One of the famous e-commerce website in Malaysia is AirAsia Airline ( www.airasia.com ). Many people do not know that AirAsia was develop in Malaysia and is one of the public held companies. Airasia is one of the budget airline which focus on online ticket booking rather than having counter selling ticket in airport. Thus, it creates convenient for customer that can access to internet and also save up their cost to set up counter in airport. Let’s take a review on the feature of this website – www.airasia.com.my
TYPE OF PRODUCT
AirAsia is not only offering flight line for customer in one-way and return through online. The website also allowed customer find out Flight + Hotel which means customer can both booking for flight line and hotel together. This has brought a lot of convenience for people who plan for travel by comparing what time to go and return and what hotel to stay based on the rating, price and number of people. Besides, AirAsia also provide their superior services which is high accuracy on flight time. On the website, customer can easily select the place they depart and destination which they prefer to go. It cover a lot of country such as China, Indonesia, Australia, Brunei, Hong Kong and so on.
SITE DESIGN AND LAYOUT
In the left hand side is the place for customer to choose whether to book what type of ticket ( One-Way or Return) and choosing the depart and destination. It also allowed customers to choose what is the date to have flight. And AirAsia also have member system which enable customers to sign up and booking their ticket online to keep their privacy. The member system also can help to advertise by sending promotion in newsletter to customers. In the up site of the website is Navigation of the webpage. Middle part is the promotion current provided by AirAsia. Most of the color using by AirAsia is red color and it has become the represent of it’s image.
AVAILABLITY OF SEARCH ENGINE
AirAsia also having search engine in their website which is on the right up corner of webpage that bring convenient to customers to find out what they want to. Besides, another important search engine in AirAsia is search for the flight time and line when customer choose on the date and place of depart and destination. AirAsia will provided flight time to customer and the price on that time. On the other hand, speed of searching and downloading the website is very fast. It just take around 30 second to display the webpage.
NAVIGATION
The navigation available in the webpage as well which located on the upper site. It include convenience service which can bring customers to Bookings details, Flight Info, Product and Shipping, Travel Services, Corporate Services, About Us and Help Info. All of this details can bring customer to different webpage to satisfy customers need. For examples, checking out the flight info about where is the destination that AirAsia provide and check out the Help Info for FAQ (Frequently Ask Question). All of this are almost related to customer services. Customer can check out the payment system that provided by AirAsia so that customer can easily make booking through internet.
In conclusion, all of the feature that having for an e-commerce website is very important. First of all, must let customers know what product or services is available on the website. Second is having a well structured site layout that easily for customers to navigate and find out more information. Search engine is important for customer to compare the price.
Electronic Currency also known as Electronic Money, Electronic Cash, Digital Money or Digital Cash refer to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. The emerge of electronic currency is because of the Internet and E-Commerce become an increasing commercial area. So that, electronic payment become one of the important feature between customers and sellers. Traditional payment include credit cards, private label debit cards and charge cards. However, problem arise for these traditional form of payment online. First of all, not all merchant acre accept credit card transactions because of service fee for each transaction. In addition, customers have become with “hackers” obtaining their credit card number stored on the Internet and become the victim of fraud. As a result, electronic currency are receiving attention from both customers and merchants.
How Electronic Currency Works?
Electronic currency is a system that allows a person to pay for goods or services by transmitting a number from one computer to another. The transaction is carry out electronically by transferring funds from one party to another by either debit or credit. This system can eliminate the payment risk because the money are instantly cleared and secured by using strong encryption. Thus, electronic currency is the digital representation of money or digital representation of currency.
Advantages of Electronic Currency
CONFIDENTIALITY
One of the attractive features of electronic currency is, unlike real cash, it is anonymous. That means when electronic currency is sent from a customer to merchant, there is no way to obtain information about customers. This is one of the significant differences between electronic currency and credit card. Credit card companies will collect a customer’s spending habits and sell this data to third party and the bank will not have record of customer involved in the electronic currency transaction. Thus, the bank is unable to obtain personal information about customers and protects against the privacy rights of the customer.
SECURITY
The electronic currency is provided by the use of encryption to security purpose.
