Make Money with E-Bussines

Monday, May 20, 2013

When Will Mobile Commerce Be Ready for Primetime? (Part - 2 end)

Who Pays and Who Assumes the Risk?

Traditional payment methods--credit and debit cards and cash--have well-established infrastructures and risk models attached to them. If you want your transaction to be quick (and in some cases hard to trace), you pay in cash. Even though you're paying with what is essentially worthless paper, the paper gets its value from the Federal Reserve and the strength of the U.S. economy.

If you're buying something online and are worried about fraud, then you pay with a credit card. If anything goes wrong, the credit card provider steps in, and assuming you reported the problem in a timely fashion, you're only liable for $50.

"If the payment mechanism, mobile- or Web-funded, such as a pre-paid gift card, accepts any of the major credit cards, the same protections exist for the consumer," says Dan Dufault, executive vice president, Sales and Marketing at Merchant Warehouse, a provider of credit card processing and mobile payment solutions.

What if the m-payment, though, shows up on a cellular phone bill instead of a credit card bill? Dufault, for one, doesn't believe this will happen. "[Ultimately], the charges will appear on the credit card associated with that account and, as such, the same credit card protections will apply."

Dufault's point of view is probably the safe bet, but it's not a sure thing. Mcommerce doesn't necessarily have to evolve so that traditional card networks are in the middle of everything.

"Competing initiatives and objectives between emerging payment players (such as Google, Square and PayPal) and traditional constituents (banks, card networks and merchants) has slowed down advancement of mobile transactions," Signorini says. "Much posturing and saber-rattling is occurring, since much is at stake financially for all of these different market players."

According to Signorini, it's not just obvious players, like carriers, who could infringe on the turf of banks and credit card companies, but also major online companies and retailers as well. "Large merchants, such as Wal-Mart, 7-Eleven, and Target, have formed their own initiative (Merchant Exchange), in an effort to at least influence how the market evolves and ensure that their market heft is recognized by these other players," Signorini says.

The other thing that Square, PayPal and Google Wallet could do is drive down the processing fees that merchants pay. But that doesn't mean they'll end up making any money doing so.

"The processing of payments is a loss for Google Wallet. The company has said that they are not interested in becoming a bank," Dufault said. "Rather, Wallet is a great conduit for information and provides Google with a way to better deliver their ads to consumers."

Which points to the main theme often heard in mcommerce cirlces: In order to succeed, mcommerce should focus not on transactions, per se, but on customer engagement.

The Secret Sauce of the Mobile Channel: EngagementTry this some afternoon. Walk in to a Best Buy store, scrutinize some high-ticket item, such as a gigantic flat-screen TV, and then see what the nearby sales associates do. Chances are their already surly attitudes will become more so.

Why? Because Best Buy--and, to be fair, many retailers--are worried about something they call "showrooming," or consumers using their stores as a showroom floors to investigate products and then walking right back out to find a better price online.

Personally, I find this to phenomena to stem more from paranoia than anything. I mean, if I'm going to buy online anyway, why on earth would I subject myself to the torture of entering a Big Box store? If I don't like what arrives in the mail, I'll ship it back (on Amazon's dime) and try again. If I do enter a Big Box store, the only way I can justify the psychic pain is by walking out with some gadget I must absolutely have right this minute.

According to Andrew Schrage, co-founder of Money Crashers, a personal finance Website, Amazon continues to outperform mcommerce (and most Big Box stores) partially because it has done a better job of engaging customers. Whereas most mcommerce retailers are overly focused on price and rely too much on display ads, which typically aren't very user-friendly, Amazon offers up recommendations specific to you.

"Setting an affordable price is not the sole factor to drive sales and increase revenues--providing a more streamlined experience for the consumer is equally important. Businesses that can do this will be the ones at the forefront to overtake Amazon and other Web-based retailers," Schrage says.

Now, I should pause here to point out that not every Big Box retailer is succumbing to showrooming fears. Lowe's, for instance, is bullish on mobile.

"Lowe's built its mobile success from the inside out," says ForeSee's Feinberg. "They started using mobile devices to help sales associates become more knowledgeable, and they then moved forward to use mobile apps to make their customers more knowledgeable too."

