Background

The aim of this project is to conduct a research study on a particular e-Commerce transaction broker e-business model. In our project, we will be focusing on the evaluation of octopustravel.com.

Let’s start by defining what e-commerce represents. Electronic commerce, commonly known as (electronic marketing) e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.

A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.

Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses is referred to as business-to-business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market). Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses and consumers, on the other hand, is referred to as business-to-consumer or B2C. This is the type of electronic commerce conducted by companies such as Amazon.com.

Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the business transactions.

Octopustravel.com

OctopusTravel.com is a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) transaction broker with offices in London, Hong Kong and Los Angeles, offering 15,000 discounted hotels in 121 countries worldwide.

Purpose

Octopus, as a transaction broker, ensure the information of their sellers (ie. hotels) are as accurate as possible. They only facilitate and provide brokerage linkages to enable transactions between the buyers and sellers (hotels). As such, the buyers and sellers are responsible to ensure that their contractual obligations are carried out between each other.

The key purpose of the website is to allow users to experience a simple and quick booking process whilst receiving detailed information to allow informed choices to be made.

Designs

The layout of the website is simple. This is excellent for the users for they are All the information is neatly categorised and hence users are able to navigate and retrieve relevant information with ease.


Strength

The website caters for every budget, from 1 star to 5 stars. Special care is provided to ensure octopustravel customers receive great rates and that no hidden extra cost is incurred.

To assist users’ selection of the hotel best suited to their needs, octupustravel.com provides a full list of amenities and an independent report for each hotel. These are written by travel professionals who have personally visited the hotels and they provide an honest and up-to-date appraisal of each property.

For most properties, hotel location maps plus interior and exterior photos are provided to avoid any surprises. Furthermore, the web site is able to confirm availability of the customers' selected hotel immediately.

In addition, the website provides additional information that may be of assistance to potential travellers. This includes travel guides and maps of the relevant places of interest, travel advice and even a currency converter device.


Last but not least, the website is presented in about 8 different languages in bid to cater to travellers from all over the world. There is even a hotline provided to users who prefer phone booking services. The picture below shows the link to the currency converter device.

Weakness

Some details are not fully exemplified although efforts have been made into the websites to try to explicitly introduce and recommend certain favourable locations or suggestions on whereabouts in the country.

We assume that a consumer wishes to spend his holiday in Singapore and he happened to surf the website on the octopustravel. He found out that there is a cable car service which links to the Sentosa Island. He might have went to the exact location for the cable car ride, but to his dismay, he will be disappointed as it has recently been closed down for renovations. It is sufficient to prove that an international transaction broker might not be fast enough to update and amend the details in each and every part of the many countries. Details like the non-functioning of the cable car seems like an insignificant detail but it might lead to a great disappointment of many disgruntled individuals.

Information needs to be frequently updated to keep up with the trend and pace the country has developed. Tourists will be more than keen to learn about the new changes and development that has taken place in the country they are visiting and to greatly appreciate and give credits to the transaction broker website. Hence, there should be a form of flexibility to regenerate details and information whenever there is new information.

E-commerce transaction broker websites in general, can only suffice individuals who are IT-savvy and for individuals with the connection to the internet. Moreover, only the computer educated citizens will find this service useful. At such, individuals who are computer illiterate will find it troublesome to make their holiday hotel bookings through the internet. Looking at the consumer groups, there is a large group of citizens belonging to the aging who are the less IT-educated. The older generation is a group of consumers not to be missed out, as they are usually in their retirement age who can only spend time on leisure and travel. Hence, one of the pitfalls is it can only cater to a certain group of consumers and not the population in whole. As a result, they will still prefer to physically make their booking through a tour agency at their convenience. At such, e-commerce only has a limited market place of consumers.

Although some human interaction can be facilitated via the web, e-commerce can not provide the richness of interaction provided by personal service. For most businesses, e-commerce methods provide the equivalent of an information-rich counter attendant rather than a salesperson. This also means that feedback about how people react to product and service offerings also tends to be more granular or perhaps lost using e-commerce approaches. If your only feedback is that people are (or are not) buying your products or services online, this is inadequate for evaluating how to change or improve your e-commerce strategies and/or product and service offerings. Successful business use of e-commerce typically involves strategies for gaining and applying customer feedback. This helps businesses to understand, anticipate and meet changing online customer needs and preferences, which is critical because of the comparatively rapid rate of ongoing Internet-based change.

