Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce

Question: Discuss about the Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce. Answer: Introduction The early internet was largely text-based with minimum tools to find information. Gopher, a text based search tool, was developed to ease the searching process. Tim Berners-Lee, a CERN scientist, developed the Hyper-Text Markup Language around the same time. HTML facilitated the inclusion of non-text data into the internet. Mosaic, a graphical web browser came into existence in 1993. Yahoo developed a web directory around 1995 that simplified the task of finding resources over the internet. The internet grew rapidly as more individuals and businesses connected to the internet (World Wide Web Foundation 2016). The growth of the internet called for efficient and effective scaling mechanisms and defined protocol suites for communication over the internet. A number of protocols like Simple Network Management Protocol and Simple Group Management Protocol were developed. Many of these protocols were either modified or deprecated over the years of development of the internet and related technologies (Roberts and Zahay 2016). Marketing over the Internet The expansion and reach of the Internet provide a new and effective medium for business to reach out to people. Strategic marketing techniques are capable of providing enormous benefit to the company both in terms of economy and user base. Different techniques and models have been developed by corporations to exploit the utility of the internet and these models are optimized regularly to increase profitability. Suppliers and consumers dictate the strategies of any business and marketing is a tool to acquaint customers with the suppliers. The change in business and marketing strategies, with the advent of internet, is largely due to demand of suppliers and consumers. Availability of superior technology provides the consumer with ease of access and provides supplier cost effectiveness and reach ability (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick 2012). Cloud technology is one such driving technology factor. According to Mell and Grance (Mell and Grance 2011), cloud technology or cloud is concept that allows ubiquitous on demand network access to a pool of resources. The resources available in the cloud are capable of being specified and organized rapidly, with minimal management and intervention of the cloud service provider. The cloud is based on an infrastructure that is composed of necessary hardware and software to support the concept of cloud. The cloud infrastructure is divided into layers to simplify the process of maintaining the concept of cloud. The infrastructure contains a physical layer that is composed of the physical hardware modules like storage, servers and so on. The software that enables the user of the cloud to have an intact view of the cloud provides the abstraction layer. The concept of cloud supports a number of characteristics: The cloud should be able to support resources on-demand. The user should be able to access the resources without any intervention of the service provider. The service should be accessible through different device types. The abstraction layer should provide uniformity to the cloud structure and the user should not be able to differentiate the location of resources. The cloud should work as a unified whole. The cloud should be scalable and expandable. Elasticity is an important feature of cloud. Mechanisms should be available to monitor and control the use of the cloud by users to maintain clarity between provider and user. The cloud infrastructure provides the following services: SaaS or Software as a Service allows consumers to use software resources without buying the software. The software is installed on a remote system and user can access the service through web browsers. The service provider does the maintenance of the software and underlying hardware and the user can use the facilities for a payment. The facilities provided by this method include access to the service from any connected system, secure storage of data and scalability of usage. PaaS or Platform as a Service provides development and deployment platform for application developers to develop and deploy user created applications. The service provides resources to support entire development lifecycle of web-based applications. This fastens the development and deployment of applications and reduces the complexity of middleware services. IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service provides access to physical resources as per user requirement over the network. The resources vary from server to data bank. The access of the service reduces the cost required to buy the hardware and the hardwares maintenance cost. A few facilities common to all these services are ease of access, flexibility and scalability (Mell and Grance 2011 and Ibm.com 2016). The deployment models supported by the cloud infrastructure are the following: Private cloud is available for the personal use of an individual or organization. The services of the cloud are available only to the intended group of people. The maintenance can be done by either the owner or a third party employed by the owner. A group of people or a community uses community cloud. This kind of cloud is deployed for people who share a common concern. The community can be groups inside a corporation or individual. Public cloud is open to public. Organizations or academic institutions deploy these kinds of clouds. These clouds are managed and maintained by those organizations or the people who access the cloud. Hybrid clouds are the clouds, which follow a combination of deployment techniques and follow design and specifications defined during the creation and deployment of the cloud (Mell and Grance 2011 and Ibm.com 2016). Impact of cloud in the hotel industry The hotel industry is a customer centric stable business. Customer information and management data are of prime importance and crucial to its functioning and appropriate management. Historically the data was stored in-house, recorded manually on physic al files. However, with the advent of technology and digitization, most hotels store information digitally. The storage of these data into the cloud offers certain advantages. The data can be accessed from practically any location that supports a network connection, simplifying data access. Cloud computing offers a pay-per-use service. This helps in cost effective management of the companys resources. The required resources on the cloud can be scaled based on requirement of the hotel. Cloud makes many services affordable to the small and medium sized hotels. Large organizations can afford to pay for an entire personalized system but smaller organizations do not have the financial strength to do so. Cloud combines their small financial strength and makes the system