is lack of innovation and creativity. They were trying to mean this Go.com to be a "destination site" much like Yahoo. Although they spent millions and millions on promotion, at the end Disney was still not able to make this website popular. Another cause would be the logo of the Go.com. In early 2000 Go.com was forced to give up its logo because of a legal action taken by Goto.com due to similar logo problems. Because of that, Go.com had to pay $21.5 million in damages to Goto.com by court order.



However, Go.com end by shutting down due to many causes and it took a write off of 790 million from Disney. Therefore, GO.com became one of the top 10 dot-com failures of e-commerce. Until now, Go.com still existing as a function carries only feeds from other Disney Web properties.

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

Nowadays e-commerce plays a great role in reducing cycle time of business transaction, improving employees’ empowerment and facilitating customer support too.

E-Commerce can reduce the cycle time by eliminating steps in business process and take a shorter time to complete a business transaction. The process of middle man and intermediaries will be eliminated and the suppliers or producers of certain products can send products directly to customers. By this, the company can reduce unnecessary cost and gain competitive advantages towards other companies. For example, Dell Corporation which does not use any middle man to complete the transaction will definitely reduce cost incurred that to be added on price paid by customers.

Next, E-commerce can improve employees’ empowerment. It allows the decentralization of decision making and authority via collaborative commerce. It grants power to employees in dealing with process of capturing, researching and leveraging business information. Employee empowerment divided into 3 levels. The first level is encouraging. It encourages employees to play more active roles in their work. Second level is involving which gives employees responsibility for improving the way that things are done. Lastly is the enabling. It gives employees more and bigger decisions making power without referring to seniors or managers. As a result, it will benefit organization in term of getting closer to customers, improving service quality, innovating continuously, increasing productivity and gaining the competitive edge.

Lastly, E-commerce also facilitates customer support by providing a wide range of technological solutions and communication opportunity. It also provides electronic bulletin for customer in order to report fault and dissatisfaction. Customer has direct access to product information updates, and other promotion by visiting the online stores. Through online, it creates an interactive and more easier way for customer to buy the products that they need compared to the traditional stores.

http://amazingcommerce.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/discuss-how-e-commerce-can-reduce-cycle-time-improve-employees-empowernment-and-facilitate-customer-support/

Revenue Model of Google,Amazon.com and eBay

Google, Amazon.com and eBay are three well-known e-commerce incorporation around the world, but what makes them different is their revenue models, which is their ways to earn income. Google is a global technology leader that mainly earns revenue from advertising through its internet search, web-based e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, video sharing, and others channel. It has the largest, most comprehensive index of website and other content, and has made all this information freely available to anyone with internet connection. Although most of the services provided are free of charge to internet users, it still gains lot of profit from firms through Google AdWords, Google AdSense and Google Answer. Google AdWords is a pay per click advertising program that allow business to present advertisement to people when they are looking for information related to what the advertiser offer. Google Adsense helps to distribute relevant advertisement with search result and advertise on the Google Network members’ sites. Both of these are online advertising payment model which the advertiser has to pay for every time its advertisement receives a click.
Google Answer is an internet search which customer can ask question and researchers answer them, Google will keep 25% of the payment paid by customer, the rest will be sent to researchers.

On the other hand, Amazon.Com's main income is from retailing, which through selling wide range of products to three primary customer sets, including consumer customers, seller customers and developer customers. Besides that, it also generates revenue through co-branded credit card agreements and other marketing and promotional services, such as online advertising. Amazon.com’s revenue model relies heavily on third party providers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble, to maintain its sufficient supplies. The three operational strategies used are cost-leadership, customer differentiation and focus strategies.

EBay provides online market place for the buy and sale of goods and services to a diverse community of individuals and business. It provides services such as online payment services, informing seller and buyer when the auction is end, introducing category-specific bulletin boards and chat rooms for online communication offerings. EBay generates main revenue from collecting fees, especially from sellers. When seller listed their product on eBay, a non refundable insertion fee is charged based on their opening bid on the particular item. Once the auction is completed, a final value fee is charged on sellers, which is generally at a range from 1.25 percent to 5 percent of the final sale price.


All these three large global corporations are the leaders in different e-commerce trading, which are advertising, retailing and auction. They provide great customer services and keep on to be innovative in order to be more competitive. With the advance and expansion in internet usage around the world, all these three corporations will be able to keep on making huge profit in future.