Page 182 - DCAP306_DCAP511_E-COMMERCE_AND_E-BUSINESS

Unit 14: Designing and Building E-Commerce Web Site - Advanced

Competition
Currently eBay is facing a problem in creating a business plan to maintain their position as the leader in
the online auction industry.
There are both direct and indirect competitors of online auction services. As per eBay (2005) competing
channels are, online and offline retailers, distributors, liquidators, import and export companies,
auctioneers, catalog and mail-order companies, classifieds, directories, search engines, products of
search engines, virtually all online and offline commerce participants, online and offline shopping
channels, and networks.

Some of the competition that eBay is facing are sites such as Yahoo Auctions, Overstock.com, Craigslist,
Google, and Amazon.com.
eBay is not a free site. Sellers have to pay monthly fees, which in turn can increase the cost of the items
being sold. On the other hand, sites like Craigslist are completely free which is increasing its popularity.
Questions:
1. How has eBay been able to maintain its dominant position?
2. What method does eBay use to reduce the potential for fraud by traders on its site?

14.5 Summary

• Mobile phones can be used in e-commerce.
• Payments gateway is an online payment service used to connect the buyer and the supplier.
• Orders for online shopping can be done using cookies, temporary IP number, and cart number.
14.6 Keywords

IP: It refers to Internet protocol through which the data packets are transmitted over the network.
Smartphone: A Smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more sophisticated and advanced computing
ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone.
URL: It stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It specifies the global address of web documents and web
resource.
Virtual Shopping: The imitation of a shopping mall environment on the Internet.
14.7 Self Assessment

1. State whether the following statements are True or False:
(a) Mobile Internet connections can sometimes be unstable.
(b) High-end smartphones are increasingly incorporating on-screen keyboard.
2. Fill in the blanks:
(a) __________ is an online payment service.

(b) Temporary IP number will be automatically assigned by the _________.
3. Select a suitable choice for every question:
(a) How many types of electronic currencies are there?
(i) Four
(ii) Three
(iii) Two
(iv) Five

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