E-Business Analysis: Models, Threats, Strategies, and Internet's Force

This document provides comprehensive answers to questions related to e-business. It begins by defining and comparing various e-business models, including private label, white label, dropshipping, print-on-demand, and wholesaling, outlining their advantages and disadvantages. The assignment then explores competitive threats in e-business, distinguishing between buy-side and sell-side threats, and analyzes Amazon's dual role as both a buyer and seller. The document further delves into selecting distributors, outlining key procedures for identifying and evaluating potential partners. It also describes failed e-business start-up strategies, such as time errors and lack of creativity. Finally, it examines the impact of the internet on e-business, discussing whether the internet acts as a powerful force or a gentle influence, and addresses barriers to e-commerce adoption, providing insights on how businesses can overcome these challenges.

E-Business Questions
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Contents
QUESTION 1..................................................................................................................................3
QUESTION 2..................................................................................................................................5
QUESTION 3..................................................................................................................................6
QUESTION-4..................................................................................................................................7
QUESTION-5..................................................................................................................................8
QUESTION-6................................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12
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QUESTION 1
Private Label
It is one of the most commonly used business models which is used in e-commerce
market but mostly it is used by online courses, training courses etc. it is mostly used for reselling
products though e-commerce (Madlberger and Matook, 2017). In these private labelers buy
generic products and sell them on Amazon simply by adding their names without any
modification. This model is simply about identifying a niche away from main competition. It has
various advantages and disadvantages as well.
Advantages:
 It helps in reducing competition where organization can buy products from suppliers without
their label on it and charge any price.
 It helps in increasing profit margin for sellers (Madlberger and Matook, 2017).
 It also helps in building builder and also helps in enhancing customer loyalty.
Disadvantages:
 In this model many times minimum order is such a large quantity that becomes a difficulty
for organizations
 Many times, e-commerce retailers order wrong products without even knowing whether their
customers will like it or not. As a result, it becomes dead inventory and difficult to sell.
 People fine it a bit difficult to trust private labelled brands.
White Label
This model also involves sourcing generic products but rebrand those products in order to
be sold as one’s own products. In many cases rebranding process simply includes adding a logo
or creation of original documents. It has various advantages and disadvantages as well.
Advantages:
 It helps in increasing distribution of products.
 Its implementation is fast and cost effective
 Reduce commercial risk and maximises profit.
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Disadvantages
 Due to over budget pricing and prolongation leads delay lead in transaction delay
 Many times it can also result in misunderstanding.
DropShipping
In recent years this model has become quite popular because it is simple and easily
accessible. In these retailers do not stock items, in fact they create list of items available from
third party suppliers and bump up prices in order to be sold so that profit margin can be
increased. It has various advantages and disadvantages as well.
Advantages:
 It enables anyone who wants to sell products online
 It does not require warehouse space, manufacturing facilities, employees etc.
Disadvantages
 It’s tough to make huge profit using this model
 There is very limited pool of products to choose from and this pool of products is available
with other sellers as well because of which competition in the market increases.
Print-On-Demand
This model is also referred as on- demand printing model that helps retailers to sell customized
products that are printed only after an order has been placed. It has various advantages and
disadvantages as well.
Advantages:
 It is easy to set up and use this model for e-commerce business.
 It has minimum inventory headache
Disadvantages
 It has lower profit margin
 Retailers have limited control over their customer’s experience
 Limited product types
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Wholesaling
It is a business model where e-commerce stores can sell products in bulk or at lower
prices as compared to general market prices (Madlberger and Matook, 2017). One of the most
famous examples of this model is Alibaba e-commerce platform. It has various advantages and
disadvantages as well.
Advantages:
 It can help in filling gaps in demand by dealing directly with small independent producers
Disadvantages
 Has tough competition like Alibaba and Amazon both uses wholesaling business model and
give each other tough competition
QUESTION 2
Part A: 3 competitive threats applied to e-business on the buy-side and 2 competitive threats
from the perspective of the sell-side
There are various kinds of competitive threats that can be applied to e-commerce
business both on buy-side and sell side that can impact business drastically. Some of these
threats are:
Competitive threats on buy side:
 Power of suppliers: Internet has reduced power of suppliers but slowly this power is
increasing as there are various number of suppliers who can supply products to customers
directly. Due to which power of suppliers is increasing (Tamilarasi and Elamathi, 2017).
 Virus and malicious software: virus that come from other external sources can impact overall
performance of ecommerce website because of which business of ecommerce website can be
impacted.
 Power of intermediatory: there are various websites that can act as intermediatory because of
which overall business of organizations is impacted.
