Question

eBusiness encompasses ALL business communication via the Internet. That includes CRM, SCM, ERP, extranets, intranets, business presence Web sites, online auctions, business transaction Web sites, pop-over & pop-under advertising, email broadcasts, and certainly SPAM. From your experience, or from research for the purpose of this discussion, give an example or two of eBusiness functions that you believe are executed effectively. Post a link or two, and explain why you think each one works.

Answer 1

Electronic Business or e-business is a term which can be used for any kind of business or commercial transaction that includes sharing information across the internet. Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and services between businesses, groups and individuals and can be seen as one of the essential activities of any business. Electronic commerce focuses on the use of ICT to enable the external activities and relationships of the business with individuals, groups and other businesses or e business refers to business with help of internet i.e. doing business with the help of internet network. The term "e-business" was coined by IBM's marketing and Internet team in 1996.

When organizations go online, they have to decide which e-business models best suit their goals A business model is defined as the organization of product, service and information flows, and the source of revenues and benefits for suppliers and customers. The concept of e-business model is the same but used in the online presence.

If I talk talk about e-businesses that are executed effectively are:

1. Online Ticketing

Online ticketing involves aggregating the flight/train/bus details from different companies in different cities of the world and enabling the customers to book the tickets online without contacting any travel agent, just by specifying the source and the destination cities and the travel dates. Even the payment is made by different online payment gateways. One of the giants in online ticketing is Expedia:

Expedia, Inc. is an American company that owns and operates several international global online travel brands including eponymous Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, trivago, Egencia, Venere.com, Expedia Local Expert, Classic Vacations, Expedia CruiseShipCenters, Travelocity, Orbitz and HomeAway. Expedia, Inc.’s companies operate more than 100 branded points of sale in more than 60 countries. Expedia also powers travel bookings for over 10,000 partners such as airlines and hotels, consumer brands, and high traffic websites through Expedia Affiliate Network, 80% of which is powered by their API.

In 2008, Expedia was named to the most admired Internet companies in the United States list, released by Fortune. Expedia ranked third, after IAC and Google, and was followed by Amazon.com at fourth place. National Travel, an affiliate of American Express Travel, announced it has added Expedia Vacations to its suite of travel vendors.

2. E-Commerce

E-commerce (short for "electronic commerce") is trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction's life cycle, although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail.

Amazon.com often simply Amazon, is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company, founded in July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos and based in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the world by total sales and market capitalization. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, later diversifying to sell DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, audiobook downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics—notably, Amazon Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, and Fire TV—and is the world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure services (IaaS). Amazon also sells certain low-end products like USB cables under its in-house brand AmazonBasics.

Amazon has separate retail websites for the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India, and Mexico. Amazon also offers international shipping to certain other countries for some of its products. In 2016, Dutch and Polish language versions of the German Amazon website were launched.

In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization, and is, as of 2016 Q3, the fourth most valuable public company.