Introduction:

Electronic commerce or e-commerce is about business transaction over electronic systems such as the internet. As globalization takes place, e-commerce has become ever more popular as it allows people to trade across space and time barriers. E-commerce is considered to be the sales aspect of e-business.

There are several models of e-commerce, like Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumers (B2C), and even Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C). We have come out with 2 different models of such websites where their primary purpose differs, and we further analyze each website’s potential benefits and disadvantage. Each website has its distinct features which allow users to maneuver through the website easily and perform their target task.

www.zuji.com

ZUJI is Asia-Pacific’s most comprehensive online travel company. It has internet travel sites and offices in five Asia Pacific countries and helps to put the world of travel at your fingertips.
This website’s objective was to provide a full-coverage online service for a holiday planner. Its destination range from popular tourist spots to unusual destinations. Besides the fixed travel packages that we came across in the olden days, this website also allows for a more innovative packages where you can choose your own destinations, choice of flight services, date and time of travel, choice of accommodation, your choice of travel insurance, etc. ZUJI also offers you a wide array of travel services to make planning your trip even easier.
Zuji has a wide range of business partners in hand, ranging from airlines companies, cruise, hotels, insurance agencies, car rentals companies, local travel agencies, etc.
In Zuji, customers don't make a hundred trips just to make arrangements for one. Their Red Hot Deals offers great travel deals that make travelling even more rewarding. Their customers also get the priority through the e-newsletter. They alert their members of travel deals before they advertise them to the public. The website’s Price Guru tracks for the lowest return airfares for up to five chosen destinations and alerts you via e-mail when it hits or betters the amount specified by you. In addition, Zuji also provides a host of search options for flights, including alerting you of free stopovers. You can even pre-select your seats on selected flights. The section of travel tools also provides everything to help you prepare for your trip such as useful destination information, a currency converter, global weather forecasts, visa requirements, flight schedules, insurance and more.
Regarding its payment method, Zuji provides a flexible and secure payment options to its customers. Pay online through your credit card, or call our Customer Service Centre and provide your credit card details. Alternatively, you can pay in person at the ZUJI ticketing office. Furthermore, online payment at ZUJI is secured by VeriSign, the global leader in online security for e-commerce payments.
For better customer service, Zuji provides a free ticket delivery for the local customers and charge a small fee for an overseas courier. Besides that, their customer care are accessible 7 days a week via email, phone or fax to answer any of your queries regarding the booking that you have made. Zuji also gives privacy and security for the information given by the customers.
The design of the website gives customer a level of satisfaction even before they start using it. The home page gives a clear outlook of what the websites are doing and it gives the range of services provided by Zuji and also the current promotional deals available. It is user friendly, even for those unfamiliar with the idea of e-commerce. The instructions given at every step are very clear and this reduces the level of difficulties that the customer will be facing. Besides that, Zuji website came in different languages at their different url. This gives the customer a more customized service and thus, more customers will be attracted to Zuji’s services.

Potential strength:

As introduced on the website, Zuji is a comprehensive online travel company which caters to busy city dwellers to arrange their getaways hassle free. They can make travel arrangements any where, any time and even make payments online through major credit cards. Tickets are even being delivered to them. Its greatest strength lies in the convenience it provides its users with. Users do not need to travel at all and could get all necessary tasks completed.

Besides convenient ticketing arrangements, accommodation, travel insurance and travel arrangements like car rental is also featured on site for the free and easy travelers. The idea of flexibility and self-preference in travel arrangements can be achieved. Conventional travel packages do not offer such personal services. Travelers would have to just drag themselves along in the tour even though they may not be interested in the destination or activities.

Zuji also offer users email or sms alert to inform them of the cheapest deals available. It even featured a deal where users could simply email Zuji if they find better pricing for similar model of vehicle being rent out by competitors, and in return, they would undercut the price by $5. This is a marketing strategy that captures bargain hunters, and assure its users that they are getting the best deals in town, thus their ability to retain its customer crowd and remain one of the most popular and trusted site for online travel bookings.