Competitive threats on sell side:
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 Customers power and knowledge: Access to internet is one of the main threats to ecommerce
business because with the help if internet, customers are enhancing their knowledge about
different kinds of products and services and ways in which these products and services are
delivered to them through internet (Madlberger and Matook, 2017).
 New digital products/ services: It is one of the main threats that can be faced by ecommerce
websites because entering into ecommerce business does not require much investment
because of which a greater number of ecommerce business are increasing and also increasing
competition
Part B: ways in which company like Amazon, is both a buy-side and sell-side enterprise, and
how this could be interpreted as anti-competitive
Amazon is both buy side and sell side ecommerce website because It acts as a purchasing
organization where it buy products from it suppliers to be sold on Amazon (Afsharipour and
Laster, 2018). It provides a platform to small retailers or seller to sell their products on Amazon
because of which it become a buy side enterprise.
On the other hand, it acts as a supplier side organization where it sells different kinds of
products to its customers because of which it acts as a sell side enterprise (buy side and sell side
business for Amazon. 2018). De to this it is said as anti-competitive because different kinds of
sellers are provided with a chance to sell their products online and customers can also purchase
different variety of products on a single platform.
As per analysis, Amazon should consider both buy side and sell side so that they can
establish or maintain the position in marketplace. Usually, it can be developed as strong
competitors for other enterprise, who have already performed buy side or sell side. In this way, it
has more chance for business to increase production and sales in global marketplace.
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QUESTION 3
7 actions or selection procedures, in determining how business would select or identify the best
distributor and ways in which it would improve operational success.
 Cast a wide net: In starting, a wide pool of potential distributers should be established using
different sources. It will help in achieving operational success because e-commerce website
will be able to check available distributors for them (Deb, Pai and Said, 2019).
 Develop an “ideal distributor” profile: On the basis of wide net of distributors, ideal
distributor profile should be developed so that, type of distributor suitable for our business
can be identified.
 Pre-qualify and prioritize: Then on the basis of distributors provided received, a pre-
qualifying and prioritizing list should be developed so that it becomes easier for segregating
idle distributor.
 Prepare for the interview: It is another step to prepare or complete the list of questions for
meeting with distributors. In this way, it can easily completed the screening as well as pre-
qualification process. It became suitable for different key areas such as distribution structure,
number of years in enterprise, promotional and advertising activities, brands applicable in
portfolio, identifying annual sales turnover.
 Evaluate the trade: it is one of the most important aspects to identify the trade independently,
prior to meeting with different potential distributors to understand overall structure of
product in different channels. In this way, it provides the great opportunity to evaluate the
distributors brand in global marketplace.
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QUESTION-4
Describe the five failed e-business start-up strategies
 Time errors- it is one of the program error that occurs while e-business is running but
failed to manage or control the bugs within execution. It is one of the most common
failed start-up strategy that can directly crash the overall running system (Abdullah,
2019). Generally, it caused by memory leak, poorly organised the program so that
increasing invalid function and generate incorrect output within e-commerce business.
For example- running system can be shown as time error due to lack of management.
 Lack of creativity- this is the failed e-commerce start-up strategy for increasing lot of
complexities within business. When e-commerce can ignore creativity to reduce the
demand of business in marketplace. For Example- statics website cannot attract more
customer due to lack of innovation within it.
 Offering free services- When e-commerce business offering the free services for targeting
the potential consumers towards brand. But sometimes, this strategy will go with wrong
to fail the business in term of growth and development. For Example- Amazon E-
commerce provide fee delivery service.
 Over-ambition- The E-commerce business is becoming ambition that always motivating
the potential customers towards product as well as services. Afterwards, Over-ambition
can also be dangerous when putting so risk of burnout, stubbornness and even shorter
life.
 Implementation- The e-commerce business need to know about the system reliability,
privacy or security that would be increasing the issue during implementing. At certain
point, it can be failed the e-commerce business strategies due to poor implementation
management
QUESTION-5
Explain the statement “Is the internet a typhoon force or light breeze
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Yes, internet a typhoon force or light breeze that help for business to enhance their
performance and measure the capabilities at the time of online presence (Sokiyna and Aqel,
2020). The E-commerce should react to the internet in positive ways, considering the internet a
typhoon force or light breeze.
According to meteorological analogy by Mr. Andy Grove, he was chairman of Intel and
used the internet of business. Internet is one of the most important aspect for organization to
achieve significant cost saving and provide more benefits in term of growth and development.
Internet is becoming as fundamental forces in business model and driving change in today’s
world. Through internet, e-commerce business is successful innovation program that help for
influencing the business towards growth and development. Another way, it is also increased the
production as well as sales in marketplace.
Suggested that how organization can evaluate the impact of internet on its business during
pandemic or lockdown.
It is almost accepted that internet plays important role in business for increasing the
demand of product as well as service in global marketplace. E-commerce enterprise refer at
business whether it’s all about information, communication and relaxation.
During lockdown and Pandemic, it has rapidly increasingly usage of internet on the
business where every employee does their task for work from home. In this way, it helps for
working employees who are doing their work from home and protect their health condition or
situation.
In Lock down, Internet has significantly impact on the business where many customers can
select online option to purchase product from e-commerce site. In this way, it has been suggested
that internet impact on the business in context of growth and development (Rajagukguk and
Samosir, 2020). This will help for influencing the business to establish the online presence in
global marketplace.
Identifying the barrier to adopt e-commerce by potential customers and how enterprise could
counter forces.
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It can be identified the different barriers that needs to adoption of e-commerce by
potential consumers. Different barriers include lack of awareness, uncertainty about benefits of
e-commerce, lack of skills, resources and pricing issues. There are most commonly identified
barriers so that require for e-commerce business to improve the current performance of
organization.
Sometimes, it has been suggested to the organization when they could counter as internet
forces for creating online presence. Generally, it applicable in e-commerce business that help for
considering all barrier and eliminate them through internet. The organization is mainly focused
on encountered the use of online presence whereas increasing the demand of different products
as well as service in global marketplace.
QUESTION-6
Purpose of organization to implement e-CRM system and how changes made by Cisco.
The different organizations can be implementing the concept of e-CRM system because
its primary purpose is to identify, acquire and retain client. This will help for providing the
business to manage, coordinate customer interactions. e-CRM helps for organizations to increase
the value of every client interact and turn to improve corporate performance or efficiency.
According to case study, e-CRM system relates to the Cisco when offering the electronic
support for business in order to create a virtual environment (Paul Mathurin and Alain, 2020). In
this way, organization can perform the different operation through online such as tracking order,
ordering by customer (Rudansky-Kloppers and Strydom, 2020). Cisco has provided the web-
based commerce tool or platform that allows for users to configure, purchase products. In
additional, it is helping the organization in context of customer service while giving better option
related products as well as services.
Why Cisco allows B2B customer to complete online order, identifying benefits and disadvantage
or risk to business.
Cisco allows B2B customer to complete online orders and gained more benefit,
advantage to business. Cisco can be done online order process because it provides the flexibility,
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reliability for customer, who will purchase product through e-commerce business. Cisco should
provide the web-based commerce tool or platform in 1995 (Paul Mathurin and Alain, 2020). It is
considered as important aspects to reduce the complicated processing and maintain error prone
process. So as Cisco allow for users to purchase or configure item over web without any
interruption.
Benefits
Identifying the benefit for business to reduce the operating cost/price within order taking
processes. Cisco has saved the several hundred dollar every years (CHANDRAPPA, 2020 ). This
will help for increasing the productivity as well as profitability of business in global marketplace.
In additional, it is also beneficial for immediately tracking online order by customer through
online platform or tool
Disadvantage or risk
The disadvantage of business is to reduce requirement of workforce because every task
would be performed by online platform. Sometimes, it will be increasing the rate unemployment.
In most of cases, organization can also terminate the staff member without giving any notice. On
the other hand, it would be generated the security and privacy risk or threat during online
processing.
Identifying three cost saving advantage or benefit.
There are three cost saving benefits that Cisco has achieved during the implementation of
their online connection system.
 It will help for reducing the price/cost in the order taking. When online order processing
by customer. Cisco provide the benefit to reduce $1000 per years and decrease 20% of
total price of operating within the business operations (Paul Mathurin and Alain, 2020).
 Cisco has enhanced to support the technical as well as customer service. With more than
90% of technical and customer service handled through online platform. it will help for
business to minimise technical support and staff price approximately $125 million per
year.
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 Another advantage is when reduce the price within software distribution, customer can
download new software release directly from Cisco. In this way, it also saving cost $180
million in context of packaging, distribution and duplication each year.
 Web based CD-ROM saves $50 million annually in printing, distributing the catalogues
and support marketing materials (Paul Mathurin and Alain, 2020).
As per discussion, it has been justified that Cisco can configure or manage the order more
quickly, immediately identify the reducing price as much as possible. Generally, organization is
moving towards selling online its product and service. it is cost effective for maintaining the
coordination between operating price in proper manner.
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