Disadvantages of Electronic Currency
FRAUD
Major disadvantage to electronic currency is fraud. If customer misplace this private key and a perpetrator uses it to withdraw fund, the bank would never know and the customer will liable to the lost. Credit card can limit the customer’s liability for unauthorized activity. In addition, if the security code is broken and the message is intercepted, the hacker will be able to perpetrate the fraud on the recipient of the message.
PEER-TO-PEER DOUBLE SPENDING
Another disadvantage of electronic currency is double spending of digital coins. This is potential to happen when customer chooses a peer-to-peer transaction. In the electronic currency system, the bank able to check the serial number of each coin in a transaction against its database of spent coins, if the coin has been spent, the transaction will be denied.
The meaning of electronic commerce has changed over the last 30 years. Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. Another form of e-commerce was the airline reservation system. Online shopping was invented in the UK in 1979. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.
Perhaps it is introduced from the Telephone Exchange Office, or maybe not. The earliest example of many-to-many electronic commerce in physical goods was the Boston Computer Exchange, a marketplace for used computers launched in 1982. The first online information marketplace, including online consulting, was likely the American Information Exchange, another pre-Internet online system introduced in 1991.
Although the Internet became popular worldwide in 1994, it took about five years to introduce security protocols and DSL allowing continual connection to the Internet. And by the end of 2000, a lot of European and American business companies offered their services through the World Wide Web. Since then people began to associate a word "ecommerce" with the ability of purchasing various goods through the Internet using secure protocols and electronic payment services.
The success story of Dell's e-commerce business was being famous story in the business world. The founder of Dell, Michael Dell was a myth that he had been created a revolutionary new model for doing business in the information age and became the youngest CEO in history to ever head a Fortune 500 company. He started the PC company by $1000 twenty years ago from now, and now it had became a large global enterprise with an annual turnover of more than 410 billion dollars. Michael Dell always indicates that "Dell win because we have a better business model." which is the famous model created by him call "Dell Model". By relying on this model, combined with an high efficiency production process and scientifically cost control management, it has bring Dell get a great success in personal computer market over the past 20 years.
Here are a few causes on Dell become a successful personal computer company:
Dell Model
Dell Company assembly their product according to customers' orders, and send directly to their customers. The essence of this model is its save costs and reduced the product prices by put aside the traditional sales chains, which are brokers and retailers. This model can be summarized in the following main features:
Produce according to orders: Assembling products according to the orders made by customers through the website and telephone, which customers have full freedom to choose their favourite product. The company also purchased accessories in accordance with orders, which can reduce the stock keeping and increase the cash flow.
Connect to customer directly: Direct link to the customer to save time and cost that will be wasted by selling through the middle channel, and get better understanding on customer needs.
Efficient logistics system to reduce cost: Establish a highly efficient supply chain and production process management , which had reduced production cost significantly.
Standardization of product and technology: The production line operated are mainly applying those standardize product and technology, which can reduce cost and production time.
Low Costing, High Efficiency, Better Service
Low Costing was the rules of survival for Dell all the time, and also the core for "Dell Model", but there must implement high efficiency in order to achieved low costing. Dell had create a well-known production and marketing line with their precise management , smooth flow and provide ultra-high efficiency service all the time, its help Dell can always control the cost at the lowest level effectively.
Dell seeks to simplify everything in order to improve efficiency. The company breaks downs the calling sell process into eight simple steps, with a 24hours working production lines the. The accessories can be turned into finished products within two hours in the high efficiency production line, and then transported directly to the Customer Service Center. Dell has owned 550 patents on theirs simplified process, this is why analysts generally believe that other companies can not really copy the "Dell Model"
Beside, Dell also putting much effort to establish the brand and improving service quality. Dell not only has a strict quality guarantee system, but also established a strong after-sales service network. Dell's staff not only provide comprehensive technical advice and guidance service for maintance through the website and telephone, but also on the spot service.
Nowadays, business environment is changing rapidly. So that, every organization have to create their own competitive advantage in order to compete with their competitors. As we know, e-commerce is one of the business type that can bring a lot of benefit to the organization. Now we will focus on three part which is how e-commerce help to reduce cycle time, improve employee’s empowerment and facilitate customer support.
