منتديات شباب فلسطين - التجارة الالكترونية

University of Palestine
Applied Engineering and
Urban Planning
General.

IGGU1101- 00

Prepared By

Supervised By
Dr.

1st quadmester

25. Nov. 2007

p.o.Box:1219,Al Zahara City, Gaza,Palestine
Tel: +972 82837733 Fax: +972 8 2837766 Email.inf@up.edu.ps

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

" وقل رب زدني علما "

سورة طه:114

صدق الله العظيم

Dedication

To my family……. .
To my Instructors …………

To my supervisor::
Dr.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Eng who helped me along my project

Abstract

Electronic commerce is a new concept explaining the sale or purchase or exchange of products, services and information through computer networks, including the Internet. There are several points of view to the definition of the word:
The world of communications-known e-commerce as a means for the delivery of information, services or products via telephone lines or via computer networks or through any technical means.
- From the point of view of business is the application of the technical process for making business transactions are automatically and rapidly.
- While electronic commerce services known as a tool in order to meet the wishes of companies, consumers and managers in reducing the cost of service and graduation Kvadtha and work to accelerate the delivery of service.
- Finally, the world of the Internet knows that open trade area for the sale and purchase of products and services and information via the Internet

Table of Contents

Subject page No.
1. Introduction 1
2. What is E-Commerce? 1
3. E-commerce can be divided into 2
4.The Elements of Commerce 2
5. Why the Hype? 4
6.What is B2B E-Commerce 5
6.1 2 main issues to deal with when conducting a
B2B E-commerce
7.What is B2C E-Commerce 6
7.1.Who should use B2C E-Commerce
8. The Lure of E-commerce 7
8.1 list summarizes what might be called
the "lure of e-commerce
9. Easy and Hard Aspects of E-commerce 8
9. 1 The things that are hard about e-commerce include:
9.2 The things that are easy about e-commerce, especially
for small businesses and individuals, include
10. Building an E-commerce Site 8
10.1The things you need to keep in mind when
thinking about building an e-commerce site include
10.2When you think about e-commerce, you may
Also want to consider these other desirable capabilities
11. Implementing an E-commerce Site 9
11. 1 these are in order of decreasing flexibility and
increasing simplicity.
11.1.1Enterprise computing
11.1.2 Virtual hosting services
11.2.3 Simplified e-commerce
12. Results 10
13. Discussion 10
14. Conclusion 10
15. Recommendations 10
References 10

1. Introduction
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, you have probably heard about e-commerce. And you have heard about it from several different angles. You may have:
· heard about all of the companies that offer e-commerce because you have been bombarded by their TV and radio ads
· read all of the news stories about the shift to e-commerce and the hype that has developed around e-commerce companies
· seen the huge valuations that Web companies get in the stock market, even when they don't make a profit
· purchased something on the Web, so you have direct personal experience with e-commerce
Still, you may feel like you don't understand e-commerce at all. What is all the hype about? Why the huge valuations? And most importantly, is there a way for you to participate? If you have an e-commerce idea, how might you get started implementing it? If you have had questions like these, then this paper will help out by exposing you to the entire e-commerce space

2.What is E-Commerce?
In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, it is extremely important for businesses to embrace the latest methods and trends to conduct their businesses. With the advancement of technology, particularly the Internet, the world has discovered a new path of opportunities, switching the transactions of traditional business models into a better model far superior in terms of efficiency, productivity, profitability and competitiveness. This is where e-Commerce comes into the picture in which is simply a short form for "Electronic Commerce". E-Commerce is generally the "in-thing" today, which concept covers the global information economy which includes electronic trading of goods and services, electronic fund transfer, online procurement, direct marketing, electronic billing, etc, through the internet via the computer. E-Commerce does not change the core of businesses, which is to generate profitability from transactions, but it is to change the mindset of how to go about generating profits through an efficient manner. This simply means obtaining information at our fingertips, without wasting time, money and effort, and also to conduct real time transactions in a "borderless world" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With e-Commerce transactions, it is a Win-Win situation for the parties (both buyers and sellers) participating in it. It offers distinguished benefits such as less overhead expenses, larger advertising market exposure, and reduces middle man participation and all these benefits are easily understood and quantifiable.
E-Commerce itself is categorized into several sections. Among the sections are Business-To-Business (B2B), Business-To-Consumer (B2C), and Business-To-Government (B2G).

