2. Selling and buying online is very often called
e-commerce
• It is electronic commerce (EC) which offers us
the opportunity to buy and sell on the
Internet
• A system used to conduct business
transactions over a computer network
• A simple form of EC is taking an order over
the telephone
3. E-commerce can refer to:
• Business transactions between companies or
between companies and their customers
• Transferring money through the Internet
• A new term dotcom frenzy (going mad for the
world of Internet) appeared in the late 1990s
4. A new term – clicks and mortar is becoming
very popular
• It is a business that combines online selling
with traditional offline selling ( in stores)
• A store using this cliks and mortar sell its
products in a shop beside offering the same
products online
• The Internet part is called clicks and
traditional selling is called mortar
5. An example: Tesco
• It is an international supremarket chain based
in the United Kingdom (food, clothes,
electronic, financial services...)
• Tesco has successfully combined old economy
with the world of e-commerce
• Today Tesco sells goods in stores and on the
Internet
6. An example of failure: e-toys
• It was a high-profile company that built a
great service
• It started selling toys online in America
• The problem was their low profit (no profit-
no futher business) which caused the
company to run out of cash and go into
liquidation
7. Amazon: almost the only online seller
• Amazon is the only (exclusively) online seller
that has a well known brand
• It has good e-fulfilment systems (taking
orders and delivery) and it is very efficient,
but some say that its long-term profitability is
not certain
8. To set up Amazon.co.uk it was necessary to:
• Achieve lots of sales and secure profit
• The only way to have this is to do a fantastic job for
customers so they keep coming back
• You must have a good website (it must be easy and
quick to use)
• It must give lots of information about the items and
offer low prices
• When somebody orders, you must provide a fast
delivery which is reliable
• If anything goes wrong you need an excellent customer
service team (on the phone or by e-mail)
9. The choice of goods to sell online:
• Some goods and services may be more
suitable for selling online (holidays and travel)
• Some other products may produce problems:
groceries and shoes
• What happens when you find out that the
product you got is not suitable, or it is not at
all what you ordered?
10. New developments: teenagers buy a lot
online
• They buy games, CDs and clothing
• The problem is they are too young to own
credit cards, so they sometimes manage to do
this with the help of their parents
• Visa calculates that they spent a total of 153
billion dollars in the US last year!
• The parents are more likely to buy them
something in a real shop than to give them
credit cards
