pE-commerce (electronic commerce or EC) is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting

of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the Internet. These business transactions occur either
business-to-business, business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer or consumer-to-business. The terms e-
commerceand e-business are often used interchangeably. The term e-tail is also sometimes used in reference
to transactional processes around online retail.Business conducted through the use
of computers, telephones, fax machines, barcode readers, credit cards, automated teller
machines (ATM) or other electronic appliances (whether or not using the internet) without
the exchange of paper-based documents. It includes activities such as procurement, order
entry, transaction processing, payment, authentication and non-repudiation, inventory
control, order fulfillment, and customer support. When a buyer pays with a bank card swiped
through a magnetic-stripe-reader, he or she is participating in e-commerce.

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Electronic commerce as known as E-commerce is the process of buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging
products, services or information via computer network, including the internet. It does not include payments
made online for transactions whose terms were negotiated offline. It can be business to business (B to B) or
business to consumer (B to C).  Electronic commerce is the paperless exchange of business information using
electronic data interchange (EDI), or E-mail.
E-commerce can be defined from five perspectives. First, business process. E-commerce is doing business
electronically by completing business process over electronic network, thereby substituting information for
physical business process ( Weill and Vitale 2001). Second, services. It is a tool that addresses the desire of
governments, firms, consumers, and management to cut service costs while improving the quality of customer
service and increasing the speed of service delivery. Third, learning. It enables online training and education
schools to the customers. Fourth is collaborative which is framework for inter- and intra organizational
collaboration. Final is community, which provides a gathering place for community members to learn, transact,
and collaborate.
There are few reason that the companies use E-commerce to support their business. First, it enables the
company's business to reach the global market. It can cater demand for both the national and international
market. By using E-commerce, it can allow the company business operate their business 24 hours a day even
at holiday or weekends. So, it can significantly increase the sales and profit.
Besides that, companies also can reduce some costs by using E-commerce. It is because companies can run
with less employees such as sales staff .Other than that, companies also can reduce the cost of phone bills,
utility costs and others.
Furthermore, it can let the company gain the loyalty of the customers. Through the E-commerce, companies
can always make it to customer's wish and fulfill the customers' requirement with fast and reasonable cost.
Customers will feel satisfy with the service of the company, so it will gain the loyalty from the customers that
will increase the sales and profit.
General situation in Malaysia
Internet start introduced in Malaysia since 1990 when Internet Service provider (ISP) JARING introduced in
Malaysia. Follow by TMNET in 1996, the growth in the number of internet hosts in Malaysia increase. In March
2002, 21 percent of Malaysia's populations of 22.2 million people were internet users. (Nua, 2002). However,
the application of e-commerce just starts at year 1998. There was a growth rate of users from 303.9% (2000-
2007) in Malaysia itself.
In Malaysia, government and business bodies have put much attention on E-commerce. Since 1997, Inter-
Agency task Force on E-commerce established to develop national strategic action plan, and suggested that
the security, encryption technology, policy measures to promote e-commerce and transaction tracking system.
Although E-commerce in Malaysia is still in infancy, it is a potential business for today's market. Compare to
USD 22.15billion in 2009, it is grow about 32% during 2010 which is USD 29.24billion. Most revenues of E-
commerce are made by airlines, travel and financial sectors. In 2009, there are more than 8million internet
users used transaction online which is more than half of Malaysia's internet users.
However, on the other side, the E-commerce business in Malaysia is still far from maturity level. The general
public still does not have the habit to online shopping. The Malaysia market lacks of smart customers which will
cause customers have the high risk of deceived. Besides, Malaysia lack of giant suppliers in E-commerce
market such as Amazon. They could well kick starts local e-commerce mass adoption. Giant suppliers will
have the ability to pull the financial resources to educate the local public and gaining trust from their customers.
For smaller or medium sized online retailers, they faced the challenge on how to attract traffic to their online
store. It is hard to pull traffic from the public unless the product sell is something niche.
From the pie chart above, 66% of Malaysian interested in E-commerce is males while males below 30years
own the 42% of E-commerce market. However, there is only 4% of people used internet to make money, 26%
just start their business and a total of 70% of people are new to the E-commerce. Besides, 53% of people
willing to start do their E-commerce business now and 17% will just have the curious to know more about E-
commerce.

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What is E-Commerce? Explain with different perspectives.

Ans:

There are several ways of looking at e-commerce:

Communication: It is the ability to deliver products, services, information, or payments via networks like the
internet.

Interface: E-commerce means information and transaction exchange: (Business to business, Business to

consumer, Consumer to consumer, and business to government.)

Business process: E-Commerce means activities that support commerce electronically by networked

connections. For Example business processes like manufacturing and inventory etc.

Online: E commerce is an electronic environment that allows sellers to buy and sell products, services, and
information on the internet. The Products may be physical like Cars, Computers, Books or services like news
or consulting.

Structure:

Ecommerce deals with various media: data, text, video, web pages, and internet telephony.

Market: E-commerce is a world wide network. A local store can open a web storefront and find the world at
doorstep- customers, suppliers, competitors, and payments services, Of course, an advertising presence is
essential.