Whitepapers & Articles on Human Resource development

1. Logistics
2. Payment
3. Goods delivery
4. Shopping cart systems
5. Web Shop Design
6. Virtual Value Chain
7. Information Load
8. Consumer Expectations
9. User interface
10. Market share
11. Convenience
12. Information and reviews
13. Price and selection
14. Fraud and security concerns

Online shopping is the course consumers go through to buy goods or services over the Internet. An online shop, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web shop, online store, or virtual store suggests the physical analogy of buying goods services bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.

The metaphor of an online catalog is also used, by analogy with mail order catalogs. All kinds of stores have retail online sites, comprising of those that do and do not also have physical storefronts and paper catalogs.

Online shopping is a kind of electronic commerce used for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) dealings.

The term "Web shop" also refers to a place of business where web development, web hosting and other kinds of web connected activities take place (Web refers to the World Wide Web and "shop" has an informal meaning used to explain a place of business, the place where one's occupation is carried out).

Logistics

Consumers find goods of interest by visiting the online site of the retailer directly, or do a search across many different vendors using a shopping search engine.

Once exacting goods has been found on the online site of the seller, most online retailers use shopping cart software to allow the consumer to collect multiple items and to adjust quantities, by analogy with filling a physical shopping cart or basket in a conventional store. A "checkout" course follows (continuing the physical-store analogy) in which payment and delivery information is collected, if necessary. Some stores allow consumers to sign up for a permanent online account so that some or all of this information only requires to be entered once. The consumer often receives an e-mail confirmation once the dealing is complete. Less stylish stores may rely on consumers to phone or e-mail their orders (though credit card numbers are not accepted by e-mail, for security reasons).

Payment

Online shoppers commonly use their credit card for making payments, however some systems allow users to make the accounts and pay by alternative means, such as:

• Debit card
• Various kinds of electronic money
• Cash on delivery (C.O.D., offered by very few online stores)
• Cheque
• Wire transfer/delivery on payment
• Postal money order
• Pay Pal
• Google Checkout
• U-Got Cash
• Money bookers
• Reverse SMS billing to mobile phones
• Gift cards
• Direct Debit in some countries

Goods delivery

Once a payment has been accepted the products or services can be delivered in the following ways.

•  Download: This is the method often used for digital media goods such as software, music, movies, or images.
•  Shipping: The goods are shipped to the customer's address.
•  Drop shipping: The order is passed to the producer or third-party distributor, who ships the item directly to the consumer, bypassing the retailer's physical place to save time, money, and space.
•  In-store pickup: The customer orders online, finds a local store using locator software and picks the goods up at the closest store. This is the method often used in the bricks and clicks business model.

Shopping cart systems.

•  Simple systems permit the offline administration of goods and categories. The shop is then created as HTML files and graphics that can be uploaded to a web space. These systems do not use an online database.
•  A high end answer can be bought or rented as a standalone program or as an addition to an Enterprise resource planning program. It is generally installed on the company's own web server and may mix very well into the existing supply chain so that ordering, payment, delivery, accounting and warehousing can be automated to a large extent.
•  Other answers permit the user to register and make an online shop on a portal that hosts multiple shops at the same time.
•  Open source shopping cart packages comprise eCommerce, Magneto and Zen Cart. Virtue mart is a shopping addition for the really demanded CMS Joomla.
•  Commercial systems can also be tailored to ones requirements so that the shop does not have to be made from scratch. By using a framework already existing, software modules for different functionalities needed by a web shop can be adapted and combined.

Web Shop Design.

Why does electronic shopping survive? For customers it is not only because of the high level of convenience, but also because of the broader selection; competitive pricing and greater access to information. For organizations it increases their customer value and the building of sustainable capabilities, next to the increased profits.

Virtual Value Chain.

In the physical world, the course of making value for customers is often referred to as a series of value-adding activities, a so called value chain. More recently, executives are increasingly pushed to pay attention to how their companies make value in both the physical world (value chain) and the virtual world (virtual value chain). However, the course by which value can be made in the virtual world is not the same as in the physical world. The physical world, for instance, considers information as a supporting element of the value-adding course. By different, information in the virtual world is seen as a source of value itself.

