week 10 Trust

Trust and privacy are the fundamental principle for both physical and online business. At least I do not like shop online because I do not trust online business. I prefer to go to the physical store and touch the items that I want, talk to the sales assistant and  i will feel more comfortable because the shop is unlikely to disappear for a short time. (especially for those who do not know technology and e-commerce very well)


1) What does this meant by the following statements?


Trust is not associative (non-symmetric)
It means that the meaning of trust that buyer and seller on each other are not the same. The seller will worried about whether they can get the goods they wanted and whether their information could be protected. however, buyers are worried about whether the seller will put positive comment on their website and whether the buyer will pay money to them and come back next time.


Trust is not transitive
It means that the trust can not transferred from one party to another party. In my view,  trust can be transferred between parties.  That is why reputation is so important in both physical and online business. The positive word of mouth can attract new customer and build customer confidence for the first time. However, it is important for the business itself to deliver trustworthy service to keep its reputation.


Trust is always between exactly 2 parties
It means trust is only exist between 2 parties. In terms of merchant, it is true. Below is the structure of merchant, the trust between buyers & seller and seller& supplier are independent. only two parties are involved in each trust relationship. 

However, in terms Internet escrow. the trust is between three parities.( the seller, the buyer and Escrow) Internet escrow works by placing money in the control of an independent and licensed third party in order to protect both buyer and seller in a transaction. When both parties verify the transaction has been completed per terms set, the money is released. If at any point there is a dispute between the parties in the transaction, the process moves along to dispute resolution.

Trust will involve either direct trust or recommender trust
Direct trust is happened when the party experience the service by themselves, while the recommendetr trust is the experience heard  from the other parties. It is true and I think the recommender trust comes first, because normally people do not like experience risk.


2a) Have a look at the following websites. What are some of the elements that have been incorporated to increase your trust in the sites? If there are also some aspects which decrease your level of trust describe them as well.


eBay: eBay has well known reputation.The categories and items of eBay are numerous , it gives me a sense that many buyers and sellers are involved in eBay. eBay created a community for users to chat and share, it also has customer support. Those service increased its trustworthiness, because I know if I have some question or problem. There is someone I can ask. eBay also has rating system, fraud alert system. most importantly, the eBay buyer protection increase its trustworthiness. At least, the name of the service itself is very attractive.


ANZ: ANZ is the third largest bank in Australia, the reputation it has already  let me feel it is trustworthy. In addition, the layout of ANZ site is very neat and organized very well. The picture below is what I took from ANZ site. ANZ protects customer from unauthorized transaction, fraud, unauthorized access and so on. It also provides some tips for customer protecting themselves. In addition,ANZ also has security alert and reporting fraud. 

ThinkGeek: This is my first time to know this website, the name of the website and the appearance of the website does not let me feel it is trustworthy. However, it security and privacy statements states that they will not record customer credit card data, customer sensitive information is highly protected. those may help to build trustworthiness. personally speaking, I think formal appearance of the website can increase its trustworthiness.  In this site, I found the picture below.  It says "timmy is here to help!" and the picture shows me a monkey is  there to help. It let me feel informal. But if this site has high reputation. I would not care about  those informal appearance.

Paypal: The appearance of the homepage already tell me it is trustworthy. see the picture below. Many trustworthy companies are using Paypal. The brand name of other companies provides PayPal a high reputation.PayPal has PayPal security key, buyer protection service and fraud protection tips. Those are very important for it to increase its trustworthiness.

2b) Find a web site yourself that you think looks untrustworthy
http://www.resellerratings.com/store/SJ_Discount_Tools
This is the website that I found is untrustworthy. The layout of the site is very messy. It does not looks like a real retailer. most importantly, the bad comments appeared in the homepage already told me it is untrustworthy.

wee 9 Channel conflict

Channel conflict happens when manufacturers sells their product direct to consumers over Internet through e-commerce without distributors, retailers and sales representatives.
channel conflict is always exist. so it is important that managers take a proactive action to look at how the Internet can work most effectively in terms of understanding what the customer wants, what the business want to do, how to manage and re-engineer the channel mix to provide best customer service and achieve business objectives.

week 8 online auctions

From this topic, it shows that how powerful online auction is. However, online business must provide easy and free way for both sellers and buyers to do their business, for example, free from the annoyance of complicated buying and selling process, virus. It also needs to provide services to protect customers from fraud  and establish an trustworthy platform for trading.

Q1: eBay is one of the only major Internet "pure plays" to consistently make a profit from its inception. What is eBay's business model? Why has it been so successful?

ebay's business model is brokerage model. As the picture above shows, the broker brings buyers and sellers together and facilitate their transactions. The broker (eBay) charges a commission or fees from the completed transaction according to the value of the transaction.
why eBay is so successful:
1: it brings buyers and sellers all over the world together which benefits every party. sellers can reach more customers from all over the world. it also makes buyers easier to make purchase decision because they can compare and choose who they want to deal with.
2: it brings sellers together, which can increase the competition. through competition, buyers can get better quality products with better price.

Q2: Other major web sites, like Amazon.com and Yahoo!, have entered the auction marketplace with far less success than eBay. How has eBay been able to maintain its dominant position?

Those can be understood by their difference. 

eBay and Amazon:

1:eBay can sell almost everything, Amazon limits the sellers for certain categories and items. 

2:eBay is a site for both company and individual sell for auction. while Amazon is retail companies that sales items online. people can sell anything on eBay, but on Amazon, they can sell only whatever is available on the website. if it is not available on their website, you need to recommend it to them, and after their approval, you can get the chance to list your items on Amazon. 
3:Amazon has lesser visitors. if you sell things on Amazon, you need to be patient.
4:In Amazon, you name your price. however, In eBay, you may sell things in a much higher price than you originally purchase price.
eBay and Yahoo:
The problem yahoo auction has is that sellers need to register before they list items on yahoo. sometimes the system cause problem, for example, Yahoo Auction keep signing people out when they want to list some items there.  some people says there is a problem on Yahoo auction search engine. when they put some key words into the search engine. the item does not match the words at all. in addition, Yahoo does not resolve the problem it has unless the matter brought into their attention.
see serious problem of Yahoo Auction http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080526051521AANpt9a

Q3: What method does eBay use to reduce the potential for fraud among traders on its site? What kinds of fraud, if any, are eBay users most susceptible?

ebay has ebay buyer protection to protect which is fast, easy and free of charge which illustrated in the video. eBay Buyer Protection covers items purchased on eBay with eligible payment methods that are not received or not as described in the listing. But there are also some situations that ebay buyer protection will not cover.
 see http://pages.ebay.com/coverage/index.html

ebay also has "fraud alert system" to provide customer the opportunity to make complain and solve the issue with seller.
common fraud on ebay are:
1:items are not as good as it described
2:seller did not sent the goods to customer after they pay the money
3:fake products 

Q4: eBay makes every effort to conceptualize its users as a community (as opposed to, say "customers" or "clients"). What is the purpose of this conceptual twist and does eBay gain something by doing it?

Because of the value they set as a community, it can helps ebay to increase their customers'(both seller and buyer) loyalty by provide a way to encourage buyers and sellers to communicate with, respect and trust each other. It promotes a safer, fair and trustworthy place for trading. This concept increased ebay's profit by 5% in 2010 according to its financial report.

Q5: eBay has long been a marketplace for used goods and collectibles. Today, it is increasingly a place where major businesses come to auction their wares. Why would a brand name vendor set-up shop on eBay?

eBay has nearly 94 million active users. It plays a  dominant role in online business. Users generally think they can get a more cheaper price on eBay because they can compare the product and price.

Q6. I have a few businesses, and I have used eBay for about 12 years on and off. Currently I have about 600 books listed on eBay (seller name ozrural). I stopped selling on eBay for a few years but they changed the rules this July and it is viable again (for me). What do you think changed?
According to http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/news/feeupdate2011.html. Fix Price Final Value Fee has been reduced. 

Week 7:Digital Automata

This is a very interesting topic. through digital automata, it provides a more efficient and effective way to provide customer service. as the example in eBay, it also saved cost for the company. For example,the virtual agent in eBay can give instant answers to customer which avoid thousands calls to customer service. therefore, eBay do not need to hire as much employees to answer the phone as before.

2) 

what is turing test?

A turing test is devised by the English mathematician Alan M. Turing to determine whether or not a computer can be said to think like a human brain. A human interrogator is isolated and given the task of distinguishing between a human  and a computer  based on their replies to questions that the interrogator poses. After a series of tests are performed, the interrogator  attempts to determine which subject is human and which is an artificial intelligence. The computer's success at thinking can be quantified by its probability of being misidentified as the human subject.

There is a interesting sample turing test I found in Youtub. However, the interrogator is also an artificial intelligence.

The argument against turing test----Chinese room:

This argument says that Turing test can not prove that machine can think. Searle argues that a software could pass the Turing Test simply by manipulating symbols of which they had no understanding. Without understanding, they could not be described as "thinking" in the same sense people do. Like a Chinese room, a person who can not speak Chinese can communicate with Chinese by using the instruction to select an appropriate response without understanding it. The video below demonstrates the Chinese room

3)

can virtual agent succeed in delivering high quality customer service over the web? 

I had a experience with an English learning virtual agent before. That is for practicing my English speaking skill. I can talk with the virtual agent to practice my speaking. However, it just sounds fantastic. The virtual agent's response is very slow. The other problem is I have to speak something which is demonstrated by the instruction. So I can not chat with the virtual agent like a real human conversation.

But I think virtual agent may be good in some situation, like Virtuoz virtual agent demonstrate in the Video below. The virtual agent can give instant answers to customer which avoid thousands calls to customer service.

There is another example on MyCyberTwin, when I try to register a free twin, there is a virtual agent called Sarah to answer my questions. The interesting things is that I can ask personal question like "how old are you? who is your boss?" she can response me properly and also ask me "how old are you?". She told me that The MyCyberTwin Design team now manage her brain so she can learn from the people she chat with. (she can also have some facial expression like a big smile when I told her she is pretty. : ) )

In this sense, I do think virtual agent can deliver high customer service in the future.Because the more questions been asked by customer, the virtual agent is more able to answer the question.