Nowadays, most of the people would like to purchase goods through internet as the price would be different and it is convenient for the consumers. However, online purchasing is not 100% safety. Many people, especially teenagers had been cheated when they performed online purchasing. Some companies will attempt to deceive consumers by displaying cheaper products online in order to attract and seudce people to make a transaction with them. After the consumers made the payment, they won’t receive the goods they had ordered. Thus, it was very important for us to be more cautions while buying goods featured on the internet.
In fact, it is advisable that consumers should purchases goods in well-known website such as ebay, amazon and so on. In the other words, don’t make a big deal in the website you are not familiar.
Besides that, customers should look at the online merchant's refund/return and customer privacy policies and beware of online merchants who do not prominently display refund/return or privacy policies.
On the other hands, customers would look for the security alert and the lock icon when making online purchases through Internet Explorer, which will pop up "security alert" when you connect with a secure server. Moreover, consumers may look for the addresses that start with “https” which means that the information you fill out in an ordering form will be encrypted and securely connect to the merchant.
In conclusion, due to the development in technology, online purchasing becomes popular and well-like. However, there are a lot of traps in internet and users should be aware of it and be cautious while performing online purchasing.
Corporate blog is an effective communicate medium that used by organization to meet their organization goals. Corporate blog enable organization to interact with customer more directly and respond immediately to their question.
There are few TYPE of corporate blog:
Internal blog This is the blog where just can access through the organization intranet by any employee.
External blog This kind of blog is publicly. It’s usually used by organization when there is a release of new product and responds to the customer question.
CEO blog This is the discussion blog among the CEO
Steve Rubel , a vice president of client services at CooperKatz& Co is an expert in blogging and he has suggested a FOUR step formula :
1. find influencers in the subject matter.
2. Listen to people, recognize their needs, and subscribe to other blogs to better understand the customer
3. engage people in dialogue through email and have a blog to join in the discussion
4. give people authority, which helps bloggers achieve their goals while creating loyalty customers
Advantages :
deliver a company message to customer more directly
get faster feedback from customer through blog
enable organization more understand the customer needs
more participation of employee in discussion
Disadvantages:
employee may reveal too much organization information to customer
hard to predict the reaction of the customer
hard to manage : debate between customer and employee
E-government (also known as electronic government) is a diffused neologism used to refer to the use of information and communication technology to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.
Many countries are implementing e-government including Malaysia. The implementation of e-government started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by the Malaysia Government in 1996. It has improved both how the government operates internally as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. In addition, it seek to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses, at the same time, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement.
“Roadmap for a tech enabled government” is one of the visions of Malaysia Vision 2020. The vision focuses on effectively and efficiently delivering services from the government to the people of Malaysia, enabling the government to become more responsive to the needs of its citizens.
There are 7 pilot projects of the Electronic Government Flagship Application:
Project Monitoring System (SPP II)
Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)
Generic Office Environment (GOE)
Electronic Procurement (EP)
Electronic Services (E-Services)
Electronic Labour Exchange (ELCX)
E-Syariah
Government-to-Citizens
The Government-to-Citizen (G2C) relationship refers to services provides to fulfill citizens’ needs. Citizens seek more reliable and accessible services from the public sector. This implies that citizens should be able to carry out variety of tasks that involves multiple agencies, from a single access point. Increased interactions between government and citizens encourage citizens to become more participative thus allowing the government to respond to their needs more effectively. This category of relationship desires electronic services and infrastructure.
The myGovernment portal (http://www.malaysia.gov.my) acts as one-stop source of Malaysian government information and services for the citizens. Below are some online access services provided by government to citizens:
Electronic driver’s license issuance and renewal
Integrated passport and visa processing
Electronic tax payment and processing
Smart traffic fine payment
Electronic road tax and vehicle registration
Electronic EPF/SOCSO management
Easy employment licensing/permitting
Electronic IC renewal
Electronic quit rent processing and payment
Smart commercial vehicle licensing/permitting
Electronic pension processing
Integrated low cost housing management
On-line consumer information
On-line health information
Electronic public complains information
Electronic school/higher education registration
Electronic polling/survey
There are some recent surveys about e-government adoption in Malaysia, stated that the usage of e-government service is growing but at a small pace. In 2003, only 15% of Malaysian has used the Internet to access online government services compared to 12% in year 2002. In addition, there are some challenges faced by government in adoption of e-government services. The main challenge in e-government in Malaysia is the technological change, which includes issues such as standards, data integration, legacy maintenance and privacy and security. The key priority is to improve the core government applications and integrating more services across agencies. Simultaneously, market the e-government services to the public and businesses.
Related Links:
e-government
e-government in Malaysia
electronic Government in Malaysia
Implementation of electronic government in Malaysia: the status and potential for better services to the publicMalaysian
www.blooming.com.my is the local e-commerce site that has been established in Malaysia and began operations since 1981; it has been grown from a small retail shop to its present set-up five retail outlet and now with its e-commerce operation. It allows the Internet users to have online Internet trading for the product such as flowers, baskets and etc. There have many types of the flower such as hand bouquets and potted flowers. During the special occasion like Valentine Day, Mother Day, Father Day and so on flower always will be the best choices to show the loves to their beloved. Furthermore, the basket arrangements such as fruits baskets, gourmet baskets and various types of hampers, and snacks such as cookies, cup cakes, cakes, quiches, chocolates, candies, wines and pies and other products.
product of blooming.com.my
Let Blooming Florist be your first choice for
FLOWERS.
Worldwide delivery, satisfaction guaranteed. The delivery of product will be on time and satisfied the customers. The procedures are been stated in the web pages. In addition, this websites provided many sample of the flowers and baskets, customers can choose from the picture show in the websites. Besides that, the price was stated below of each sample, this convenient the customer to make comparison the price of the product. Although, the site design of this website is simple and dullness as it does not emphasizes on the layout and does not draw the attention of the customers but it is having the colorful and unique designs of their products which are quite attractive. Due to the website having a lot of pictures of the products, the download speed is quite slow. This website also provided the floral arrangement tips, floral care, and popular card message and so on to the customers. Moreover, this website is user friendly as it has FAQ (frequently asked questions) section that answers the consumers about the problems relating to placing an order and delivery guidelines. There is no doubt that blooming.com.my was websites that provided the Quality product and Quality services.
www.blooming.com.my
It also provides the search engine to help the users easily find what they are interesting in. Consumers can also choose to shop either by products or by occasions as they have arranged it in their home webpage. There also have the some special promotion for the flowers are stated in the home webpage where this is one of the strategic to attach more customer. Moreover, also provides customer with a secure shopping carts so that customer can shop safely. Customer can verify the product through the VeriSign Secure Site. Consumers can make the payment for the purchases in various ways such as through online credit card, online banking, mobile payment, pay using Kawanku ATM, open bill payment and also cash payment in their retail outlets.
MOBILE PAYMENT SYSTEMS in MALAYSIA: Its POTENTIALS and CONSUMERS' ADOPTION STRATEGIES
Mobile payment system(also known as mobile web payments or WAP billing) allow individual to make the payment through their mobile phone, smart phone, Personal Digital Assistant(PDA) or other such device. It can use to purchases either digital or physical goods. Digital product refers to the intangible products that can be transfer over a digital network such as songs, games and wallpaper for mobile phone.
Mobile payment is developing fast in Malaysia such as MobileExec and Mobile Money. Both of the system allows customer to pay for their goods or services through a mobile device without having cash on hand. Besides that, the other companies in Malaysia also come out with various services by applying the same concept such as Maxis, Celcom and so on.
Thus, have a great potential as the customers are more comfortable with this payment system. On the other hand, consumers can make transactions in their house as it is not necessary for them to go to the shopping centre. For example, the customers can book cinema ticket through their hand phone. Besides that, as a matter of convenience, the customers no need go to find ATM machines when they have insufficient cash on hand. Hence, it will continue to continue to growth as consumer’s confidence on mobile payment increased.
For consumers’ adoption strategies, most of the companies offer bonus point, promotion, rewards and various incentives to build up the loyalty of the customers. For example, Hotlink will give extra credit to Hotlink users with certain calls or points.
From the link above,to the ecommerce’s blog, we can know that many offline businesses have started to move their step into electronic retailing (e-tailing). E-tailing simply mean retailing conducted over the internet, online. The e-tailing most likely is sale of goods and services to individuals (B2C). E-tailing has become a competitive advantage to the business as the internet became so important and popular nowadays. An example of e-tailing is the Amazon.com which is also the king of retailing. Amazon has continuously expanding and enhancing their product selection from books to electronic product to other nonretail activities. Some special features such as amazon allows customer to send and receive email to the book author has retain the loyalty of the customer.
From the blog, we can see that various business, even fisherman in Tanjung Dawai also go to e-tailing. We can’t deny that internet already play an important role in business. It also increases the standard of living of the fisherman while benefit them in term of profit.
In order to survive in e-tailing, it’s not just creating a website online and do then carrying out the business. It must also provide some special services or features in order to differentiate their website from other. From the example, we can see that online shopping is being top of the e-tailing market. However, many consumers are worrying about the size of clothes that they purchased does not fit them . To overcome this problem myShape.com allow consumer to purchase personalised clothing collection matched with their style and fit preferences and body dimensions.