In other words, the mobile channel can serve as an extension of the physical location. Perhaps, people do research first on their mobile phone, or they do research in the store itself, but if you engage customers while they are on their mobile devices, instead of ignoring or discouraging them, they will indeed be your customers and not someone else's.
"[At Lowe's] when someone without a lot of home improvement experience walks into the store, they feel like they're on equal footing with the sales staff," Feinberg says. "This is why Best Buy will continue to fail. Instead of worrying about showrooming, they should worry about the customer experience."

By Jeff Vance

Jeff Vance is a freelance writer based in Santa Monica, Calif. Connect with him on Twitter @JWVance or by email at jeff@sandstormmedia.net.

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When Will Mobile Commerce Be Ready for Primetime? (Part - 1)

Mobile commerce has tons of potential, but like so many high-upside technology trends (smartphones, tablets, cloud computing, social media), paradigms don't change on overnight.

Today, the mcommerce success story is Asia. In many Asian countries, people have skipped right over the PC era to the smartphone and tablet one. Thus, any sort of e-commerce in Asia is by definition mcommerce.

Even in Asia, though, mcommerce success looks more like what we're all used to than anything revolutionary. Mainly, you can order things out of vending machines from your smartphone, or you can shop from your phone or tablet instead of from your PC.

Research by Neilson commissioned by PayPal found that both Singapore and Hong Kong are experiencing spikes in mcommerce, but when you drill into the details, mcommerce in Asia looks a heck of a lot like ecommerce in the U.S Which points to one of the reasons mcommerce is failing to deliver on its lofty promise: mcommerce is tracking too closely to its ecommerce ancestors.

"When retailers built their ecommerce sites, they did so without talking to customers," says Eric Feinberg, senior director, Mobile, Media and Entertainment for ForeSee, a marketing analytics firm. "As a result, mobile wasn't a factor when they built those sites out, which was a big mistake."

According to Feinberg, only a small percentage of ecommerce sites--or any Websites at all for that matter --are optimized for mobile. As a result, when consumers visit a site and find it to be, say, a Flash-heavy pig, they'll bail before the page is even finished loading.

"Transactions over mobile can take longer than over broadband Internet," says Dave Berg, Senior Director of Product Management for Shunra Software, an application performance monitoring company. "Slow or under-performing apps, even if they do not slow the entire system down, will result in reduced sales and unhappy customers."

According to Berg, a performance delay of 250 milliseconds is perceptible to a consumer and a delay of less than half a second will cause a consumer to select one mcommerce site over another. After three seconds, 40 percent of users will abandon a mobile site if it has not loaded. After 10 seconds, 60 percent of mobile users will not only abandon that site or app, but also never return to it again.

"One bad performance experience and the mobile user has left your business for the competition," Berg says.

Mobile POS Systems Provide a Bridge

Those who believe that mcommerce is indeed living up to expectations will point to things like Square and payvia. These solutions allow small businesses to turn their smartphones or tablets into mobile point-of-sale (POS) solutions, giving Mom-and-Pop stores the ability to accept credit card payments without investing in expensive hardware and service agreements. Related: Square Launches Support for Customer Loyalty ProgramsRelated: How a Mobile Payment Service Can Grow Your Business

Obviously, this means that the transaction, other than the actual credit card processing, still happens the old-fashioned way, by physically visiting a store or calling in an order. This isn't a knock against Square, payvia and the like, rather it points out that there are new opportunities for mcommerce that aren't being realized.

"If a brand fails to establish a reason for a consumer to engage at the point of sale, and doesn't make the actual transaction so simple they don't even notice it's happening (think Starbucks' plans for Square), the technology infrastructure to support mobile transactions is null and void," says Gene Signorini, vice president, Mobile Insights at Mobiquity, a professional services firm that focuses on enterprise mobility.

Thanks for Read : When Will Mobile Commerce Be Ready for Primetime? (Part - 1)

In e-Book Case, Apple Says Publishers had already Taken Measures to Counter Amazon

Apple said it did not enter into or facilitate a conspiracy to eliminate price competition or raise prices in the e-book industry.

IDG News Service - Concerned about Amazon.com's low pricing of e-books, publishers had taken measures as early as 2009 such as "windowing," a practice of delaying e-book releases to benefit sales of hardcover editions, Apple said in a filing in an e-book price-fixing lawsuit.

The U.S. Department of Justice in an antitrust lawsuit in April last year alleged that Apple and five publishers had conspired to raise e-book prices.