By publishing their deals online, Zuji being one of the biggest online travel company, is able to affect the pricing and marketing strategy of fellow competitors. Consumers emerge the final winner of the battle. Such competition stimulates the industry by getting industry players to be more innovative by offering exotic trips to uncommon destinations or activities. Level of service provided in the industry will also be improved too. Such arrangements have made traveling a much more feasible option for common folks to spend their holidays away. Traveling is no longer a exclusive activity.

Weaknesses:

One of the greatest flaw of Zuji is that the prices that is stated online is not the final nett price. Although we as consumers can understand that surcharges for different airlines or service charge for different hotels varies, consumers would still prefer that the prices quoted online can be as near reality as possible. If consumers are not careful in their calculations, they may end up with a more expensive traveling package after adding in all the hidden cost.

Special highlights of the site:

The special highlight of the site is the part which features details like the weather condition of the destination, the currency conversion, as well as the visa requirements. Having such features in a single website allow users to save the hassle of visiting several website just to get the right amount of information.

Another feature is the section called Market Place where products are being advertised in Zuji’s website. Setting up a separate section for advertisers actually arranges the website in an orderly fashion as there users would not experience so many pop-up advertisements and flashing advertisements at the side of the web page which is extremely distracting.


www.eBay.com

eBay is a C2C ecommerce website which allows trading between consumer to consumers. It brings together millions of people every day on a local, national and international basis through an array of websites that focus on commerce, payments and communications.

The eBay Marketplace creates a powerful online platform for the sale of goods and services by individuals and small businesses. On any given day, there are millions of items available through auction-style and fixed-price trading. With millions of buyers and sellers worldwide, eBay offers localized sites in the following markets. For examples Singapore have their own localize eBay website. eBay offer the followings types of auction:

Auction-style listings allow seller to offer one or more items for sale for a specified number of days. The seller can establish a reserve price.

Fixed Price Format allows the seller to offer one or more items for sale at BUY IT NOW price. Buyers who agree to pay that price win the auction immediately without submitting a bid.

Dutch Auctions allow the seller to offer two or more identical items in the same auction. Bidders can bid for any number from one item up to the total number offered.

Through the eBay Community hub provided by eBay, members meet and form meaningful relationships with one another via discussion boards, chat rooms, Online Workshops, eBay Groups, and the Answer Center for member-to-member interactions. Every day, members use these forums to get help from other experienced users, share their best practices with others who are just starting out, or just socialize.

eBay also works behind-the-scenes to prevent fraud and, in the event a problem occurs, eBay proactively works with law enforcement and government agencies throughout the world to enforce its policies. Rooted in the values of the marketplace, eBay's policies are aimed at offering a level playing field, encouraging open, honest, and accountable transactions, and creating economic opportunities for everyone.

To ensure safe and security transactions, eBay offers the following tools, programs, and resources:

Feedback is an indication of each user's reputation on eBay. Through positive, negative, and neutral ratings and comments, each eBay member has a Feedback score. All sellers display this score in the Seller Information box of the item listing page. eBay Feedback fosters trust between people by acting as both an incentive to do the right thing and as a mark of distinction for those who conduct transactions with respect, honesty, and fairness.

Consumers are encouraged to take up PayPal Buyer Protection shield which covered their purchase up to $500 at no additional cost. For consumers who are not using PayPal as their payment system, there is also the eBay Standard Purchase Protection Program which provides up to $200 coverage with minimum a $25 processing cost for either items that are not received or items that are not as described in the listing.

The eBay Toolbar with Account Guard enables eBay members to protect their accounts by indicating when they are on an eBay or PayPal site and warning them when they are on a potentially fraudulent, or spoof, web site. In addition, eBay helps users prevent and combat fraud by conducting online tutorials on spoof email and educating members on how to report issues to spoof@ebay.com.