Reduce Cycle Time
First of all, we have to know what is the meaning of cycle time. Cycle time is the total amount of time between the orders that placing by consumers and receiving the goods and services. That means it start from the order by customer and end when customer receive the goods.
A very good example is in traditional software business. Seller have to produce software CD when receive order from customer and delivered the CD to the customer. While through e-commerce, buyer can just simply download from website and pay through online. This not only can bring convenience to customer but also successfully reduce CYCLE TIME. Buyer just simply click on it and download and they can enjoy the software immediately.
On the other hand, e-commerce also allowed us to receive the order through website. In traditional business, order may receive through phone call or written mail. After that, they have to calculate how much order they receive and only start the production. But when customer click order from the website, it can directly calculate and sent the order to manufacturer to start production. This can help to increase the speed and reduce the cycle time of waiting in production.
Improve employee’s empowerment
E-commerce also let user to enjoy this benefits. Employee’s empowerment means employee can have more power to make their own decision. As we know, employee will have more motivation when they are being empower. E-commerce can help to empower because most of the system are computerized. For example, in traditional production line, employee have to listen to supervisor on how many product to be produce in particular period. By using e-commerce, when customer order and it will automatic transfer the quantity of production to them. So that they can decide themselves whether how much should be produce in particular period.
On the other hand, some organization also enable their employee to provide idea to the organization. Employee can give their idea through e-mail or intranet. This can help employee to behave in higher morale because organization treat them as part of the “THINKER”. It not just depends on the manager anymore.
Facilitate Customer Support
Nowadays, customer service become more and more important. There are several reason. One of it is because consumer know their rights very well and they need customer service to give them more confidence on the product they purchase. With e-commerce, customer able to get a lot of support when they need help. For example, in the webpage of company might have link call “ FAQ” which stand for FREQUENTLY ASK QUESTION. This can help customer to know what is the question that most people facing. E-commerce also allowed customer to send their question through e-mail to solve their problem.
By the way, another important customer support is e-commerce can help to provide a lot of information though website. With the website, customer can get information that they want. For example, the price,quality, function, color, size or any other thing that can show within the webpage. All of this can help customer to know more about the product and help them to make decision.
E-commerce also allowed customer to track their product when their product is delivered. This can help to let customer to estimate when is the time of the product arrived. All of these customer support can help to gain customer loyalty and also create competitive advantage.
Do you still remember Webvan? The Webvan was an the online "credit and de
livery" grocery business. Webvan Group Inc. headquartered in Foster City, California, USA with its proximately 2,600 workers and about 2000 stores. To become the number one online grocer, Webvan managed their way through a tangled web of operational changes. Besides that, the failure of Webvan is also an interesting failure, it was started in 1999 by Louis Borders, founding partner of Borders Books. Unfortunately, On 9 July 2001, Webvan went bankrupt and began its liquidation.
Webvan, which began selling groceries over the Internet about two years ago(1999-2001) and was unprofitable, they blamed that the declining orders and difficulty in raising more cash to stay alive. Besides that, Webvan also invested in technology and an infrastructure that was too expensive for low margin products. Webvan’s founder, Louis Borders, had experience with larger margin products, where profits are not solely dependent on volume. Webvan expected a high adoption rate to their e-grocer business, however, people were skeptical about the lack of control over the quality of the product. Thus, the lack of volume in grocery sales was the main factors that affected to the lack of debt repayment.
Finally,there are also some reasons that affected their sales. Webvan wants to implement a new business strategy that provides within 30 minutes delivery to their customer. However, this strategy seems like a failure as some of the customers are not at home or away at the time. Moreover,the delivery service may delayed due to certain problem and caused customer do not believe in them and thus, the sales gone!
On 9 July 2001, Webvan went bankrupt and began its liquidation. Besides that,Webvan also sold all its assests to delegate from the Nasdaq Stock Market.
One of the famous e-commerce website in Malaysia is AirAsia Airline ( www.airasia.com ). Many people do not know that AirAsia was develop in Malaysia and is one of the public held companies. Airasia is one of the budget airline which focus on online ticket booking rather than having counter selling ticket in airport. Thus, it creates convenient for customer that can access to internet and also save up their cost to set up counter in airport. Let’s take a review on the feature of this website – www.airasia.com.my
