Internet Information Systems Management - Essay Example

Internet Information Systems Management 0 B2B and B2C auctions 1 Introduction eCommerce market places were created all over the world wide web invarious forms as internet started spreading. Auctions were one of the initially attractive methodologies of sale that many companies resorted to, to promote their products. Whether it is B2B or B2C, the methodologies adopted by the companies more or less have been the same. B2C auctioning has been adopted by companies like ebay and yahoo. They have been resorting to glamorous marketing campaigns to get people to their websites to quote in the auctioning that is happening there. Generally, when a product is put on the auction site, if the product is not picked up, the price is reduced to see if it will be picked up by people. Auctions work more like a liassez fare system, where the right price is decided by the market rather than by the producer. 1.2 Success of B2B and B2C A comparison chart between B2B and B2C is given below: B2B B2C Most of the B2B auction sites are specific product sellers. Typically, plastic waste auctions keep selling plastic waste to the same buyers. Since they address the other businesses, they keep coming back to them as their purchases are not an one time occurrence. In case of B2C auctions, the end user is buying and most often his purchases are once through. A buyer who buys a camera may not come back again to buy the same camera again. Repeat visits for the same product may not happen again. This means that B2C auction sites should be more broad based and should have wider product range to sell so that people would keep visiting them. Since Businesses are aware of the price ranges in the market. For instance, the copper auction site, every participant is aware of the London Metal Exchange price and quotes around that price to close the deal. In the case of B2C, a once through buyer will not be knowing the market and hence more than once he would quote a much lesser or some times phenomenally higher prices as well. There are more than 100 B2B auction sites for specific industry segments. There are only two well known B2C auction sites, though there are numerous others who come up and go down regularly. Since there is the possibility of repeat purchase, quality of the product is an issue. Metrics for quality are generally indicated by the portal itself. Quality is not monitored by the site and on more than one occasion, do not own up responsibility for the quality of the product. Quality conscious persons do not visit the site unless otherwise they are very sure of the product they are buying. 1.3 Conclusion It is pretty clear from the above, that the B2C sites need to be wide based to be successful and should offer products at really attractive price levels. Quality of the product should not be a concern for these buyers. While in case of B2B auction sites, the chances of having stable business seems high. There could be repeat business due to the inherent advantage of presenting the same product, at the same quality for a competitive price being there. Both the sites of course, have the advantage of connecting up online for a requirement, compared to the brick and mortar business where traveling and associated expense and hardships are involved. 2.0 Internet - a commercial medium 2.1 What if World Wide Web is not there Many times, it is said, if you have not done it, some body else would have. If the product is badly needed, it will any way get invented. If it is not Tim Berners-Lee, it would have been some one else who would have brought in the same phenomenon. May be, they might not have called it world wide web. Therefore, let us take a look at what prompted this invention. Rather than asking what if, may be, we should have said, why World Wide Web. Looking closer at the reason, we find the following points: a) There was an acute need to do faster transactions, whether it be business or personal. b) The speed of all the transport systems could all but be finite, 'business' which was trying to race at 'the speed of thought'. c) The World was trying to become a village, with cultures merging, with currencies merging, political demarcations were slowly becoming vaguer, the intention of the people to meet and talk was becoming more prominent. This need made sure that some thing like the world wide web could take over our computers. In order to do your business successfully, you need to be present in Tokyo in the morning and at Frankfurt for the lunch. Even with the jetting that is happening, this appear too exhausting and for effective working of business executives, this might not be the best option. People wanted to do their business from their desks. May be they will travel for their holidays. 2.2 Commercialization and its impact Swift commercialization of World wide web could happen because of Berners-Lee's policies. These were the policies of free user domain or being open. He never patented his concept; neither did he start an outfit that profited out of selling the concept nor did he have an unrestricted rights over it. Much like the personal computer launched by IBM, the WWW launched by Berners-Lee, let the people do what they feel like with the technology. This made sure that the concept was accepted and practiced by every body. Every one could develop applications that made use of this technology and concept; used these concepts to their advantage and bring the world closer. This was the immediate cause of the swift growth of the internet and www. Applications that worked over it were developed all around and users just picked them up. The open source community was also born. Many companies jumped on to the bandwagon of open source software and on to the eCommerce business. This ensured that the commercialization was not sporadic but spontaneous and steady. Such commercialization that brought the business to the work tables at office and at home, brought in home based businesses to the international market. People in a remote Nigeria village could talk of exporting their local wares to a Canadian businessman. Internationalization of small businesses and faster, efficient and a twenty four hour services were all enabled for the large enterprises. 2.3 Conclusion Looking closer at the possible alternates, we find that world wide web would have either way got created and grown to meet the requirements of the today's world. If Berners-Lee has not done it, some one else would have. He got the idea at the right time and he was at the right place to put it effectively across. 3.0 Internet access Technology 3.1 Introduction Convergence has been the buzz word for quite some time now. Televisions, Telephones and the internet get merged up into one single cable getting routed all around the world. There has been a number of visionary products that work over such converged cable system. Every home in the world would have an on-demand program that would provide a news service on demand, video-on-demand or could be information on demand. Convergence will usher in an era of end user choice. What you want is what you get (WYWIWYG). Convergence will include audio or voice and video with Data. Video to Data convergence is one of the happening areas today. New products have been announced by companies on either side of the line, from the TV world as well as from the Data world. Let us take a short look at the impact of this convergence and how internet access over this TV cable systems would change the internet community. 3.2 Future Growth Path There are two modes of growth that we find in the convergence of television and the internet. One, internet and the computers together act as televisions as well. Two, the television itself is doubling itself as the computer and connects itself over the existing cable to the internet. In both these modes of growing technologies, one after the other, new products are announced by various vendors. Sony on the other day announced the WebTV that made use of the swiftly evolving Jump Code 6 standards for internet televisions. These televisions come cabled like any other cable connected televisions. They carry the same broad band television signals and they will also carry the internet's digital data. This can be either the digital data for your company or it can also be VoD (Video On Demand) from your entertaining company's website or this can be a web cast from one of your television companies, that just moved over to the net. On Sony's WebTV, it was possible to access and browse the web using our ubiquitous remote control which is slowly becoming common for all the products in our home. Similarly, on the other side of the development, internet service providers are increasing their standard operating bandwidth as they go by, enabling the television to come on to your PC. With more and more channels also having the internet channel for web casting, we find the IPTV the next generation Television. Either way, the PC and internet have merged. More and more web based companies are now coming out with live Radio Broadcasts over the web or web casts. The same is happening with videos on demand and TV web casting. With the tendency to bring live television to the internet widely catching up and the broad band services becoming faster, it is only a question of time before we find Televisions only on the net. Users are also becoming very choosy. And the driving need will be to 'broadcast' television programs that are needed by the user or selected by the individual user. 3.3 Conclusion There are a number of reasons why they should merge. Whether we like it or not, we are not for having too many equipments at home. We need to have limited number of equipments that would do all the jobs that we want. This would be the ideal situation. This convergence needs to happen and will continue to happen. 4.0 Bibliography 1. Bambooweb dictionary, available at http://www.bambooweb.com/articles/o/n/Online_auction_business_model.html 2. Weaving the Web: Origins and Future of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee (with Mark Fischetti), Texere Publishing, 1999 available online at : ISBN 0752820907 3. Patenty Policy, 2004, available at the following website : http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/W3C 4. Internet Media and TV, Products for the New Era of PC/TV Convergence, available at: http://www.jumpcity.com/body_products.html Read More