week 8

Q1: The business model of eBay is a broker, which brings buyers and sellers together and take a listing fee on products listed over its site and a commission on things sold; both the buyer and seller are a very important part of making the whole process work.
eBay has been successful because it is able to transform many small, primarily local markets into global ones at a low cost to its users.

Q2: ebay enables an online listing of a product for a fee similar to that to put an advertisement in the classifieds, however, eBay provides a greater consumer base than does a newspaper due to the international community. It is eBay’s ability to bring together so many buyers and sellers which has assisted in its success. eBay has little upfront expenses which enables people to become entrepreneurs. Purchasing through eBay can mean the product is purchased at less than market value and encourages buyers to search for the product on eBay first. Owning PayPal has been a good move for eBay as it generates further revenue from this.
(Google Answers, 2011).
Google Answers. (2004). Why is eBay such a successful eCommerce business venture? Retrieved May 7, 2013, from http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=345309

Q3: The eBay Toolbar includes Account Guard to help members to protect their eBay account information. One of the biggest threats to the security of eBay account and members' identity is fraud email and websites. Both are used to obtain personal and account information. To help protect members against this threat, eBay has adopted a strategy including the development technology solutions such as Account Guard and community vigilance. Because of this, eBay users are not very susceptible to fraud at all. Fraudulent activity is still occurring, but there are more and more ways to prevent it. eBay is very quick to point out that it’s only a very, very tiny fraction of all transactions which enter into some kind of significant disagreement.


Q4: The main purpose of this is to bring buyers and sellers together, the customers. eBay drives its whole engine. In order to operate this business model, its vast collection of people who make the marketplace valuable have to participate in a way where they recognize a kind of shared interest in the success of the marketplace. eBay is a prime example of customers forming a community, If their customers work together to negotiate transactions, they pay eBay-fees in terms of there transactions over web sites. Making the community function  play fairly on a level playing field are all vital aspects for eBay to be successful. If people were distrustful of one another and took advantage of each other, the whole model would break down.

Q5: Brand name vendors may choose to set-up shop on eBay because it is cheaper and more easily accessible than a physical store, they can also advertise a larger range of products without the problem of having old stock on the shelves of stores. also with the feedback it is easy to find out what they are doing well and what they could improve on. They are also able to save money on promotion of a new site as well as the ease that customers can find their products.

Q6. In July of 2010 eBay introduced the Accepted Payments policy. Buyers and sellers are given greater protection through insurance and intervention offered by eBay if a transaction was not to unfold in the anticipated manner. Another possible change is the new basic store fees for books. It was recognised that previous rules made it difficult for store owners to make a profit. As such new rules were introduced to make it less expensive. “Insertion fees will be a flat 5c with a final value fee of 9.9%. This will significantly lower the upfront cost for books...(so) that both the seller and eBay share in the success of a sale” (eBay, 2010).

eBay. (2010). New Basic Store fees for Books and Music listings. Retrieved May 7, 2013, from http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/201007.shtml

Week 7

1) The cyber twin is a good and clever idea, but it does have many flaws. in my opinion, i will prefer speak and learn by lecturer in lecture than have a cyber twin to teach us thought the internet, because if i have a question i can ask the lecturer after the class and i think people to explain is more clear than cyber twin.

2) The Turing test, tests a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. A human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which tries to appear human. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. In order to test the machine’s intelligence rather than its ability to render words into audio, the conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as computer keyboard and screen. (Wikipedia, 2011).  
The Turing test is argued against as the digital computer itself does not possess intelligence. Computers are programmable which possess memory, they do not have the ability to think for themselves, computers are told what to do at the command of the operator. Computers are not things that can respond to changes in the external environment without being programmed in some way to do so, therefore computers are not the kinds of things that can be intelligent.   
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2011). The Turing Test. Retrieved May 6, 2013, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/#ChiRoo
Wikipedia. (2011). Turing test. Retrieved May 6, 2013, fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

3) There are many different categories concerning agents. Such categories are:
Mobile agents
Distributed agents
Autonomous agents
Intelligent agents
Fuzzy agents
When discussing whether or not a virtual agent can succeed in delivering high quality customer service over the web, there are a few different things to consider. The internet has many virtual agents. Such companies as Google have agents which when a user/customer put in a word or question into the search engine the agent gives a reply with similar websites relating. This can be successful but also frustrating in my experience. When putting in a word of phrase into the search engine the response is not necessarily correct and might not even be completely relevant. In such cases as Google and other search engines which require agents this demonstrates not always does the agent give high quality customer service. The agent ideally gives the best customer service it can but does not always give the customer what they ideally want (Rappa, 2005).