The octopustravel website is not sufficiently comprehensive. Bookings can only be made for hotel stays and consumers will have to find an alternate mode to book their air flights to their destination. For tourists who are making their first visit to the country will feel lost upon their landing. As booking through the internet means that they have to plan their own itinery to travel. Unless they join the tours provided by the hotels after they have checked in sound and safe.

Booking through the internet causes ambiguity. This particularly posed a problem when the booking and payment is made; however, when you arrived at the destination, the hotel has no record of you making the booking. This surfaced an important issue on the reliable and trustworthiness of the internet transaction. Cases like this might be rare, but it is equally likely to take place which dampens one’s holiday spirit. At the same time, the consumer loses faith in online booking. As the consumer will not be able to take immediate actions to make clarifications as to where their booking and money has went into until they are back in their country.

Internet transaction requires more focus on phone call services, data entry, faxing and mailings. Even confirmation of booking requires the return of an e-mail. Communication service is vital as there is no physical interaction. This leads to a need to employ a substantiate number of staffs to deal with customer service and for sales support. This subsequently results to higher transaction cost as compared to a normal retail business. On top of that, e-commerce business cannot afford to face any connection break downs which will interrupt their functioning of the 24-7-365 days of business.

Another limitation to online booking is the restricted mode of payment. Payments to the hotels can only be made by credit or debit cards through the website itself. Only the individual who possesses a credit card is able to perform the transaction. Confidentiality is important when it comes to the payment transaction details. The safety and privacy problems arises.
The following chart (Figure 1) shows some of the complaints made by Australian e-consumers.

Figure 1 Reasons for consumer complaints (Australia 2002) (EGEC, November 2003:11)


Privacy and Security

Many issues arise - privacy of information, security of that information and payment details. Concern on if the payment details (eg. credit card details) will be misused, the case of identity theft, contract ambiguity. Lastly, whether we have one or not, what laws and legal jurisdiction apply. The biggest disadvantage of e-commerce is the issue of security. Even with the improvements with data encryption, there is still the danger of someone getting a hold of your personal and financial information. Also, some sites don't have the capabilities to prove authentic transactions. If someone gets your credit card, they can go to one of these sites and purchase items without proving who they are. All they need is your name and credit card number which is already printed on the card. The internet world inevitably poses a security issue where it is a playground for the few individuals to perform illegal and fraudulent actions. The e-commerce website has to be highly secured such that no data or transaction information can be stolen. In this fast moving world, many will have the ability to commit to an unmoral behaviour and poses a threat on the online consumers. It is crucial to for the consumers to gain confidence by providing more reviews of the other tourists to reduce the fear of security threat.

The use of e-commerce can violate these ACM codes such as 1.2 which states, "Avoid harm to others." The risk of identity theft is one problem that businesses who use the concept of e-commerce of their site. A customer who is a victim of this can have their credit history ruin, even their identity stolen. Also, 1.7 of the codes states, "Respect the privacy of others" Since there is not real standard for security enforced for online transactions, many sites do not have high encryption. Many other sites often illegally collect buying statistics on their customers without permission. When taxes were a bigger issue, code 1.4 was violated. It stated, "Be fair and take action not to discriminate." Business owners complain that transactions over the internet are not tax and that businesses which did not have physical stores were being discriminated against.


CONCLUSION

It is conclusive that an e-commerce transaction broker business like the octopustravel, will certainly face a large number of general problems shared with others. The successfulness of an e-commerce transaction broker is determined by their comparative services, feedback or respond to individual consumers, the amount of information they are able to provide and the published public reviews by the consumers. As a wise consumer, we will only purchase an item or confirm a booking when all the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
In this fast moving society, more will be exposed to the e-commerce world. As we cannot forsake the convenience and the accessibility it provides. Hence, there is a serious need to work on the security issue to perfect on the e-commerce system.