Week 11 Tutorial Questions (25/5/11)

Exercise - select five applications that you have not heard of before from Popular URL's Web 2.0 awards or the webware awards and describe on your blog page how they could be useful to a business.

1. Craigslist - This site could be good to advertise the renting of a property or the sale of used goods, and it states it normally has a higher turn around than eBay (impressive!). Businesses could turn to using Craigslist like they do eBay.

2. Dimdim - This site would be good to meet up with people without having to travel. This would make conferences about online businesses simpler and more time efficient for online business owners or potential investors.

3. Elance - This would be useful for online businesses looking to hire specific people with specific knowledge and experiences. It also takes care of the accounting and payments so the business owner can focus on the work being done.

4. Etsy -  A great idea for people working from home making handmade goods, to sell their wares online. Would make it much ewasier for Grandpa to sell his lathened woodwork or for Nan to sell her mittens.

5. Mint - This site could help a small business manage their finances and it interacts directly with your bank accounts to keep the information up to date. This is a good idea for the lazy bookkeeper.

Week 10 Tutorial Questions (18/5/11)

1) What does this meant by the following statements?

Trust is not associative (non-symmetric): This means that the buyers and sellers of a transaction may not have the same trust levels. Just because one party is trusting does not measn the other is.
Trust is not transitive: This means that trust does not sinmply p[ass from one customer ro another. Word of mouth does play a big role on a businesses' popularity however it does not decifer trust to its target market, thats is the role of the business itself.
Trust is always between exactly 2 parties: This is becasue the party that you are directly dealing with as a customer is who you are repolying on for good service. You do not complain to Heinz when you buy a rotten can of soup from Coles, you complain to the Coles store because you expect Coles to deliver high quality food to you as a distributor. The trust is between the customer and who they're buying off.

Trust will involve either direct trust or recommender trust: Direct trust is built from personal experiences and recommender trust is from those who have had a good experience that has enabled them to build trust with the business which they have then expressed directly to you in an influential manner. We do reply on word of mouth when someone tells you how well they were looking after by the plumber when the toilet exploded, you go to that plumber when your toilet explodes because you know they will come straight away like they did with your friend, a previous customer of theirs.

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.

http://www.ebay.com.au/
Ebay's wesite has links to "help", "security centre" and "buyer protection" on the first page. This is reassuring to buyers on eBay as they feel like if something does go wrong in a transaction they can seek help on the website and know exactly where to go oin the site itself. There is no iformation on the first page about "seller protection" however, which to me should be a link held on the first page as just as many people sell on eBay as they do buy.

http://www.anz.com.au/
ANZ's website has links to a news feed about security alerts and also has a link ot the security and privacy statement on the first page. It comes across as secure even with the logo of a padlock next to the login link. This site seems secure and trustworthy as it looks very much alike a bank'd website would.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/
This website'sw link to customer services gives a list of things you need to know when bying online such as exchanges, shipping and product information. It seems to have a sense of humour which draws you into liking it and wanting to explore the weird and wacky things they sell online. This is a trust worthy site.

http://www.paypal.com.au/
Paypal's site gives information about online safety, paying online and selling online. There's a link that shows you how to shop online without giving your personal details. It is a basic site that gets to the point and I feel it comes across as trustworthy. However you need to be aware of the fake Paypal sites too, so always check for the abn number and copyright details at the bottom of the website.

2b) Find a web site yourself that you think looks untrustworthy.

https://www3.netbank.commbank.com.au/netbank/bankmain appears to be dodgy to me as it has a different URL than this link: https://www.my.commbank.com.au/netbank/Logon/Logon.aspx which I got off the official home page of the CBA, but when you compare the webszites there are only very subtle differences is displayed text and the highlighted features of the pages are different too, forexample the "register now" link is completely different. I would not use the first link, I think it is fake.

Tutorial Questions Week 8 (4/5/11)

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 is a general consumer auction, much like an english auction where highest bidder wins. It is so successful because you can buy just about anything on there and its all in the comfort of your own home.

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?

The general consesus on forums is that Amazon is where the scam artists purchace electronic goods.... However its safe to presume that eBay is the most popular as it is so much bigger in size, and when you think of online auction you  think of eBay automatically. It has that popularity and world-wide acceptance. Plus, it is the biggest online auction site, with the widest range of products for sale.

 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?

Out of personal experience from a family member, there are scam artists who wil email you with fake paypal emails saying that such an amount is in your account when infact it is not. They ask you to transfer money to them through western union money transfer and it appears that that is in your paypal however it is not. A good lesson to learn that to read an email that is legitimate will have verification codes and the ABN number on every email.

I know a few people who have been caught out and lost money (hundreds!) through this, and people who have picked it up straight away. It is not uncommon for an overseas person to want to purchase your goods so naturally people think they're just making a sale. In this scenario, ebay only asks you to report the person who you think is pulling a dodgy act. Paypay asks you to forward suspicious emails to spoo@paypal.com. However, once money has been sent to these fraudsters, you cannot get it back.

Therefore there is not much you can do, nor that eBay can do about it. You just have to be aware that they are out there and know the signs when you are selling something yet they ask you to pay them..?!

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?


Creating the sense of community can create a repect for others online - they're all trying to buy or sell something or run a business. Therefore you're not just an average customer, you are entering a community and have rights to uphold and expect peoiple to do the same to you. If the experience is not one of "yet another client of eBay" then you feel more satisfied with using the site to buy and sell goods. It keeps the people coming back, and perhaps why eBay is the most successful site at online auctions.

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?

The amount of people that flow through eBay, whether they're looking to buy or looking to snoop at whats on the market, is a huge amount and the sitings of products for sale will get plenty of coverage (perhaps a type of advertising?) creating a great landscape for the business vendor to sell his wares. If you ask someone "do you know where i could find this", they often repy with "have you had a look at eBay?"... well i know my dad does anyway.

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?

They incorporated more security for payment methods for both buyers and sellers, using BPay for example.

Tutorial Questions Week 7 (13/4/11)

1) Write a one paragraph describing the Turing test and another paragraph describing an argument against the Turing Test, known as the about the Chinese room.

The Turing Test is the testing of a machines ability to display intellectual behaviour. There is ahuman judge who engages in a natural conversation with a himan and a machine (trying to apper human). If the judge cannot tell the machine apart fromt he human the machine has passed the turing test. It was introduced by Alan Turing in 1950 where he wanted to consider if machines could think or play the imagination game.

An argument against the Turing Test is that  there should be extra conditions that are logically necessary for intelligence, beyond what is displayed in the Turing Test which are just behavioural properties exhibited. This argument denies that passing the test proves an agent as intelligent as there is more to being intelligent that just behavioural displays.

2) Can virtual agents succeed in delivering high-quality customer service over the Web?

Depending on the context of the customer service, it may give a high standard of customer service and it may not. For example, if it is simular to when you ring a company like Telstra and speak to a computer for ten minutes (including five minutes of repeating yourself because it doesnt understand what you're saying) then it will be a low standard and not used at all as it will only frustrate the customers.

If it can answer questions immediately say, via an email sen to your email account once the question has been asked then it is no different than waiting for a person from the company to read your enquiry on the net and answering accordingly.

The customer service needs to be immediate and relevant in its answers. This however does seem to me, a hard task to achieve. I dont know much about the internet and automata (this is the first time ive heard of it) however it does seem to be a daunting task and I feel it will take a long time before it can be utilise successfully on the web for customer service. There are still a lot of people who refuse to have mobile phones and computers in their home. The still go to the bank teller when they need cash and they only pay with cheques. Until everyone is at ease with the idea o technology then I dont feel customer service can be relied upon with automata agents.

Tutorial Questions Week 6 (6/4/11)

Question 1

a) What experiences have you had with shopping online?

Ive only ever purchased online when i bought the prescibed text book for this unit on the site that Ian Knox recommended we use.

b) Describe a good experience.

Buying this book was so easy and i had the book the next week - from the UK!

c) What did you like about the online store you used?

The store was easy to use and I could search other books and ask them to notify me when they become available to purchase.

d) Describe a bad experience.

A bad experience is (i have experienced through family and friends) when you purchase something and the product you get in the end is far less the quality you expected - such as used cars on eBay. Also, when after winning the object on eBay, you contact them and they reply with "Oh, sorry I sold it to my brother a week ago" ...????? Those are definately bad experiences.

e) What problems did you have with the online store?

I have had only one problem with the online store I used to purchase a text book - the other text books i need are no available still! (good luck i bought them from Uni's book store.)

f) What features make an online store more appealing?

The easy access without going down the stree, finding a park and being disappointed when they dont have the book i stock and you get a parking ticket to top it off.

g) What features make an online store less appealing?

The lack of personal contact and noone there to explain what this or that actually means, or to ask questions and instantly get answers.

h) Should we expect to see the prices of goods and services rise or fall due to the migration of consumers online?

Online prices will rise as demand increases and in-store pirces will fall as demand decreases.

Question 2

a) The dispersion of prices (that is, the spread between the lowest and highest price for a particular product) will narrow.

I agree with the findings of Bailey (1998a, 1998b), Brynjolfsson and Smith (1999) that there is no smaller price dispersion on the net as opposed to in the physical markets as on the net there is less chance for ill advised  price choices as customers can browse more stores online than they can in person.

b) The importance of brand names will decrease.

I personally feel brand names wil decrease because there is less of a material importance to online shopping than there is to physical stores. It will come down more to best quality at the best price.

c) Price competition will make all products cheaper.

Price competition does force competitors within the market to make their prices as pleasing as possible to attract the most market share. However, some producers may be stubborn and not change their prices (an unwise move, but none the less not unfathomable).

d) Digital markets will become dominated by a handful of mega-sites, like Amazon.com.

I dont feel that this will happen.... when i go to look for something online i google it. This doesnt always lead to Amazon.com. Nor will it lead to the more competitive price, therefore i dont believe this will happen.

e) How do you think the balance of power between buyer’s and seller’s will change?

I feel buyers will have the power still. If online buying is not working out and people feel they are being ripped off, they will go down to their local hardware store or supermarket instead.

f) Prices are clustered online.

Prices may cluster as online the profitable items are offered online, but it does not mean that the price cispersion will be effected.

g) Online prices are elastic. ( i.e. immune to change up and down with demand)

Online prices shoud have a quick reponse to demand as they should be monitored daily with each order being processed. They could become elastic as bargainging power is decreased, but they will respond to interest rate rises and disposable income decreases.

h) Online prices are generally transparent (the extent to which prices for a given product or service are known by buyers in the marketplace.).

Yes, the prices are transparent if they are displayed nest to the item. If for example you go to an accreditated Dog Breeding Kennel site, you can make a request to purchase a puppy in the next litter and they will email you back with a price and the availabilty. This is not transparent at all - little is known about the product (puppy) as the sexes of the litter, the number of the litter and the cost of the litter is not known when looking at the site.

Question 3

a) What types of m-commerce services does your cell phone provider offer?

With Telstra, i can pay my bills online. It is not as simple as paying through Postbillpay.com, however it is still usable. You can now activate sim cards and change prepaid plans online - no ringing telstra to be on hold for ages!

b) Which of these services do you use?

I have activated sim cards online and I also pay my bills online.

c) What types of transactions do you perform through your cell phone or other wireless device?

I do not perform transactions through my mobile as the internet is hard to operate on it. On my wireless internet though i can check my usage, pay bills and anything else available to me online.

d) What types of transactions would you like to perform, but are currently unable to?

I would like to be able to check my bank balance online instead of driving to the atm every pay day, or when i need to know my balance. It would be handy to set up an account i cannot touch through my eftpos card. To fix this however is simple - see my local bank tellor!

e) What is your opinion of wireless advertising/mobile marketing?

I like wireless advertsing as I am a member of several stores in Ballarat and they text me when there is a sale on! I do not like getting a call from Telstra (on my optus phone mind you!) where I pick up and a computer starts trying to sell me something! It has its ups and downs. And you cn always ignore texts and phone calls. It does get across to a lot of people tho - most have a mobile these days!

Tutorial Questions Week 5 (30/3/11)

Business Models:

   1. Brokerage model. This model is about the agent that brings buyers and sellers together to facilitate transactions. Their role is apparent in B2B models, B2C models and C2C models. They charge a fee for their brokerage, which can vary depending who the broker is. An example of a very common broker is eBay.

   2. Advertising model. This model is an extension of the media broadcast model. It is a website with content and and services available with a mixture of advertising usually int he form of banner ads. This model works most effective on high-traffic websites. An example of this is Google which uses this model in a query-based paid placement as well as content-targeted advertising.

   3. Infomediary model. This model is where a site is an information intermediary; collecting data about consumers and their habits and also producer information for consumers to make decisions about a product. An example of this is Netratings which is an audience market research agent.

   4. Merchent model. This model consists of wholesalers and retailers of goods or services through price lists or auctions. An example of a merchent is Amazon.com.

   5. Manufacturer model (Direct model). This is where a manufacturer can reach its buyers diectly and focus on efficiency, customer service and customer needs.

   6. Affiliate model. This models offers purchase opportunities where ever people may be surfing by offering financial incentives (% of profit) to affiliated partner sites. Variations include banner exchange, pay-per-click and revenue sharing. Amazon.com is an example of this model as well.

   7. Community model. This model's revenue can be based on the sale of ancillary products and services or voluntary contributions or contextual advertising and subscriptions for premium services. The increase of social networking has come about because of the popularity of this model. An example would be any social networking site available on the net, such as Friendster.

   8. Subscription model. Thus model is where users are charged periodically to subscribe to the service, for example Listen.com.

   9. Utility model (On-demand model). This model is a "pay as you go" set up where usage is metred and u pay what you use. This set up is common in the US for internet usage. Another example is Slashdot where access is purchased in metered portions.

Global Information Technology Report 2009-2010


1) What is the Mobile phone use /100 population - compare Australia, USA, China, India, Your Country

Australia - 105.0, USA - 86.8, China - 47.9 & India - 29.4. I live in Australia.

2) Internet use / 100 population - compare Australia, USA, China, India, Your Country

Australia - 74.0, USA - 74.0, China - 22.3 & India - 4.4. I live in Australia.

3) Compare main strengths and weaknesses of Australia or your home country in the survey

The strengths of Australia are that the highest ranked figures were level of competition index (1/133), the time required to start a business (2/133) the e-participation index (2/133) and the number of procedures to start a business (3/133). These are very high indicating the easy access into the Australian market. The weaknesses were the lowest ranks in mobile cellular tariffs (76/133), fixed telephone lines tariff (82/133) and business monthly telephone subscriptions (97/133). This indicates the lack of mobile tariff and line subscription in Australia. Perhaps because of the introduction of pre-paid mobiles?


4) What does the survey suggest to you about the Information Technology readiness of Australian business compared to Australian consumers?

This information supports the readiness of Australia to enter into a higher Information Technology usage. All our strengths support the use of technology and we should get on the bandwagon whilst our economy is booming!

Tutorail Questions Week 4 (23/03/11)

   1) Looking at the site useage, what does the terms visits, page views and pages/visit mean? What does the bounce rate mean and does it vary

much from day to day?

Visits are the number of times your visitors has been to your site (unique sessions initiated by all your visitors). If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session.

Page views indicate the total number of pageviews for your site when applied over the selected dimension. For example, if you select this metric together with Request URI, it will return the number of page views over the returned result set for the Request URI for your report.

Pages/visit is the average amount of pages a visitor requests

   2) Now look at the traffic sources report. What are the three sources of traffic and where has most of the traffic come from?

the sources of traffic come from direct traffic, referring sites and search engines. This websites traffic mainly comes from direct traffic.

   3) What was the most popular web browser used to access the site?

Google.

   4) How many countries did visitors to Foliospaces come from and what were the top four countries?

 There were 62 visiting countries and the top four were USA, Australia, UK and Canada respectively.

   5) Having clicked every possible link on my analytics, make a few comments on (a) What you can track, (b) What you can track over time and (c) What you can’t track. 

This site allows you to track the amount of visitors and visits, which countri th visit was from, the source of the traffic, average time spent on site, the browser used to access the site and the internet provider of the visitor.

Over time the site allows you to track visits, visitors, pageviews, pages/visit, average time on site, bounce rate, country of origin of access.

It does not allow you to track the personal information of the people accessing the site, eg demographics. Now does it let you see what page they diverted to after being on your site. 

   6) What do the following terms mean? These are just a few, you may like to add some more and perhaps include them on the Moodle glossary.

high bounce rate - a large amount of visitors leave the site after seeing one page

key words - the main dialogue used on the site

Average Page Depth - number of people that visted a specific site

click through rate - percentage of impressions that resulted in a click

click - amount of people that clicked on advertisement, whether or not they entered the site as a result.

Cookie - small stream of data that’s passed between a web site and a user’s browser

Impression - when a site's advertisement loads on your computer

Hyperlink - a link that has a hidden URL within it that relocates you to a specific web page when clicked

Navigation - links on a page to send you to another page within the website

Pageview - visits to the webpage

Session - A period of interaction between a visitor's browser and a particular website. When a user visits a page on your site, a session is established. The session expires after 30 minutes of inactivity by the user

Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors) - The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the visitor's computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent.

URL - universal resource locator

Visitor - person who goes onto your website

Visitor Session - Average amount of time that visitors spend on the site each time they visit

Comparison shopping - people access several sites to decide between products illustrated on the sites.