Information Load.

Designers of Web shops must think the effects of information load. Mehrabian and Russel (1974) introduced the idea of information rate (load) as the complex spatial and temporal arrangements of stimuli within a setting. The notion of information load is directly connected to concerns about whether consumers can be given too much information in virtual shopping environments. Compared with conventional retail shopping, computer shopping enriches the information environment of virtual shopping by giving additional goods information, such as comparative goods and services, as well as different alternatives and attributes of each alternative, etc.

Two major sub-dimensions have been seen for information load: complexity and novelty. Complexity refers to the number of different elements or characters of a site, which can be the result of increased information diversity. Novelty involves the unexpected, suppressing, new, or unfamiliar aspects of the site. A research by Huang (2000) showed that the novelty dimension kept consumers exploring the shopping sites, whereas the complexity dimension has the potential to comprise impulse buying.

Consumer Expectations.

Designers of web shops must think research outcomes about consumer prospect. Research conducted by Elliot and Fowell (2000) bared satisfactory and unsatisfactory customer experiences.

Satisfactory:

• Increased Customization, e.g. "capability to treat customers as individuals".
• Convenience in buying "anytime, from anywhere, to anywhere".
• Responsiveness in goods delivery, e.g. "instantaneous distribution of digital goods and services".
• Cost savings through lower prices, e.g. "site aims at giving lower costs and latest information on music scene".

• Security
• Ease of use
• Poor levels of service
• Costs
• Goods delivered did not meet expectations.

User interface.

It is significant to take the country and customers into account. For example, in Japan privacy is very important and emotional involvement is more significant on a pension's site then on a shopping site. Next to that, there is a difference in experience: experienced users aims more on the variables that directly control the task, while novice users are aiming more on understanding the information.

There are many techniques for the examination of the usability. The ones used in the research of Chen & Macredie (2005) are: Heuristic estimate, cognitive walkthrough and the user testing. Every technique has its own (dis-)advantages and it is therefore significant to check per state which technique is suitable.

When the customers visited the online shop, a couple of factors decide whether they will return to the site. The most significant factors are the ease of use and the presence of user-friendly characters.

Market share.

E-commerce goods sales totaled $146.4 billion in the United States in 2006, representing about 6% of retail goods sales in the country. The $18.3 billion worth of clothes sold online represented about 10% of the domestic market.

For developing countries and low-income households in developed countries, adoption of e-commerce in place of or in addition to conventional methods is limited by a lack of reasonable Internet access.

Advantages and disadvantages

Convenience.

Online stores are generally available 24 hours a day, and many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home. A visit to a conventional retail store needs travel and must take place during business hours.

Searching or browsing an online catalog can be faster than browsing the aisles of a physical store. Consumers with dial-up Internet connections rather than broadband have much longer load times for comfortable-rich web sites, and have a considerably slower online shopping experience.

Some consumers prefer interacting with people rather than computers (and vice versa), sometimes because they find computers hard to use. Not all online retailers have succeeded in creating their sites easy to use or reliable.

In most cases, merchandise should be shipped to the consumer, introducing a important delay and potentially uncertainty about whether or not the item was actually in stock at the time of purchase. Bricks-and-clicks stores offer the ability to buy online but pick up in a nearby store. Many stores give the consumer the delivery company's tracking number for their package when shipped, so they can check its status online and know exactly when it will arrive. For efficiency reasons, online stores usually do not ship goods directly upon receiving an order. Orders are only filled during warehouse operating hours, and there may be a delay of anywhere from a few minutes to a few days to a few weeks before in-stock items are actually packaged and shipped. Many retailers inform customers how long they can expect to wait before receiving a package, and whether or not they usually have a fulfillment backlog. A quick response time is sometimes a significant factor in consumers' choice of merchant.