E-tailing can enhance your business. Business in the offline market can consider starting their business online. Online market is globalisation and we can attract many customer. In additon, setting up a webpages is much more easier compare with open a physical outlet. However, from our opinion, physical market is equally important for us. For example, Dell which is well known as selling personal computer and laptop through online is already conducting their business in the offline market. As some consumer will be more confident and convincing in the product in the offline market. Offline market reduces the fraud and other security issues in the internet. Moreover, it also reduces the unemployment rate. Therefore, the better way is to make a combination in your business through physical market and online market.
Consumer likes to purchases an item or service through credit card anytime anywhere. The convenience of using credit cards has stimulated the usage among people which has become a big social problem as it can lead many people into bankruptcy. Debts will increase when the consumer unable to pay the company for the money he or she spent. There have several reasons that cause the credit cards debt, such as following:
Poor Money Management People are unconscious in conducting a monthly spending plan and do not keep track of monthly bills and that why individuals have accumulated many credit card debts. They usually spent on the unnecessary or no value items and when there is a need to purchases the required items people may short of cash and use credit card frequently. There might have some charge on purchasing using credit card, people tend to pay for the interest on these purchases every month. Thus, it end up with debt when they unable to make payment.
Lifestyle
Nowadays, people are likely to live in the lifestyles that they preferring even they may spend more than they earn. Therefore, they find that using credit cards is the one of the way to afford their lifestyle. For example, they may prefer to have luxury living style such as to having decoration, limousine, having meal in high-class restaurant, braded clothes and so on which are the causes of credit card debt to be a lot when they unable to pay the debts.
Consumption Due to the convenience of using credit card, people tend not to bring a lot of cash goes for shopping. What they need just to bring along the light and handy credit card and purchase the merchandises and services that they want rather than to worry the insufficient cash to be consume. As a result, they would not realize how much they actually expended at the time, they will only know until the bill send from credit card bank which may causes a lot of debt need to pay.
Financial Ignorance People less of the financial knowledge, so they spent money without taking into the consideration the key concept of saving and investing. They spend too much and save little. They are responsible to theirs life and money anyways so that they have to find out the correct ways to spend money. However, nowadays financial mistakes are increasingly expensive and complicated to resolve. The deficiency of financial knowledge raises the credit card debts because people tend to use credit cards in the incorrect ways without knowing the financial strength and limitation.
On the other hand, there have some of the PREVENTION METHODS to overcome credit card debts:
1. Set a clear BUDGET
People have to create clear budget and stick on it that includes monthly bills, food, clothes, entertainment and miscellaneous expenses will prevent from overspending and fall under deeper debt load. Otherwise, can get advices from a consumer credit counseling centre where they will help you work out different payment options for your credit cards.
2. Deal with CREDITORS
Address the problem to creditors to investigate whether they could give revised payment arrangement when having trouble to pay off debts because running away is not a good solution. If not, may refer to Fair Debt Collection Practices Act if the collection of money from creditors is not fair enough. Creditors may approve proposal and accept modified payment plan when hiring a good credit card debt consolidation companies.
3. Get rids of DEBIT CARD
By using debit cards, people will not spend more money than money they have and wont over the limit. There is no doubt that debit cards are a superb toll to get rid of credit card debt.
4. Get rids of CREDIT CARD
Get rids of credit card is one of the ways to live a debt free life. People can limit the number of card and using credit card that provide low interest balance transfers, transfer the balances from your other cards onto the card with the lowest rate. Besides that, only use the credit card when there is an emergency.
5. SELF CONTROL AND DISCIPLINE
The best practices of getting out of the credit card debt are able to pay back the full amount each month and only use in emergencies. Thus, self control and discipline to keep these cards in wallet and would not overspend. Besides that, avoid impulse purchases. Only purchase items that really needed. Do not buy it if it not a necessity. If you think you have badly in self control you can tear up credit card applications when the credit card company sends you those application forms.
Resisting the pressures of the credit card society will be a lot easier once you have set your mind to it, and started to feel the benefits. Enjoy the process, and you will be a cash convert for the rest of your wealthy life. ^^
Electronic currency, or e-currency, is an approach of trading currencies electronically through brokerage account. E-money, electronic cash, electronic money, digital money or digital currency are some of the terms of e-currency. Examples of e-currency are Electronic Fund Transfer and direct deposit. Electronic Fund Transfer is type of computer-based system to conduct financial transaction through online. Direct deposit is an electronic transfer of a payment directly from the account of the payer to the payee. E-currency was officially accepted in 1999 by the countries of the European Union to simplify business by eliminating the exchange rates.
Advantage
E-currency allows people to make money on the Internet using their personal computer. E-currency allows people to start business or trading electronically with low cost. It only needs as low as few dollars to start e-currency trading or do business. It is suggested to the beginners that they should start with few dollars investment so that they can learn how the e-currency works. It depends to you whether you want to increase the investment. You will not spending too much on investment as the e-currency gave many chances to earn money.
Besides, banks offering many services whereby a customer can transfer funds, purchase stocks, contribute to their retirement plans and offer a variety of other services without having to handle physical cash or cheques. Customers do not have to wait in lines and this provides a lower-hassle environment. In addition, debit card and online bill payments allows immediate funds transfer of funds from an individual’s personal account to a business account without any actual paper transfer of money.
Disadvantage
Although there are some benefits of e-currency, there are also many significant disadvantages. These include fraud, failure of technology, possible tracking of individuals and loss of human interaction.
Fraud over digital cash has been a pressing issue in recent years. Hacking into bank accounts and illegal retrieval of banking records has led to a widespread invasion of privacy and has promoted identity theft.
There is also a pressing issue regarding the technology involved in digital cash. Power failures, loss of records and undependable software often cause a major setback in promoting the technology.
Privacy questions have also been raised; there is a fear that the use of debit cards and the like will lead to the creation of a global tracking system by the banking industry. Some people are working on anonymous e-cash to try to address this issue. The issue of providing anonymity to users itself introduces more problems, however; there is the distinct possibility that a fully anonymous digital cash system could permit the "perfect crime" - i.e., where a criminal uses someone else's electronic cash to make a payment, but cannot be traced - to occur. For this reason, 'revocable anonymity' is a suggested solution: a user is fully anonymous until they commit some crime, at which point authorization is given for their identity to be revealed. However, critics of this policy point out that the anonymous users will never be caught and held trial (thus their identity will never be revealed) without tracing.
Future evolution
The main focuses of digital cash development are 1) being able to use it through a wider range of hardware such as secured credit cards; and 2) linked bank accounts that would generally be used over an internet means, for exchange with a secure micropayment system such as in large corporations (PayPal).
Furthering network evolution in terms of the use of digital cash, a company named DigiCash is at the focus of creating an e-cash system that would allow issuers to sell electronic coins at some value. When they are purchased they come under someone’s own name and are stored on his computer or under his online identity. At all times, the e-cash is linked to the e-cash company and all transactions go through it, so the e-cash company secures anything that is purchased. Only the company knows your information and will properly direct purchases to your location.
Theoretical developments in the area of decentralized money are underway that may rival traditional, centralized money. Systems of accounting such as Altruistic Economics are emerging that are entirely electronic, and can be more efficient and more realistic because they do not assume a zero-sum transaction model.
Below are selected e-currency companies:
E-bullion - e-Bullion® is electronic bullion: international electronic currency fully backed by physical precious metals stored on behalf of account holders in Treasury Grade bullion storage facilities.
E-gold - The leading e-currency payment systems backed by physical gold.
Liberty Reserve - Liberty Reserve is an online payment system and provider of digital gold currency (LR-gold)
Moneybookers– Wallet for Internet which allows people to shop and send money worldwide.
Pecunix - Digital currency operator. Pecunix is backed by gold, and offers an advanced and secure API for merchants and users.
After review the blog, it has alerted me to be more careful when performing the online activities. When we switch on our personal computer or laptop and connect to the internet and perform some online activities, there is always a risk that our computer will be hacked, vulnerable to viruses, worm or Trojan. In e-commerce world, actions should be taken to prevent computer from these threats as it involves business mainly in the online world. Neglect in internet security can lead to loss of personal data or hacker will hack to the company database to steal the information that is crucial to the company. First, we should be familiar with the threat and attack in order to protect our computer from threats.
There are two main types of attack and threats. One is known as technical attack and the other one is known as non technical attack. The example of the non-technical threat is ‘phising’ which the attacker will use the social pressure to trick the user to reveal their personal information such as credit card or bank account number. This technique is usually involved by sending e-mail to trick the user. For example, the attacker will send a bank notice that have been manipulated and states that they need the user’s information to safeguard their account due to certain reason. Then the user will provide their personal data with no doubt as it looks real.
Most of us are familiar with worms and viruses and these are the type of technical attacks. Besides that, non-technical attack also consists of Denial-of service (DOS) attack, Distributed denial of service (DDoS) and Trojan horse.
☠ Denial-of service (DOS) attack This is attack uses software by sending a floor of data packets to the user computer with the purpose of overloading its capacity. This can cause the network to shut down and making it impossible for user to access.
☠Distributed denial of service (DDoS) It is similar to DOS attack which send request to bombard the system until it not responding. The different of DDos is the attacker will illegally access to several computer and send request while DOS only using one computer.
☠ Trojan horse This is a program that appear to be useful function as it actually hidden a harmful function that can be harmful for your computer.
What can we do to aVoid those threat and attack?
❤ Access control The very first thing is to protect the physical asset which is your personal computer, laptop, hand phone and so on. It is also important to determine that who can actually access to the webpage. Besides that, avoid using password that is something related to you and known by other people such as your name or the date of the birthday. Biometric system such as finger print, iris scanner can also take into consideration as the interest of this system is increasing.
❤ Anti-virus and anti-spyware software Anti-virus software can scan and protect the system by remove viruses, worm and also Trojan horse while anti- spyware can also removes Trojan horse which often include hidden inside of freeware product and services.
❤Firewall Firewall act like a filter where the network must pass. It can protect the system against remote login, viruses, spam and others.
❤ Key encryption This is the process of encrypts the message in the ways that are difficult, expensive and time consuming. This can prevent an unauthorized people to decrypt the message easily.
Nowadays, computer and Internet become needs of people. We cannot ignore that, computer and Internet connections are became crucial part of our daily life, besides of hand phone. People use computer to record their daily life or business transaction; use Internet connection to conduct trading activities, gather information and etc. However, there is always a risk that our data will be exposed to others. In addition, we may not aware is it attacker will attack our computer to steal our personal or confidential data, or damage our computer. Therefore, it is important to safeguard our assets from those risks.
Below are some approaches that users can safeguard their personal and financial data:
1. Avoid from accessing financial data in public
Users are advised not to check their financial data in public such as coffee shop that offers free wireless access. These systems are trustable, yet it still unknown whether our data can be accessed by others who sharing the same wireless connections. Hence, users are recommended to check their Internet settings that can give them a highest security protection.
2. Use separate user account
If you are sharing computer with few people, you may be worry that your data will be accidentally access, modify, delete or misuse by others. Therefore, create separate users account is a most effective way to solve their problems. By using separate user account, each of the users will be assigned specific access right and privileges by administrator. This approach limits the risk of private and confidential date been accessible and modifiable by other unwanted users. However, it will not give a full protection by using separate user account against vulnerabilities that may give an attacker administrator privileges.
3. Use and maintain antivirus software and firewall
Antivirus software can helps you to detect and eliminate viruses and Trojan horses than can modify and access to your personal data stored in personal computer. You need to update your antivirus database regularly to avoid your computer being infected by newest viruses. Furthermore, firewall helps to provide protection in favor of users by safeguarding network from malicious or unnecessary Internet traffic. Most of the computer comes with the firewall that integrated with their operating system. Nevertheless, if you using old computer, you are advised to buy firewall and install by yourself.
4. Use password to encrypt sensitive/confidential data
Passwords and other security features add layers of protection if people know how to use it appropriately. By encrypting files, you can ensure that your data not being accessed by unauthorized person. Even if they can physically access to the data, yet the file is not readable or viewable by unauthorized person. Whether the data stored is permanently or temporarily, the data still need to be encrypted. Once you use encryption for your data, it is important that you need to remember the password or passphrases, if not, you lost access to your data and data lose as well.
5. Do not open unknown attachments/links
Never open any unknown files or links that send by an unknown party. Most probably those attachment contains viruses can lead to damages to your data. Besides, it could be one of a way that an unknown party steals your data by sending those attachments or links. Moreover, if you click on the links, most probably it will guide you to a website where they ask you to enter or fill in any personal or financial data.
Nowadays, most of the people would like to purchase goods through internet as the price would be different and it is convenient for the consumers. However, online purchasing is not 100% safety. Many people, especially teenagers had been cheated when they performed online purchasing. Some companies will attempt to deceive consumers by displaying cheaper products online in order to attract and seudce people to make a transaction with them. After the consumers made the payment, they won’t receive the goods they had ordered. Thus, it was very important for us t
o be more cautions while buying goods featured on the internet.
Mobile payment system(also known as mobile web payments or WAP billing) allow individual to make the payment through their mobile phone, smart phone, Personal Digital Assistant(PDA) or other such device. It can use to purchases either digital or physical goods. Digital product refers to the intangible products that can be transfer over a digital network such as songs, games and wallpaper for mobile phone.
in order to differentiate their website from other. From the example, we can see that online shopping is being top of the e-tailing market. However, many consumers are worrying about the size of clothes that they purchased does