3.E-commerce can be divided into:
· E-tailing or "virtual storefronts" on Web sites with online catalogs, sometimes gathered into a "virtual mall"
· The gathering and use of demographic data through Web contacts
· Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), the business-to-business exchange of data
· e-mail and fax and their use as media for reaching prospects and established customers (for example, with newsletters)
· Business-to-business buying and selling
· The security of business transactions

4.The Elements of Commerce:
When you get down to the actual elements of commerce and commercial transactions, things get slightly more complicated because you have to deal with the details. However, these details boil down to a finite number of steps. The following list highlights all of the elements of a typical commerce activity. In this case, the activity is the sale of some product by a retailer to a customer:
· If you would like to sell something to a customer, at the very core of the matter is the something itself. You must have a product or service to offer. The product can be anything from ball bearings to back rubs. You may get your products directly from a producer, or you might go through a distributor to get them, or you may produce the products yourself.
· You must also have a place from which to sell your products. Place can sometimes be very ephemeral -- for example a phone number might be the place. If you are a customer in need of a massage, if you call "Judy's Massages, Inc." on the telephone to order a massage, and if Judy shows up at your office to give you a massage, then the phone number is the place where you purchased this service. For most physical products we tend to think of the place as a store or shop of some sort. But if you think about it a bit more you realize that the place for any traditional mail order company is the combination of an ad or a catalog and a phone number or a mail box.
· You need to figure out a way to get people to come to your place. This process is known as marketing. If no one knows that your place exists, you will never sell anything. Locating your place in a busy shopping center is one way to get traffic. Sending out a mail order catalog is another. There is also advertising, word of mouth and even the guy in a chicken suit who stands by the road waving at passing cars.
· You need a way to accept orders. At Wal-Mart this is handled by the check out line. In a mail order company the orders come in by mail or phone and are processed by employees of the company.
· You also need a way to accept money. If you are at Wal-Mart you know that you can use cash, check or credit cards to pay for products. Business-to-business transactions often use purchase orders. Many businesses do not require you to pay for the product or service at the time of delivery, and some products and services are delivered continuously (water, power, phone and pagers are like this). That gets into the whole area of billing and collections.
· You need a way to deliver the product or service, often known as fulfillment. At a store like Wal-mart fulfillment is automatic. The customer picks up the item of desire, pays for it and walks out the door. In mail-order businesses the item is packaged and mailed. Large items must be loaded onto trucks or trains and shipped.
· Sometimes customers do not like what they buy, so you need a way to accept returns. You may or may not charge certain fees for returns, and you may or may not require the customer to get authorization before returning anything.
· Sometimes a product breaks, so you need a way to honor warranty claims. For retailers this part of the transaction is often handled by the producer.
· Many products today are so complicated that they require customer service and technical support departments to help customers use them. Computers are a good example of this sort of product. On-going products like cell phone service may also require on-going customer service because customers want to change the service they receive over time. Traditional items (for example, a head of lettuce), generally require less support that modern electronic items.
You find all of these elements in any traditional mail order company. Whether the company is selling books, consumer products, information in the form of reports and papers, or services, all of these elements come into play.
In an e-commerce sales channel you find all of these elements as well, but they change slightly. You must have the following elements to conduct e-commerce:
· A product
· A place to sell the product - in e-commerce, a Web site displays the products in some way and acts as the place
· A way to get people to come to your Web site
· A way to accept orders - normally an on-line form of some sort
· A way to accept money - normally a merchant account handling credit card payments. This piece requires a secure ordering page and a connection to a bank. Or you may use more traditional billing techniques either online or through the mail.
· A fulfillment facility to ship products to customers (often outsource-able). In the case of software and information, however, fulfillment can occur over the Web through a file download mechanism.
· A way to accept returns
· A way to handle warranty claims if necessary
· A way to provide customer service (often through email, on-line forms, on-line knowledge bases and FAQs, et cetera)
In addition, there is often a strong desire to integrate other business functions or practices into the e-commerce offering. An extremely simple example -- you might want to be able to show the customer the exact status of an order

5. Why the Hype?
There is a huge amount of hype that surrounds e-commerce. Given the similarities with mail order commerce, you may be wondering why the hype is so common. Take, for example, the following quotes:
· "...the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2005, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, was $22.3 billion, an increase of 5.7 percent (±1.7%) from the second quarter of 2005."-- U.S. Census Bureau
· "2004 online retail sales rose 23.8 percent to $89 billion, representing 4.6 percent of total retail sales. Including travel, online sales also rose 23.8 percent to $141.4 billion. Online retail sales will reach $109.6 billion [in 2005]. Online sales including travel will rise to $172.4 billion this year." -- Forrester
· "Online ad growth of 33.7 percent is expected in 2005 to $12.7 billion, raising a previous estimate of $11.5 billion for the year. eMarketer had estimated 2004 ad revenue at $9.5 billion." --eMarketer
This sort of hype applies to a wide range of products. According to eMarketer the biggest product categories include:

6.What is B2B E-Commerce?
Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce, also known as E-Business, is experiencing an explosive growth rate on the Internet. Companies of all sizes and types are now mutually buying and selling products and services on the Internet.
The original first stage of commerce on the Internet was that of E-Commerce, which business to consumer activities is. Business to business goes well beyond that popular form of consumer purchasing. It is intended to bring "Just In Time" concept to a greater height which allow businesses to coordinate with its business associate for real time transaction and improving efficiency and productivity for both organizations. Because Time is money; people are money, good management of both means more money for the business and less expenditure on others.
B2B also offers unique benefits such as less human intervention, less overhead expenses, fewer inadvertent errors, more efficiency, more advertising exposure, new markets and new physical territories equate to an intelligent method of mutual business. It is a win-win situation for both buyer and seller.
These are just a few of the benefits that B2B E-commerce can offer. It is already well accepted in the business community, that the potential return of doing business on the Internet is far greater than the investment. The bottom line is greater profits for the business.

6.1 Currently there are 2 main issues to deal with when conducting a B2B E-commerce

· Supply Chain Management - to co-ordinate the fields of competition turned to efficiency in manufacturing. In the 80's, concepts like Lean Manufacturing, Design for Manufacturability, Just-in-Time, and Stockless Production emerged. If properly managed, the operating costs of such systems can be substantially reduced. Reduction in costs can be in the form of reduced inventory cost, obsolescence, transportation and other logistics costs, overhead and direct labor costs. All have pointed out potential savings in costs that could amount to billions when companies can engage in supply chain integration efforts.
· Electronic Procurement System - using Internet technologies to handle product distribution to the buyer and from supplier while at the same time removing the complexity of multi-level paper and processing which are labour intensive. This allows the business to run more efficiently and allows purchasing professionals to have more time to focus on complex acquisitions and supplier negotiation. Besides reducing cost and hassle, it must be designed expressly for casual use by untrained employees and it must also provide extensive management controls, reporting, and integration with existing systems.

7.What is B2C E-Commerce?
B2C (Business-to-Consumer) is basically a concept of online marketing and distributing of products and services over the Internet. It is a natural progression for many retailers or marketer who sells directly to the consumer. The general idea is, if you could reach more customers, service them better, and make more sales while spending less to do it, which would the formula of success for implementing a B2C e-commerce infrastructure.
For the consumer, it is relatively easy to appreciate the importance of e-commerce. Why waste time fighting the very real crowds in supermarkets, when, from the comfort of home, one can shop on-line at any time in virtual Internet shopping malls, and have the goods delivered home directly.

7.1Who should use B2C E-Commerce?
· Manufacturers - to sell and to retail the business buyers
· Distributors - to take orders from the merchants they supply
· Publisher - to sell subscriptions and books
· Direct Sales Firms - as another channel to reach the buyers
· Entertainment Firms - to promote new products and sell copies
· Information Provider - to take payment for downloaded materials
· Specialty Retailers - Niche marketers of products ranging from candles, coffees, specialty foods, books use it to broaden their customer reach.
· Insurance Firms - On-line rate quotes and premium payments have made it easier for this industry to attract and retain customers. In fact, virtually any business that can deliver its products or provide its services outside its doors is a potential user.

8. The Lure of E-commerce:
8.1 The following list summarizes what might be called the "lure of e-commerce":
Lower transaction costs - if an e-commerce site is implemented well, the web can significantly lower both order-taking costs up front and customer service costs after the sale by automating processes.
Larger purchases per transaction - Amazon offers a feature that no normal store offers. When you read the description of a book, you also can see "what other people who ordered this book also purchased." That is, you can see the related books that people are actually buying. Because of features like these it is common for people to buy more books that they might buy at a normal bookstore.
Integration into the business cycle - A Web site that is well-integrated into the business cycle can offer customers more information than previously available. For example, if Dell tracks each computer through the manufacturing and shipping process, customers can see exactly where their order is at any time. This is what FedEx did when they introduced on-line package tracking - FedEx made far more information available to the customer.
People can shop in different ways. Traditional mail order companies introduced the concept of shopping from home in your pajamas, and e-commerce offers this same luxury. New features that web sites offer include:
The ability to build an order over several days
The ability to configure products and see actual prices
The ability to easily build complicated custom orders
The ability to compare prices between multiple vendors easily
The ability to search large catalogs easily.
Larger catalogs - A company can build a catalog on the web that would never fit in an ordinary mailbox. For example, Amazon sells millions of books. Imagine trying to fit all of the information available in Amazon's database into a paper catalog!
Improved customer interactions - With automated tools it is possible to interact with a customer in richer ways at virtually no cost. For example, the customer might get an email when the order is confirmed, when the order is shipped and after the order arrives. A happy customer is more likely to purchase something else from the company.