The publishers had also pursued in 2009 an agency model to sell e-books where the publisher would set the price or a price range for each e-book and the retailer, acting as an agent, would receive a commission on each e-book sale, and also discussed raising wholesale prices of e-books, Apple said in the filing before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Into this environment, Apple stepped in to negotiate with publishers to set up its own iBooks e-book store. It favored an agency model that gave it 30 percent commission, as the agency model had helped the company in its App Store, where the developer fixed the consumer price.

Apple engaged in "individual, one-on-one, and at times contentious negotiations" over the draft contracts with each publisher throughout January 2010, it said in the filing.

Hachette, for example, resisted Apple's across-the-board prohibition on windowing. Hachette believed that it was important to retain all of its available tools to respond to the changing market conditions, including the ability to window, according to Apple's filing.

Apple had just over two weeks until former CEO Steve Jobs publically unveiled the iPad on Jan. 27, 2010 to complete its initial content deals. By Jan. 22, four major publishers--Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster--had separately agreed to Apple's terms.

Random House, which joined Apple's e-book store one year later, in February 2011, had objected to the agency agreement in January 2010, while HarperCollins also objected to many of Apple's terms including 30 percent agency commission, believing it too high, according to the filing.

Apple did not enter into or facilitate a conspiracy to eliminate price competition or raise prices in the e-book industry, the company said in the filing made public on the court website on Tuesday.

After the lawsuit was filed, Apple learned for the first time about allegations relating to various publisher meetings, phone calls, and dinners, it added.

Apple and the five publishers were accused of working together to raise prices of e-books, in retaliation for competitor Amazon.com pricing most e-books at US$9.99 beginning in late 2007.

Defendants exercised their market power when they collectively increased the average price of trade e-books, DOJ said in a filing on Tuesday. Average prices of trade e-books sold by the defending publishers increased by 18.6 percent at Amazon and by 19.9 percent at Barnes & Noble through the transition to agency.

Apple counters that trade e-book prices came down after the agreements with the publishers. "The average retail price of e-books in the alleged relevant market, trade e-books, has decreased since the implementation of Apple's first agency agreements on April 1, 2010," it said in its filing.

The publishers who are defendants in the case have since settled with the DOJ.
By: John Ribeiro

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

Thanks for Read : In e-Book Case, Apple Says Publishers had already Taken Measures to Counter Amazon

Monday, May 13, 2013

About Electronic Business (E - Business)

Electronic business, or e-business, may be defined as the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in support of all the activities of business. Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and services between businesses, groups and individuals and can be seen as one of the essential activities of any business. Electronic commerce focuses on the use of ICT to enable the external activities and relationships of the business with individuals, groups and other businesses.

e-business may be defined as the conduct of industry,trade,and commerce using the computer networks.The term "e-business" was coined by IBM's marketing and Internet teams in 1996.

Electronic business methods enable companies to link their internal and external data processing systems more efficiently and flexibly, to work more closely with suppliers and partners, and to better satisfy the needs and expectations of their customers. The internet is a public through way. Firms use more private and hence more secure networks for more effective and efficient management of their internal functions.

In practice, e-business is more than just e-commerce. While e-business refers to more strategic focus with an emphasis on the functions that occur using electronic capabilities, e-commerce is a subset of an overall e-business strategy. E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the World Wide Web or the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners and to improve efficiency using the Empty Vessel strategy. Often, e-commerce involves the application of knowledge management systems.

E-business involves business processes spanning the entire value chain: electronic purchasing and supply chain management, processing orders electronically, handling customer service, and cooperating with business partners. Special technical standards for e-business facilitate the exchange of data between companies. E-business software solutions allow the integration of intra and inter firm business processes. E-business can be conducted using the Web, the Internet, intranets, extranets, or some combination of these.

Basically, electronic commerce (EC) is the process of buying, transferring, or exchanging products, services, and/or information via computer networks, including the internet. EC can also be beneficial from many perspectives including business process, service, learning, collaborative, community. EC is often confused with e-business. (wikipedia.org)

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Thursday, May 9, 2013

Make Money Online via E-business (Part - 3 end)

Econsultancy

They provide a wide range of courses those are constantly updated by front-line marketers; covering the entire digital marketing spectrum. The prices vary depending on the course you select. Here is the list of courses provided: