Assignment: economics

 1. Differentiate among B2C and B2B electric commerce.

The difference between B2B and B2C is the customer requirement. B2C focuses on individual customer transactions, whereas B2B focuses on other businesses as the consumer. This difference creates different needs for B2B applications. One difference between B2B and B2C is the type of order. For example, when you order office supplies or parts, you usually order the same products as well as the same amounts at fairly regular intervals. Repeat and standing orders are a common B2B requirement. Type of payment is also a different requirement for B2B transactions.

When your company makes a purchase, you rarely use a credit card for payment. More likely, you will have varied forms of payment such as lines of credit and open orders. B2B applications are designed with these requirements in mind. Another difference is the type of search function in B2B applications. A catalog to browse through is not necessarily a requirement, depending on the type of B2B purchase you want to make. When shopping for specific items, your company may benefit from a configurator and bid function rather than browsing and searching an online catalog.

Lastly, the type of connection between B2B and B2C differs. When you are connecting to a B2B application to make a purchase, you are normally connecting to one partner (a buy-side or sell side application) or several trusted partners (an e-marketplace or Trading partner agreement application). Because you are dealing with a relatively static list of trading partners, virtual private network (VPN) technology may be used to provide secure access to selected applications inside your firewall, thus avoiding the need to replicate data and applications outside your firewall.

2. Describe electronic storefronts and malls.

Electronic Storefronts is a Web that represents a single store. Hundreds of thousands of electronic storefronts can be found on the Internet. Each one has its own uniform resource locator (URL), OE Internet address, at which buyers can place orders. Some electronic storefronts are extensions of physical stores such as Hermes, Sharper Image, and Wal-Mart. Others are new businesses started by entrepreneurs who saw a niche on the Web. Examplesare Restaurant. com and Alloy. com. Manufacturers for example, www. dell. com as well as retailers for example, www. officedepot. com also use storefronts.

Whereas an electronic storefront represents a single store, an electronic mall, also known as cybermall or e-mall, is a collection of individual shops under a single Internet address. The basic idea of an electronic mall is the same as that of a regular shopping mall – to provide a one-stop shopping place that offers many products and services. Each cybermall may include thousands of vendors. For example, Microsoft Shopping or now Bing shopping, www. bing. com/shopping includes tens of thousands of products from thousands of vendors.

3. List the major issues relating to e-tailing.

• Channel Conflicts
• Conflicts within click-and-mortar organizations
• Order fulfillment and logistics
• Viability and risk of online e-tailers
• Identifying appropriate revenue models

4. Briefly differentiate between the sell-side marketplace and the buy-side marketplace.

There’s a few differences between between the sell-side marketplace and the buy-side marketplace. The sell-side marketplace is a model in which there are many buyers but one seller. In the sell-side marketplace model, organizations attempt to sell their products or services to other organizations electronically.

This model is similar to the B2C model in which the buyer is expected to come to the seller’s site, view catalogs, and place an order. In this case, however, the buyer is an organization that may be a regular customer of the seller. The sell-side model is used by thousands of companies. Examples are major computer companies such as Cisco, IBM, and Intel. The seller in this model can be either a manufacturer, a distributor, or a retailer. Whereas the buy-side marketplace is a model in which there are many sellers but one buyer. The buy-side marketplace, also known as e-procurement, is a model in which EC technology is used to streamline the urchasing process in order to reduce the cost of items purchased. A major method of e-procurement is a reverse auction. In reverse auctions there is one buyer, who wants to buy a product or service. Suppliers are invited to submit bids. The supplier that submits the lowest bid wins. Such auctions attract larger pools of willing suppliers.