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Online shopping is the process consumers go through to purchase products or services over the Internet. An online shop, e-shop, e-store, internet shop, webshop or online store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall. It is an electronic commerce application used for business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B) or business-to-consumer electronic commerce (B2C). Online shopping is popular mainly because of its speed and ease of use. Some issues of concern can include fluctuating exchange rates for foreign currencies, local and international laws and delivery methods. Wikibooks has more about this subject: Marketing In economics and marketing, a service is the non-material equivalent of a good. ...
Brick and mortar can simply refer to any company that possesses a building for operations. ...
Drawing of a self-service store. ...
This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ...
This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
Dr Zak article:-Business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B) typically takes the form of automated processes between trading partners and is performed in much higher volumes than business-to-consumer (B2C) applications. ...
Business-to-consumer electronic commerce (B2C) is a form of electronic commerce in which products or services are sold from a firm to a consumer. ...
Product reviews Online shoppers can easily learn from previous experiences of different products, mostly by reading user or expert reviews. Many online stores allow customers to comment or rate their items. There are also dedicated review sites that host user reviews for different products. A website on which people can post reviews for products or services. ...
Store reputation It is important to do business with reputable online stores to avoid possible Internet fraud and to easily exchange or return when things go wrong. Shoppers often read store ratings or reviews by other customers if they are not familiar with some online stores. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
Some general guidelines apply when choosing an online store
- Honesty in providing product information and availability
- Speed of orders processing
- Shipping cost and speed: online package tracking is popular
- Return/exchange policy: the time frame customers can return/exchange; who should pay the returning shipping; if there is any restocking fee etc. (Note: In the United Kingdom, Online shops are prohibited from charging a restocking fee if the consumer cancels their order in accordance with the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Act 2000 http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/general/oft698.pdf)
Some online stores also provide live chat with their representatives in case customer need to discuss the product.
Price comparison An advantage of shopping online is being able to use the power of the internet to seek out the best deals available for items or services. For example if one is buying a digital camera he/she should enter "digital camera" into a search engine or a price search engine. Most price comparison services have the advantage of store ratings and reviews. The differences between the online prices and local store prices also rely on the shipping cost and tax. On the internet, a price comparison service (also known as shopping comparison or price engine) allows individuals to see lists of prices for specific products. ...
Discounts -
There are multiple websites that compile coupon or discount information for most online merchants. The advent of online shopping has resulted in the development of a large number of rewards programs that offer rewards for shopping through specific shopping portals. ...
Means of payment Online shoppers commonly use their credit card for making payments, however some systems enable users to create accounts and pay by alternative means, such as Credit cards A credit card is a system of payment named after the small plastic card issued to users of the system. ...
Some sites will not allow international credit cards and billing address and shipping address have to be in the same country in which site does its business. Other sites allow customers from anywhere to send gifts anywhere. A debit card is a plastic card which provides an alternative payment method to cash when making purchases. ...
Electronic money (also known as electronic cash, electronic currency, digital money, digital cash, digital currency or scrip) refers to money which is exchanged only electronically. ...
Cash on delivery or COD is a financial transaction where the payment of products and/or services received is done at the time of actual delivery rather than paid for in advance. ...
Example of a Canadian cheque. ...
A wire transfer is a method of transferring of funds from one entity to another. ...
A money order is a payment order for a pre-specified amount of money. ...
eBay North First Street satellite office campus (home to PayPal) PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. ...
Google Checkout is an online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. ...
Reverse SMS billing means that the owner of the recipient phone rather than the message sender is charged for the cost of the SMS message received. ...
Product Delivery Once a payment has been accepted the goods or services can be delivered in the following ways. - Download: This is the method often used for digital media products such as software, music, movies, or images.
- Shipping: The product is shipped to the customer's address.
- In-store pickup: The customer orders online, finds a local store using locator software and picks the product up at the closest store. This is the method often used in the bricks and clicks business model.
This article is about the computer terms. ...
Damaged package The Panama canal. ...
Drawing of a self-service store. ...
Locator software is an electronic commerce software module on a website that allows a visitor to find nearby stores and business locations. ...
Bricks and clicks is a business strategy or business model in e-commerce by which a company attempts to integrate both online and physical presences. ...
Security issues - User and payment data is encrypted by SSL when it is transferred on the Internet.
- Quality seals can be placed on the Shop webpage if it has undergone an independent assessment and meets all requirements of the company issuing the seal. The purpose of these seals is to increase the confidence of the online shoppers; the existence of many different seals foils this effort to a certain extent.
- The ability of the online merchant to determine the identity of the purchaser is still the major security issue. Repudiations of involvement with online transactions can happen even 6 months after the date of transaction.
- Privacy of personal information is a big issue. In spite of Privacy Guidelines of the OECD, for example, privacy violations still occur and hamper eCommerce from developing to its full potential.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), its successor, are cryptographic protocols which provide secure communications on the Internet. ...
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organization of those developed countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and a free market economy. ...
Shopping cart systems - See also: Shopping cart software
- Simple systems allow the offline administration of products and categories. The shop is then generated as HTML files and graphics that can be uploaded to a webspace. These systems do not use an online database.
- A high end solution can be bought or rented as a standalone program or as an addition to an Enterprise resource planning program. It is usually installed on the company's own webserver and may integrate very well into the existing supply chain so that ordering, payment, delivery, accounting and warehousing can be automated to a large extent.
- Other solutions allow the user to register and create an online shop on a portal that hosts multiple shops at the same time.
- Open Source solutions can be adapted and installed on a webspace.
- There exist commercial systems that can be tailored to ones needs so that the shop does not have to be created from scratch. By using a framework already existing, software modules for different functionalities required by a webshop can be adapted and combined.
Shopping cart software is software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online, analagous to the US English term shopping cart. In British English it is generally known as a shopping basket, almost exclusively shortened on websites to basket. The software allows online shopping customers to place items...
Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) integrate (or attempt to integrate) all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. ...
A supply chain, logistics network, or supply network is a coordinated system of organizations, people, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service in physical or virtual manner from supplier to customer. ...
A Web portal is a site that functions as a point of access to information on the World Wide Web. ...
Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...
Free software The correct title of this article is . ...
A free open source shopping cart system for e-commerce. ...
Comparison -
This is a list of ecommerce software solutions that are used to create an online store. ...
History - 1990: Tim Berners-Lee wrote "The WorldWideWeb browser" using a NeXT computer.
- 1994: Netscape released the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Pizza Hut offered pizza ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opened. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. "Adult" materials were also commercially available, as were cars and bikes. Netscape 1.0 in late 1994 introduced SSL encryption that made transactions secure.
- 1995: Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com and the first commercial 24 hr. internet only radio stations "Radio HK" and Netradio started broadcasting. Dell and Cisco began to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay was founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb.
- 1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.
- 1999: business.com was sold for US $7.5 million (purchased in 1997 for US $150,000) The peer-to-peer filesharing software "Napster" was launched.
- 2000: The dot-com bust.
- 2003: Amazon.com: first-ever full-year profit.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Tim (Timothy John) Berners-Lee, KBE (TimBL or TBL) (b. ...
WorldWideWeb was the worlds first web browser and WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) HTML editor. ...
NEXTSTEP is the original object-oriented, multitasking operating system that NeXT Computer, Inc. ...
Netscape Communications Corporation was the publisher of the Netscape Navigator web browser as well as many other internet and intranet client and server software products. ...
Mozilla was the official, public, original name of Mozilla Application Suite by the Mozilla Foundation, nowadays called SeaMonkey suite. ...
Netscape Navigator, also known as Netscape, was a proprietary web browser that was popular during the 1990s. ...
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), its successor, are cryptographic protocols which provide secure communications on the Internet. ...
Amazon. ...
NetRadio (Net. ...
Dell Inc. ...
A Cisco ASM/2-32EM router deployed at CERN in 1987. ...
eBay headquarters in San Jose eBay North First Street satellite office campus (home to PayPal) eBay Inc. ...
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independent establishment of the executive branch of the United States government (see 39 U.S.C. § 201) responsible for providing postal service in the U.S. Within the United States, it is colloquially referred to simply as the post office. ...
Second version (revised 2001) of Napster logo: Cat wearing headphones. ...
Dot-com (also dotcom or redundantly dot. ...
Amazon. ...
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