The eBay security center provides guidance on buying safely, selling safely, and paying safely, as well as valuable third-party, government and law-enforcement resources. The security center is a valuable resource for all users, from first-time buyers who want information on safeguarding online transactions to high-volume sellers who want to protect their copyrights.

From now on, we will discuss the potentials, strengths and weaknesses of eBay and also any special highlights of the site.

Strengths:

First of all, let us see the strengths. One of the main strength of eBay lies on its popularity or its very well known brand. The popularity of the brand name is very important in any business because the more people know the brand, the higher the possibility that the people will do any transactions with the business, therefore resulting in higher revenue which could also be used to determine the level of success of the business. eBay is so successful that it has taken over a couple of other big businesses. eBay is the leading business for online auctions which is apparently also the leading brand in its field. Millions of people have used eBay as a marketplace to buy and sell various things ranging from small transactions for the very low value items to large transactions for the high value items. The term “eBay” has also become a generic term for online auctions. It is very common nowadays to hear people say that they are going to eBay or they are eBaying when they are going to go online to do online auctions so in other words, the word “eBay” has become identical to the activity of doing online auctions. Besides that, another strength of eBay is that since it has millions of members wanting to buy and sell things and services on the internet, it is safe to say that eBay has the most variations of goods available on the internet.

Weaknesses:

The main weakness of eBay is probably fraud which is also a common weakness for any other e-commerce websites. The types of fraud that are committed could be selling stolen goods or selling the goods that are different from the one described or even until not shipping the goods after the payment is received. Although eBay has done a lot of effort and preventive measure to make the organization to become more “fraud-proof” but still it is very hard to counter act against unscrupulous people who want to exploit the C2C business model. One of the actions that is taken by eBay to prevent fraud is by introducing its feedback system. It is basically the buyer and seller will have and options to rate each other after every transaction. The rate is in the form of positive or negative remarks. Besides giving a positive or negative rate, the customer could also leave a comment about the seller. So by doing this, hopefully the other customers will be able to judge the quality or other customers through its rating. Besides fraud, another weakness of eBay is system break down. A system break down here means a shutdown or outages that happen when the transactions is in process. However since nowadays the technology is advancing quickly, the system breakdown is a less significant problem. One last weakness of eBay is that the business can’t control the cost incurred on transactions such as delivery or credit card charges. The increase or decrease in the cost of delivery or credit card charges will totally rely on the related business. For example if visa or mastercard decides to increase cost for online transactions, there is nothing that can be done by eBay to prevent it from happening.

Potentials:

eBay has grown significantly since it was first created. Today it has become a multi billion dollar business. Even so, it still has a lot of potentials to grow even bigger. One of the proofs is that eBay has been continually buying over new firms and businesses. Some of them are Paypal and the online telephone company Skype technologies. The action of taking over other firms by eBay is done to increase the range of its services so that it will attract more consumers which will ultimately results in increasing profit. Since almost all kind of goods and services could be sold through eBay as long as it doesn’t violate the eBay regulation, in times to come as more people will realize the existence and the purpose of eBay, it is potentially even more people will use eBay as a marketplace to buy and sell things from customer to customer.


Special Highlight:

There was some controversy that happened since eBay was created. One of them is the controversy about the items put up for a bid. Once upon a time in late 1999, a man offered one of his kidneys to be auctioned on eBay. Although the events such as people trying to sell human organs are rarely encountered it is still a very interesting thing.


Conclusion

Different websites cater for different groups of customers. From the business perspective, the B2C model allows them to reach out to a larger target market worldwide. Whereas, the C2C model allows common people to start a small flagship online and it provides a wider variety of goods to consumers, not bounded to any particular products or brands.

It is almost guaranteed that a consumer is able to receive the goods purchased online and make secured payment in a B2C website as compared to a C2C website where sellers could default their agreement. There are proper channel for consumers to lodge complain if businesses default on their agreement, but the only thing a dissatisfied consumer could do to a C2C seller is to give bad ratings.

However, both models are able to minimize overheads, and are catered for the fast paced modern lifestyle.