Rappa,M.(2005) Automata. Retrieved May 6, 2013 from:
http://digitalenterprise.org/transcripts/automata_tr.html

Week 6

Question 1
a) What experiences have you had with shopping online?
Nowadays, shopping online is very common, i had to shop some clothes, skin product and some of pets stuffs.

b) Describe a good experience.
last few months i bought some make up product in a benefits official website in USA, the product price are cheaper than Australia store. And we can check the shipping online, and the delivery was very fast around 1 weeks the stuffs achieved .

c) What did you like about the online store you used?
Clothes, shoes, skin product and pet's stuffs.

d) Describe a bad experience.
once time, i bought the T-shirt on eBay, and i pick the black color and M size of the T-shirt. After 12 days, i received the wrong color and wrong size T-shirt, i sent email to the seller for many time, but still no one answer me.

e) What problems did you have with the online store?
in my opinion, i think the payment is the problem for me, some website i can pay by visa card, but some online store will not accept the visa payment, such as, eBay, we need to have account of Paypal 

f) What features make an online store more appealing?
i think the function of answer the buyer question directly it can more appealing the customer. i saw some function is the buyer and seller can talk with each other in the website, not the software.

g) What features make an online store less appealing?
some of the online stores have a little information about the product, people can not certain that what quality and what size of the product they are receiving. The time also is a point that cause less appealing, some people may be don't want to wait for the product.

h) Should we expect to see the prices of goods and services rise or fall due to the migration of consumers online?
in my opinion, the price will fail because more people are using online market since companies will need to adapt with the future of shopping and entering in more competition which will reduce the prices

Q2
a) The dispersion of prices (that is, the spread between the lowest and highest price for a particular product) will narrow.
I disagree with this statement because there will always be those high end brands who can demand the higher prices for their products due to their long history or high quality.

b) The importance of brand names will decrease.
I disagree with this statement as there will forever be generations of people who believe that brand names somewhat show the stature of the person. So therefore there will always be people who value brand names more than quality or lower prices.

c) Price competition will make all products cheaper.
I agree with this as all sellers want customers to buy their products and by having the lowest prices in the market, this gives their products a distinct advantage over their competitors.

d) Digital markets will become dominated by a handful of mega-sites, like Amazon.com.
Most defiantly, these mega-sites having the power to buy out smaller rivals who threaten their market share and this allows them to dominate, dictate and be the market leader and continue to expand and grow their brand further.

e) How do you think the balance of power between buyer’s and seller’s will change?
Buyers will defiantly have the upper hand in the future due to the plethora of avenues in which we are able to purchase products. This will allow buyers will be able to demand the lost prices from sellers whilst still buying high quality products at the same time.

f) Prices are clustered online.
I disagree, once again whilst you can still get quality brands for lower prices online, i still don't believe that prices are clustered online. Bigger brands still demand considerably higher prices than smaller companies and this causes a larger variant of prices online.

g) Online prices are elastic. ( i.e. immune to change up and down with demand)
Very much so. I think all prices need to be elastic wether they be from an online seller or in the local shopping mall. Prices must be elastic to change with the differing demand weather it be due the change in seasons or the change in trends.

h) Online prices are generally transparent (the extent to which prices for a given product or service are known by buyers in the marketplace.).
I agree, prices online are generally transparent and you are able to gauge what a product is worth buy looking at a few different sellers sites.

Q3)
a) I am with Telstra and the type of m-commerce services my phone provider offers is the ability to downloads lots of apps for different reasons like games, entertainment, utilities etc. They also provide me with information on how much data I have used on my phone.

b) I pretty much only use this service to access information about my usage.

c) I perform transaction through my phone such as internet banking, eBay, Google; I check the weather, Face book, and email.

d) I haven’t really thought about what I would like to be able to do but currently cant.  I guess just little things like to be able to print web pages from your phone to a printer.

e) My opinion of wireless advertising/mobile marketing is that its so annoying and it frustrates me! The SMS that I get are intrusive and I never reply to the offers and the mobile marketing on some of the apps on my phone just get in the way. When I want to do something on my phone I know exactly what I’m looking for and all the ads around the place are annoying. Actually referring back to question c, I would really like to be able to put a blocker thing on my phone to block all ads appearing on any of my apps and when I’m online!