In the event of a problem with the item - it is not what the consumer ordered, or it is not what they expected - consumers are worried with the ease with which they can return an item for the correct one or for a refund. Consumers may require content the retailer, visiting the post office and paying return shipping, and then wait for a replacement or refund. Some online companies have more generous return policies to compensate for the traditional advantage of physical stores. For example, the online shoe retailer Creativewebsols.com & Creativewebmall.com comprises labels for free return shipping, and does not charge a restocking fee, even for returns which are not the result of merchant error. (Note: In the United Kingdom, Online shops are forbidden from charging a restocking fee if the consumer cancels their order in accordance with the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Act 2000.)

Information and reviews.

Online stores should express goods for sale with text, photos, and multimedia files, whereas in a physical retail store, the actual goods and the producer's packaging will be available for direct inspection (which might engage a test drive, fitting, or other experimentation).

Some online stores give or link to supplemental goods information, such as instructions, safety procedures, demonstrations, or producer's specifications. Some give background information, advice, or how-to guides designed to help consumers to choose which goods to buy.

Some stores even permit customers to comment or rate their items. There are also dedicated review sites that host user reviews for different goods.

In a conventional retail store, clerks are usually available to answer questions. Some online stores have real-time chat characters, but most rely on e-mail or phone calls to handle customer questions.

Price and selection.

One advantage of shopping online is being able to quickly seek out deals for items or services with many different vendors (though some local search engines do exist to help consumers locate goods for sale in nearby stores). Search engines and online price comparison services can be used to look up sellers of a particular goods or service.

Shoppers find a greater selection online in certain market segments (for example, computers and consumer electronics) and in some cases lower prices. This is due to a relaxation of certain constraints, such as the size of a "brick-and-mortar" store, lower stocking costs (or none, if drop shipping is used), and lower staffing overhead.

Shipping costs (if applicable) reduce the price advantage of online merchandise, though depending on the jurisdiction, a lack of sales tax may compensate for this.

Shipping a small number of items, particularly from another country, is much more expensive than creating the larger shipments bricks-and-mortar retailers order. Some retailers (especially those selling small, high-value items like electronics) offer free shipping on sufficiently large orders.

Fraud and security concerns.

Given the lack of ability to inspect examine before buying, consumers are at higher risk of fraud on the part of the merchant than in a physical store. Merchants also risk fraudulent purchases using stolen credit cards or fraudulent repudiation of the online purchase. With a warehouse instead of a retail storefront, merchants face less risk from physical theft.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption has usually solved the problem of credit card numbers being intercepted in transit between the consumer and the merchant. Identity theft is still a concern for consumers when hackers break into a merchant's web site and steal names, addresses and credit card numbers. A number of high-profile break-ins in the 2000s have prompted some U.S. states to need disclosure to consumers when this happens. Computer security has thus become a major concern for merchants and e-commerce service providers, who deploy countermeasures such as firewalls and anti-virus software to protect their networks.

Phasing is another danger, where consumers are fooled into thinking they are transacting with a reputable retailer, when they have actually been manipulated into feeding private information to a system operated by a malicious party. On the other hand, dealing with an automated system instead of a population of store clerks reduces the risk of employees stealing consumer information, or dumpster diving of paper receipts. Denial of service attacks are a minor risk for merchants, as are server and network outages.

Quality seals can be placed on the Shop webpage if it has undergone an independent assessment and meets all needs of the company issuing the seal. The purpose of these seals is to increase the confidence of the online shoppers; the existence of many different seals, or seals unfamiliar to consumers, may foil this effort to a certain extent.

A number of resources offer advice on how consumers can protect themselves when using online retailer services. These include:

• Sticking with known stores, or trying to find independent consumer reviews of their experiences; also ensuring that there is comprehensive contact information on the online site before using the service, and noting if the retailer has enrolled in industry oversight programs such as trust mark or trust seal.
• Ensuring that the retailer has an acceptable privacy policy posted. For example note if the retailer does not explicitly state that it will not share private information with others without consent.
• Ensuring that the vendor address is protected with SSL (see above) when entering credit card information. If it does the address on the credit card information entry screen will start with "HTTPS".
• Using strong passwords, without personal information. Another option is a "pass phrase," which might be something along the lines: "I shop 4 good a buy!!" These are difficult to hack, and gives a variety of upper, lower, and special features and could be site specific and easy to remember.