9. Easy and Hard Aspects of E-commerce
9. 1 The things that are hard about e-commerce include:
· Getting traffic to come to your Web site
· Getting traffic to return to your Web site a second time
· Differentiating yourself from the competition
· Getting people to buy something from your Web site. Having people look at your site is one thing. Getting them to actually type in their credit card numbers is another.
· Integrating an e-commerce Web site with existing business data (if applicable)
There are so many Web sites, and it is so easy to create a new e-commerce web site, that getting people to look at yours is the biggest problem.

9.2 The things that are easy about e-commerce, especially for small businesses and individuals, include:
· Creating the web site
· Taking the orders
· Accepting payment
There are enumerable companies that will help you build and put up your electronic store. We'll discuss some options in the next section.

10. Building an E-commerce Site
10.1The things you need to keep in mind when thinking about building an e-commerce site include:
· Suppliers - this is no different from the concern that any normal store or Mail Order Company has. Without good suppliers you cannot offer products.
· Your price point - a big part of e-commerce is the fact that price comparisons are extremely easy for the consumer. Your price point is important in a transparent market.
· Customer relations - E-commerce offers a variety of different ways to relate to your customer. E-mail, FAQs, knowledge bases, forums, chat rooms... Integrating these features into your e-commerce offering helps you differentiate yourself from the competition.
· The back end: fulfillment, returns, customer service - These processes make or break any retail establishment. They define, in a big way, your relationship with your customer.
10.2When you think about e-commerce, you may also want to consider these other desirable capabilities:

· Gift-sending
· Affiliate programs
· Special discounts
· Repeat buyer programs
· Seasonal or periodic sales
The reason why you want to keep these things in mind is because they are all difficult unless your e-commerce software supports them. If the software does support them, they are trivial.

11. Implementing an E-commerce Site
Let's say that you would like to create an e-commerce site. There are three general ways to implement the site with all sorts of variations in between. The three general ways are:
· Enterprise computing
· Virtual hosting services
· Simplified e-commerce

11 . 1 These are in order of decreasing flexibility and increasing simplicity.

11.1.1Enterprise computing means that you purchase hardware and software and hire a staff of developers to create your e-commerce web site. Amazon, Dell and all of the other big players participate in e-commerce at the enterprise level. You might need to consider enterprise computing solutions if:
· You have immensely high traffic - millions of visitors per month
· You have a large database that holds your catalog of products (especially if the catalog is changing constantly)
· You have a complicated sales cycle that requires lots of customized forms, pricing tables, et cetera
· You have other business processes already in place and you want your e-commerce offering to integrate into them.
11.1.2 Virtual hosting services give you some of the flexibility of enterprise computing, but what you get depends on the vendor. In general the vendor maintains the equipment and software and sells them in standardized packages. Part of the package includes security, and almost always a merchant account is also an option. Database access is sometimes a part of the package. You provide the web designers and developers to create and maintain your site.
11.2.3 Simplified e-commerce is what most small businesses and individuals are using to get into e-commerce. In this option the vendor provides a simplified system for creating your store. The system usually involves a set of forms that you fill out online. The vendor's software then generates all of the web pages for the store for you. Two good examples of this sort of offering include Yahoo Stores and Verio Stores. You pay by the month for these services.

12. Results
Electronic commerce us the opportunity to exploit this pattern of action to achieve the markets may not allow traditional trade and the establishment of projects reached small capitalization may fit the investment opportunities in the Arab environment.

13. Discussion
Enabling e-commerce companies to understand the needs of their clients and shopping options available to them in scale, and this in itself achieve high satisfaction rate among customers are offered traditional means, Vision can learn items and the prices and features of each type and evaluate product differentiation and the theme in terms of the purchase met the desire of the options buyer.

14. Conclusion
E-commerce is one of the most important markets, which deals with the world as it is easier to deal enables any buyer to purchase any goods from anywhere the world and recommend any businessman to succeed, trade must deal with electronic commerce

15. Recommendations
1. The businessmen dealing with electronic commerce
2. Any researcher must deal with the search engine mamma
3. Students must read the information on electronic commerce

References:
Web site
(No. 1) author surname , auther name ,
"http://communication.howstuffworks.com/ecommerce.htm
", visiting date 19/11/2007