Week 5

Brokerage Model
Brokerage is means, a person or a company (broker) is an intermediary between a purchaser and a seller, after the deal to complete,  it may collect a portion of the money obtained. In some cases, a firm receives money from both parties, while in others, it receives a commission only from the seller.
For example, TradeKing
http://content.tradeking.com/trading/stocks-options/online-brokerage.php?split=true&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=cj&utm_campaign=splitter&ADTRK=ACJ20100715

Advertising Model

Online advertising is simply advertising that is done over the Internet. for example, forum, sometimes there are some advertising about movie, festival, event or product, etc. 

http://adelaidebbs.com.au/bbs/portal.php

Informediary Model

the infomediary model is characterized by the capture and/or sharing of information. The simplest form of an infomediary model is the registration model. In this scenario, companies require users to register before gaining access to information on their Web sites, even if the information itself is provided at no charge. some firms function help the buyer or sellers understand a given market.

http://www.nsic.co.in/infomediary.asp

Merchant Model
A people whose occupation is to buy items at wholesale prices and sell to other people at retail prices. Such as, Sasa, is a  sell skin products.

http://web1.sasa.com/SasaWeb/eng/sasacms/drive_promo/20130417_Season_of_Love/promo.jsp?cm_mmc=google000214&gclid=CK6Xj_KD17YCFcgbpQodoAsAcA

Manufacturer Model

Is a company they are produces the product and sell at there own store or web site.

Such as, Apple.

Community model
Is a website can let people to put a lot of time and emotion. A normally community website a sale the ancillary products and service or voluntary contributions. For example, Facebook.

Subscription Model

This model website will need the member to pay the member fee, every month or every years. Whatever you use how long or how many time, after you paid the member fee, you can use the site all the time. uch as, Lawmart.
http://www.lawmart.com/forms/bus-lc09.htm


Utility Model
Is a website, need you to paid when you use the website services, it means, the website will depend on how many you use, such as water, gas. For example,Utility design.
http://www.utilitydesign.co.uk/

Week 3

Q 1)
the story is talking about the Australia Post office's computer glitch has exposed the names and locations of thousands of Australians who have been sent parcels. Customers who typed a random number into the online parcel tracking system were provided with the details of thousands of customers.

Bita, N.(2012). Australia Post in online Privacy breach. News.com.au
.http://www.news.com.au/business/companies/australia-post-in-online-privacy-breach/story-fnda1bsz-1226498834454. (9th April 2013)

Q2


What AmI technologies are identified in the case?
in this case, AML are identified are: location implants, sensor networks in homes and cars, surveillance systems, mobile phone tracking, the algorithms involved in comparing data and predicting information about individuals

What drives DMC’s officers to take the actions they took?
The DMC officers hid the security breach with a desire to maintain public image. The news of a data leak by their own employees would weaken relationships with clients, negatively impact share prices and dampen business prospects. Due to these factors the company had chosen to cover up the breach.

DMC is the clear market leader in the aggregation of AmI data. Are there any comparisons you can make to technology companies today?
A comparison can be made with a company such as Google. The company has access to a user's search history if they use the Google search engine; GPS and location information through Google Maps; Worldwide satellite imaging and 'streetview' photographs through Google Earth; And social updates through Google+.

How realistic is the description of governments using the technology and prohibiting immigration from states with no AmI data aggregation information?
The likelihood of prohibiting immigration from states with no AmI data is low. It would be viewed as unethical by the general population to discriminate against a group of people simply because their history hasn't been recorded in a database somewhere.

List some of the ‘unintended consequences’ described in the case.
Such as: Unauthroised bank transactions, Having to be bailed out of bankruptcy, Public knowledge of shady deals selling information to governments, President of the company resigning over the issue and Being sued by consumer activist groups for negligence

Week 4

Q1

A customer centric web site is mean, the web site include all the information a customer would like. And that is centered around customer wants and needs. For example, customer want to go a web site to buy a T-shirt, the customer want to know the size, color or the cost of shipping or delivery time, the customer want to find out these information from the web site. But this is hard to show all the information the customer want to know, it is because every customer have different needs. The other reason is it will take a lot of time and money to make a great website. For a business it’s hard to know what its customers’ needs and wants. Customers want a quick and stress free process when navigating a web site. If this process is not this, the customer will become frustrated and will leave the website.

