E-Business and E-Commerce

INTRODUCTION

E-Business is important in future perspectives considering that the amount of trade conducted electronically have grown extraordinarily since the spread of the Internet. E-bussiness uses the internet and other networks as well as a variety of Internet technologies to support e-commerce and business processes. It includes e-commerce, which is the buying and selling of products or services over the Internet. The Internet and related technologies have changed the way businesses are operated and people work.

E-BUSINESS

A. What is it Many businesses today are using Internet technologies to conduct business processes over the Internet. E-business can be defined as the use of the Internet and other networks, as well as Internet technologies to work and facilitate business processes, electronic commerce and enterprise collaboration within a company and with its customers, suppliers and business partners. Generally, any online exchange of information, money, resources and services is a part of e-business.

E-business infrastructure

E-business infrastructure made up of a variety of components. It includes hardware, softwares, support services, human capital and telecommunication networks. Examples of hardware are computers, servers and routers. Human capital, such as information system specialists and programmers, is important to operate e-business processes. In addition, many companies use networks such as intranet that is a private network inside a company for managers and employees, and extranet, which links a company with its customers, suppliers and business partners outside the company.

Other companies use a virtual private network (VPN) which provides a private line through the internet. It uses the public Internet backbone as a channel for private data communication (3:20). Thus, a VPN allows remote offices, business partners and customers to use the Internet, rather than expensive private lines, to reach company networks by using tunneling software. This software encrypts data and then sends the data to their destination.

E-COMMERCE

A. What is it E-commerce is the buying, selling, marketing and servicing of products, services and information over the Internet and other networks. Many businesses use the Internet, intranet and extranet to support the commercial processes including advertising, sales, customer support and Internet security. Most advertisements on the Web are in the form of sending e-mails and banner ads, which is in shape of a long horizontal rectangle on the top of the Web page (3:10). These advertisements could attract a huge number of visitors to the advertised Web site.

E-commerce website must help customers to welcome and serve them personally and efficiently in order to increase customer loyalty. B. E-commerce advantages and disadvantages E commerce has several advantages. For sellers, e-commerce is an effective way to reduce costs and enlarge their markets. They cut additional labor cost and they do not need to print and distribute mail order catalogs. In addition, e -commerce allows customers to compare prices at different websites.

Then, they make purchases at their homes at any time. E-commerce websites offer variety of products for example electronic books, music files and computer softwares. However, e-commerce has some disadvantages. Consumers are not willing to buy some products over the Internet because of security and quality concerns. Online furniture businesses, for example, have failed because customers want to test the comfort of an expensive item such as sofa before they purchase it (1:1).