Synopsis: E-commerce allows people to exchange goods and services immediately with no barriers of time or distance. Any time of the day or night, you can go online and buy almost anything you want with little hassle. Some of my favorite web sites to purchase merchandise are retail sites like Abercrombie, Nine West, and The Gap. I also frequent online auction sites such as Ebay that allow users to bid on items or just watch the auction from the convenience of their home.

Title of Web page: Why People Shop on the Web
Web address: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990207.html
Breif Description:Study of useres who have bought products in the Web. Inclides important finds with implications for Web design. The results come from a survey sponsored by the Danish E-Commerce Association. The survey was completed by 2,929 Internet users in Denmark. Respondents were wasked to list the five most important reasons to shop on the Web. Source of Web site: Jakob Nielsen's AlertboxTitle of

Title of Web page: Shopping Online. Evaluate online vendors before you buy.
Web address: http://www.powerpig.ca/portfolio/articles/shoppingonline.html
Description: New online shoppers are leery of purchasing items over the Internet. Answers to why this is a common fear for many shoppers.
Source of web site: Shop News

Title of Web page: The Truth about Online Shopping
Web address: http://www.cnet.com/techtrends/0-6014-7-1533082.html
Brief Description: Stats and stories that surrounded the holiday e-commerce rush. Why so many companies had problems delivering customer satisfaction.
Source of Web site: CNET: Tech Trends

Title of Web page: E-Shopping Around the World
Web address: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menu-internet.htm
Description of Web site: Analysis of global Internet usage.The findings come from an annual report by Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), which analyzes Internet penetration, e-commerce penetration, products purchased online, reasons for not purchasing products online, and e-commerce spending among the 37 evaluated countries.
Source of Web site: Internet.com

Title of Web site: Top E-Commerce Companies Analyzed
Web address: http://www.internet.com/e-commercenews.html
Description: New research shows that e-commerce customers feel that over 80 percent of their decision to purchase or not reside in issues beyond their online experience. What's really important to customers is brand performance.
Source: Internet.com

Title of Web page: Going Shopping? Go Global! A Guide for E-Consumers.
Web address: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/glblalrt.htm
Description: Provides consumer information from the Federal Trade Commission and offers tips to help you when you "go global"
Source of Web site: Federal Trade Commission

Bunnell, David. "The e--Bay phenomenon: business secrets behind the world's hottest Internet company" Internet Commerce, February 2001, page 3.

Camp, L. Jean. "Trust and risk in Internet commerce" Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 2000, page 8-9.

Aksoy, Lerzan. "The impact of ordered alternative lists on decision quality in online shopping environments" [microform] : The role of perceived similarity, 2001.

Cunningham, Michael. "Smart things to know about e-commerce" Shopping Brains. June 2000, page 14.

Internet Story: E-Commerce

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last two years, you have heard about e-commerce! Commerce is, quite simply, the exchange of goods and services, usually for money. Everyone participates in some form of commerce almost daily. When you buy something at a grocery store you are participating in commerce. In the same way, if you take your stuff onto your front lawn for a yard sale, you are also participating in commerce. If you work for a company that produces a product, that is commerce.

According to eMarketer the biggest product categories for e-commerce include: Computer products (hardware, software, accessories), Books, Music, Financial Services, Entertainment, Home Electronics, Apparel, Gifts and flowers, Travel services, Toys, Tickets, and Information.

There are many reasons why people prefer e-commerce. Many users like the lower transaction costs. The web can lower both order-taking costs and customer service costs after the sale. Another lure of e-commerce is the larger purchases you can make per transaction. For example, Amazon offers a feature that no normal store offers. When you read the description of a book, you also can see what other people who ordered this book also purchased". That is, you can see the related books that people are actually buying. Because of features like these it is common for people to buy more books that they might buy at a normal bookstore. If a Web site is integrated well into the business cycle it can offer customers more information than previously available. For example, if Dell tracks each computer through the manufacturing and shipping process, customers can see exactly where their order is at any time. This is what FedEx did when they introduced on-line package tracking - FedEx made far more information available to the customer. People can shop in different ways. Traditional mail order companies introduced the concept of shopping from home in your pajamas, and e-commerce offers this same luxury. New features that web sites offer include:

· The ability to build an order over several days
· The ability to configure products and see actual prices
· The ability to easily build complicated custom orders
· The ability to compare prices between multiple vendors easily
· The ability to search large catalogs easily

A company can build a catalog on the web that would never fit in a mailbox. For example, Amazon sells 3,000,000 books. These kinds of advantages create the buzz that surrounds e-commerce right now. One final point about e-commerce that needs to be made is that in e-commerce both the catalog distribution cost and the order taking cost are lowered or eliminated totally. This makes it possible to offer products at a lower price.
The World Wide Web has opened up a whole world of goods and services to consumers. You can purchase goods from all around the world creating a marketplace of services that eliminates barriers in time or space. Online sites make e-commerce very attractive to consumers by offering many exciting options in the purchasing process as mentioned above.
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