Q2
Web presence is mean, a web site of an individual, company or organisation on the internet, any one can have a look or use their website.  for example: Google is a highly visited and well-development website, so Google is a high web presence, there are some highly web presence, such as, eBay  gumtree, yahoo, and etc. An web site is very simple, not useful or no one know the site that will a low web presence.

It is because, there are a lot of customers like via internet to shopping, actually that is a tend, nowadays every one can use a lots of way to go to the web site anytime, is means people can use the internet to shopping all the time and every where. This is the reason why the company need an existence on the site every second, there are some customer want to have more information about the products or have some complain  and feedback to provide , so the firms need more concerned on the site than operate in the physical world.

Q3

I find a web page which ‘does not suck’ called Roanoke Doesn’t Suck: http://roanokedoesntsuck.com/default.html. The site posts fliers promoting businesses, churches and various organizations, and features photos of several business owners. It is well designed and has blog and local event to be searched. At the home page, customers can search the products they want.
Features that make a website 'not suck' are things like not having unnecessary information, is direct and clear what the website is about, looks professional and 'neat', is easily accessible from all types of technology (new & old), not having to register to look at the site/page, not having pop-ups and a site needs to have clear instructions on how to use the web page. A good site that i found is simply google, it follows all the examples i gave plus many other cool features, but my favourite feature is that it is just simple to use.

week 2

1. Not many people actually understand quite how a search engine works, they also don’t know the correct terminology to use in order to narrow results and gain the best possible information they are after. This inevitably leads to inefficient use of time as they have had to try and gather information and then sort through what is relevant and what isn’t. Only an extremely small percentage of people who use search engines actually understand how the information you put into the search is processed and interpreted to give you the best results.

2. Search engines do not have access to every single piece of information on the web; they can only access certain things based on what the individual types into the search to get those intended results. Therefore the information you are given from this particular search engine is not all the information that would be useful to you.

3. Within search engines they have databases which store information collected from the web. This database information can be used as a result when a search is performed. An algorithm is used to determine which results will give the most relevant information to the search initiated and what the best result is from that.

4. Search is becoming increasingly important to the way people and businesses search and utilise the internet and the information they gather from that.

Reference - http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDAQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdigitalenterprise.org%2Fnavigation%2Fnav.html&ei=2N6IT5aDCur-mAWvx5jtCQ&usg=AFQjCNHqkjFK5kaHcnsMyFeqwGQd9JrLdQ&sig2=YMAQPRNW1w2GAHoF1AotZQ



The four main points i found the most interesting and significant for business from watching the Marissa Mayer interview are:

1) That Google wants to increase the amount of women working for them. Currently Google has 10% of their workforce occupied by women, however the goals they have set to achieve are at a much higher rate of 25%. This is more than double what they have now.

2) In the search industry Google has a large percentage of the market share. They have two main competitors in Yahoo who own 20% of the search maret, and Microsoft who own 10% of the the market. Google has 70% of the market but doesn't want to have a monopoly as it wants healthy competition to continue to improve idea's that they have. People who use Google however still use the other search engines from time to time.

3) China is a very big country and a lot of people use the internet. However Google is really struggling to enter the market over there because of Chinese govorment intervention and also because china has its own search engine that is competitive in Google eyes. Google would like to crack this market and allow the citizens of china to access uncensored information.

4) Google invented a search program called Google chrome. This search program is better equipped for users than the normal Google as it only has one search bar where you type information into. Google found that a lot of users typed searches into the URL bar and not the search engine.. so they created a better search which did not matter where you typed you question. Even if you typed in a web address, searches still come up that are relevant.

So what are the 6 webs?


a)The six webs was introduced because they envisioned the “far web” as the typical TV viewer experience, the “near web” as desktop computing , the “here web” or mobile devices with personal information, the “weird web” characterized by voice recognition systems, the “B2B web” of business computers dealing exclusively with each other, the “D2D web” of intelligent buildings and cities.

b) As the internet continues to evolve it is possible more Webs may be developed.

c)This means for business that the communication to the business partners, employees, consumer and to other business will be a lot easier and the relationship made closer.