The key to a successful brand lies in delivering value to the customer. Brands offer customers a promise, a set of values that will motivate them. Brands are positioned to echo the brand promise. This requires understanding customer needs. It is also important for companies to deliver a brand that reflects what customers thought they were promised. Brands are built around successful products, not …
Broadband technology refers to a high-speed, higher bandwidth connection to the Internet than is offered by a standard telephone line. The greater bandwidth of a broadband connection allows for more data to be transmitted at higher speeds than a conventional telephone line. While the definition of broadband data transmission rates vary, 144 Kbps (thousands of bits per second) represents a minimum …
Whether a company sells products or services to consumers, other businesses, or both, there are many different ways to approach the marketplace and make a profit. Business models, of which the brokerage model is simply one, are used to describe how companies go about this process. They spell out the main ways in which companies make profits by identifying a company's role during commerce an…
An extremely high-profile investor with rare job qualifications in the late 1990s—expansive patience and discomfort with technology, despite his close friendship with Microsoft mogul Bill Gates—Warren Buffett's investment success in the final decades of the 20th century knew no peer or rival. Worth about $30 billion, Buffett is one of the world's richest men, second in …
Bundling is the process of combining multiple products or services and selling them as a single package. Most major telecommunications and computer technology firms bundle at least some of their products and services. In some cases, both products and services are bundled together. For example, Internet service providers sometimes offer personal computers free to customers who are willing to sign u…
Internet-based business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce is conducted through industry-sponsored marketplaces and through private exchanges set up by large companies for their suppliers and customers. Of course, companies also sell to business customers through their own Web sites. In the early 2000s, industry-sponsored marketplaces (ISMs) accounted for only a small percentage of B2B transactions. The…
Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce has woven itself into the fabric of business and consumer relations. Major strategic alliances have been formed among e-commerce giants. Television advertisements for e-commerce Web sites are plentiful, and consumers and the business community generally seem to accept that B2C e-commerce is here to stay. Even as the United States weathered a general economic s…
The advent of e-commerce in the mid-1990s brought with it many new ways of doing business. Some were viable and others were not. While the number of ways to conduct business electronically is vast, only a handful of business models—methods by which businesses generate revenue—proved worthy enough to survive the dot-com fallout of 2000. Several variations exist within each model, and …
A business plan is a document written by an individual or group of individuals interested in launching a new business. Along with helping to determine whether or not an idea can be transformed into a functional company, a business plan is also used to secure capital and recruit executives. During the dot-com mania of the late 1990s, several analysts began to criticize the many Internet-based ventu…
Buy.com 's tagline says it all: "The Internet Superstore—Low Prices on Top Brands." Launched in November 1998, Buy.com claimed to offer the lowest prices on the Web for a wide range of consumer goods, which it offered through specialty stores devoted to such categories as computers, software, office products, wireless products, electronics, books, videos, games, music, …
C is a high-level programming language that is used to develop many kinds of software, including applications that are used during e-commerce. High-level programming languages are much closer to human language than machine language, through which computer hardware accepts commands. High-level languages eventually get translated to machine language, which is numeric (consisting mainly of zeros and …
Cahners Business Information published more than 150 magazines and 140 Web sites. It emerged as the world's leading provider of business-to-business information in the late 1990s with a subscriber base of more than 7 million. Having evolved from a consumer magazine publisher to a leading business-to-business publisher, Cahners's new focus was on operating online portals including e-I…
Call center services have changed dramatically over the past 10 years due in part to increased business taking place on the Internet. Historically, a consumer contacted a call center via a telephone number and was able to talk to a customer service representative to obtain product or service information, register a complaint, and discuss other service-related issues. E-commerce-driven technology, …
Joseph Rod Canion is the co-founder of Compaq Computer Corp., one of the largest personal computer (PC) makers in the world. Canion played an instrumental role in the launch of the world's first portable IBM-compatible PC in 1983. He also is credited with parlaying Compaq from a PC upstart into a firm largely responsible for wresting control of PC standards from IBM Corp. Canion earned a ma…
Cannibalization refers to the business process whereby engaging in one activity or practice necessarily eats into another activity or practice. Cannibalization can take place within a firm, between businesses, or across industries. Cannibalization became a crucial concern as e-commerce flourished in the late 1990s and early 2000s, since the efforts to cash in on the new commercial medium often sac…
Card-issuing banks issue credit cards to consumers. When a consumer uses a credit card to purchase a product or service, an acquiring bank, also known as a merchant bank, obtains approval from the card-issuing bank at the time of the transaction. A merchant is a business—or in terms of e-commerce, a Web site—that accepts credit or debit cards in exchange for goods or services. Mercha…
Candice Carpenter is co-founder and chairman of iVillage Inc., the largest online service for women and one of the largest content sites on the World Wide Web, with traffic rates of more than 5 million users monthly. The network, geared toward women between the ages of 25 and 54, offers 18 different channels: astrology, babies, beauty, books, computing, diet and fitness, food, games, health, home …
In mid-2001, CarsDirect.com was one of the few surviving online direct auto buying services and a brand leader in the industry. It acquired competitor Greenlight.com at the end of January 2001, while other sites—including Microsoft CarPoint's Drive-Off.com subsidiary and CarOrder.com of Austin, Texas—were shutting down. Nevertheless, CarsDirect.com CEO Robert Brisco was confid…
Stephen Case is chairman of media colossus AOL Time Warner Inc. Credited with making the Internet accessible to the general public, Case oversaw America Online's growth from a small online service into the world's number one Internet access provider, with 28 million members. One of the first profitable Internet ventures, America Online also was the first Internet-based company to be …
Casio Computer Co. Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading developers of consumer electronic devices like calculators and watches. The firm also makes digital cameras, business organizers, and pagers. One of its most popular products, the Cassiopeia Pocket PC, is the leading handheld computer using the Windows CE platform. In the late 1990s, Casio began focusing o…
Since October of 2000, CDNow Inc. has operated as a division of the Bertelsmann eCommerce Group, a unit of German media behemoth Bertels-mann AG. A leading online music retailer, CDNow sells more than 50,000 items including CDs, VHS and DVD movies, and digital music downloads. Along with making purchases, the site's roughly 700,000 daily visitors can download free music from a database of 6…
Traditional brick-and-mortar enterprises are finding it necessary to adopt some sort of e-business strategy as the Internet continues to become a powerful venue for exchanging information as well as for buying and selling products and services. According to Forrester Research, business-to-business e-commerce alone is predicted to generate $1.3 trillion by 2003. Managing the changes that go along w…
Channel conflict refers to a situation in which business partners clash in some of their operations, such as distribution networks, in such a manner that it causes stress to the relationship, effectively turning them into both competitors and partners simultaneously. In the Internet-driven business world, channel conflict is a well-known phenomenon. As the online medium has forced separate players…
Channel transparency refers to the flexibility and versatility of sales channels within a business. Channel transparency is a major goal of businesses struggling to remain competitive. This is attributable to several factors, including: the rise of e-commerce; the increasingly complex web of relationships between manufacturers, retailers, and distributors; and the variety of physical and virtual c…
Credit cards are essential components of e-commerce. Although there are other ways to make payments on the Internet, the majority of e-commerce sites receive payment for goods and services via credit card. When consumers are dissatisfied with a transaction in which a credit card was used, or if their card was stolen and used illegally, it is possible for a charge-back to occur. In this event, the …