eCommerce Research

1. What is Electronic Commerce (eCommerce)? What is the yearly value of eCommerce in Canada in the most recent data you can find?

Electronic Commerce consists in the buying and selling of products over the internet.

2. How does the term eCommerce differ from the term eBusiness?

eBusiness refers to serving businesses or employees over the internet. An ebusiness doesn't rely on the internet completely like an eCommerce business does.


3. The two major types of consumer driven eCommerce are Business to Consumer (B2C) and Consumer to Consumer (C2C). Explain each of these two types of eCommerce Websites

A B2C website is set up by a business or a company that services to other consumers like Wal-Mart which is the name of the business and they sell products online, but an eCommerce business doesn't have a huge walk in building they have a place for storage and only provide their goods over the internet. A C2C eCommerce is other consumers selling goods to others like them through a site such as eBay. EBay you can sell products to others and you can also buy from others.

4. List two specific examples of major B2C eCommerce businesses.
- Wal-Mart
- Chapters

4.1. For one B2C eCommerce business listed above, visit the website and answer the following questions:
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/

4.1.1. How does this eCommerce business generate revenue?

they provide irewards which you pay a monthly fee to get a percentage taken off of items bought in their store
they sell other products from other companies in their retail location and online

4.1.2. Identify methods that consumers can use to pay for online purchases.
- Credit Cards
- Interac Online
- Gift Certificates
- Gift Cards
- Coupons

4.1.3. Describe the security measures used by this eCommerce website

They outline that they aren't responsible for any third party resources and that you are responsible for your own account. They do have it implied that their website and your account are modified regularily as they do suggest that they can make any changes they want to your information or to their policies making you responsible to go over everything. They also state that they will terminate your account if needed or just give you limited access. Registered members and guests do have a difference in what they can do and see and they observe their site activity. They boldly outline what they are reponsible and not responsible for and members are responsible to abide by these outlines in their security and legal statements.


http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/Legal-Statement/legal-art.html


4.1.4. Analyse the privacy policies of this eCommerce website and comment on how safe you feel your information is with this business.

They've clearly outline their fields of Privacy making it easy to find and keeping information laid out where it can be seen and gone through quickly. You can easily read over any concerns you may have within their Privacy Policy they even provide a summarization of their security measures.

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/Privacy-Policy/priv-art.html


5. List two specific examples of major C2C eCommerce businesses.
- EBay
- Amazon

5.1. For one C2C eCommerce business listed above, visit the website and answer the following questions:
http://www.ebay.com/

5.1.1. How does this eCommerce business generate revenue?
take 7% off of purchases
make members of the site required to pay an amount to place their product information to their site

5.1.2. Identify methods that consumers can use to pay for online purchases.
- Credit Cards
- PayPal

5.1.3. Describe the security measures used by this eCommerce website
They provide a tutorial to teach you how to properly protect your account, they give tips on preventing and reporting identity theft, they give information on being able to safely make purchases using PayPal and they even have a trust and safety tutorial.

http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter/index.html


5.1.4. Analyse the privacy policies of this eCommerce website and comment on how safe you feel your information is with this business.
They give a detailed list of concerns that they have outlined in their policy. It's similar to the one for Chapters.indigo.com Privacy policy also. They give an extensive list as well as hyper links to allow you to go through any concerns that you want to go over first or you can scroll through them all easily.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/privacy-policy.html

6. What are the most common types of items consumers purchase online?

- Books
- Music
- Toys
- Health Products
- Beauty Products
- Entertainment
- Cars

7 .What are the benefits of buying on-line? What are the barriers to buying on-line?
A benefit to buying online is that you can shop on your time with no worries about store hours, you don't have to wait in a line, you can find what you want with search engines and quickly discover weather that store has what you're looking for or not. The barriers are that you don't get the same atmosphere as being in a store, like some people enjoy being surrounded by books in a book store or being able to smell the food being selled in the delhi, buying online there is no atmosphere other than that of your own home. Also, it isn't very useful for finding anything out on any products you are new to because you can't get any personal opinions on the product in the retail environment.

8. What services do financial institutes (eg. Canadian Banks) offer on-line? Do you consider financial institutes to be eCommerce businesses? Why or Why not?
checking your account balances
making payments
following credit flows
move money from one account to another

Yes, because you can make payments from your personal account to another department, but no because you aren't purchasing products. You can, however; purchase different types of accounts through the financial instutes and purchase gift cards which would give the bank extra money.

9. Visit PayPal.com and answer the following questions about PayPal

9.1. What is PayPal?
PayPal is an online service that allows a person to pay safely on the internet without giving away credit card numebrs or other information. You're able to store money into the PayPal account instead of directly to your bank to be able to easily use that money to make online purchases.


9.2. Do you feel that PayPal is an Ecommerce business? Why or Why not?
It is a business in the sense that it does have in someway gains money from you through you using it, but it is more like an online bank that is only usable to make online purchases. It'd be fair to say that it isn't an Ecommerce business since you don't purchase products, but you make purchases to the service.

9.3. How does PayPal benefit consumers?
It benefits the consumer by keeping the consumers information secret from another buyer or seller on the internet.

9.4. How does PayPal benefit eCommerce businesses?
People feel safer buying from online eCommerce businesses because they don't have to give away their personal financial information.


9.5. Describe the security measures taken by PayPal.
They provide information about how to prevent fraud to and indentity theft through using their services. THey give different tips on selling and buying securely.

https://www.paypal.com/ca/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_security-center-outside

9.6. Analyse the privacy policies of PayPal and comment on how safe you feel your information is with this business.
They give links and a scroll list of how they use different resources to keep your account safe. They give information on how they collect your information and what they use it for.
https://cms.paypal.com/ca/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/Privacy_full&locale.x=en_US

9.7. Do you consider PayPal to be a financial institution? Why or Why not?
Yes, because it's like a more private bank account that only stores money, you can't make any bill payments, but you can transfer money to and from it.