affordable. Security of customer data is imperative for any customer centric organization. Storing data in the cloud offers robustness, reliability and security at a lower cost. Cloud also rescues the management from maintenance and repair of technology equipments (Aljabre 2012). Models of business for the internet Business model provides a sound, albeit abstract, base for business development. The development of a business without planning about the structure of the business often results in hazardous ventures. The design and methodology of structuring a business is an integral part of management. A business model is developed based on factual research of the market the business will target. The rationale behind a business model is to obtain a sustainable business structure that will be able cope up with the demands of the market and generate revenue. The model serves as a blueprint based on which the entire business plan of the business is laid and the execution strategy of the business is detailed. The objectives of the business model is to identify the consumer requirements, fulfilled by the business in terms of the market, recognize the target audience of the business, estimate cost and return that the business will incur, the availability of suppliers, consumers and other segments that influence the business and ascertain the approach the company would take to compete with peer businesses. Based on Professor Michael Rappas initial structure, Roberts and Zahay outlined the following internet business models. Brokerage Model This model is suitable for businesses that aim to act as an intermediary between the producer and consumer. Businesses based work either as a medium of transaction overseeing the entire transaction like Alibaba, providing an outlet for merchants like Amazon, acting as a financial platform as Paypal, auctioning products online like ebay, act as promotional sites providing coupons like Restaurant.com or acting as a virtual marketplace. Advertising Model This model is based on the media advertising model and best suited for sites that receive high volume of traffic. The sites advertise usually third party products to its visitors. The advertisements can be random or customized. Customization of advertisements is achieved in many ways that include exploitation of search history of the user or other mechanisms like using search query keywords. The success of this model depends on the popularity of the host site. Infomediary Model In this model, the business is structured to provide specific information to consumers. The information ranges from corporate data to personal information including personal preferences. These businesses either act as mediator between the consumer and the supplier or gather data themselves and hand over to consumers. One way of doing this is to offer some kind of benefit to individuals by means an app to obtain information about them. Merchant Model In this model the business acts as wholesaler selling commodities online by various techniques. The merchandise varies from books to music. The customers are informed about the products through websites or catalogues and the selling of products are done through bids or price lists. Businesses can have both physical outlet as well as an online retail outlet. Buying goods from the producer and selling it online to the customer also falls under this model. Manufacturer/Direct In this model the manufacturer owns the online retail store and bypasses the intermediary altogether. The principle underlying this model is to reach the customer directly and provide the service increasing the cost effectiveness through elimination of the mediators. The techniques in this model includes selling products or services directly to customers or providing lease on products or services or provide software based solution to the consumer. Affiliate Model This model works by redirecting huge traffics to the partner sites. The payment depends on the traffic generated on the partner site. The host does not receive anything if traffic is not generated. One form this model is banners on websites. The host gets paid if visitors click on the banner. This is a pay-for-performance model. Community Model This model is based on peer-to-peer or community based networks. The model generates revenue by voluntary contributions, or sale of simple products. Open source, open content and social networks are the best examples of these models. Revenue can also be generated through advertisements on the sites or integrating the pay-for-performance features. Subscription Model This model works by availing a product or service at a fixed charge. Customers are charged a certain amount of money to use the service for a certain period. Some sites offer premium services for a price. Content providers, membership sites, application service providers are some of the businesses based on subscription model. Utility Model Utility model is suited for businesses that provide services on demand. The customer pays the price based on the extent or quantity of service used. Unlike subscription model, a customer is charged only for the used service in the utility model. Application of Business models to hotels Business models provide a primitive outline of the way a business can be conducted. However, the models can be restructured based on the requirements of the business. Often more than one model is strategically incorporated into the business plan to accommodate flexibility in the business and optimize the functioning of the business. For example, hotels generally maintain a merchant model for their transaction; however, incorporation of a brokerage model to accommodate information about hotels where the host does not offer services can actually earn profit for the host. The incorporation of an affiliate model, redirecting site visitors to local places of entertainment can earn revenue. Small hotels that cannot have the finances to support a solo website can join with other small budget hotels to form a hotel community website, based on community model, offering customer access to all the hotels in the community. The actual implementation remains on the business objectives (Roberts and Zahay 2012 and Baden-Fuller and Haefliger 2013) Search Marketing The quantity of data provided by the internet is gargantuan. Remembering each of the relevant websites and finding a new resource on the internet is an unfeasible task. Search engines are the tools that simplifies the task of obtaining resources on the web. Search engines are programs that are used to search and retrieve information on the internet. Resources are searched based on keywords. However, search techniques are evolving based with the evolution of technologies. Generally, search engines compare keywords with its index to provide search results. A search engine inspects the internet regularly to find out or discover websites and resources. The search is conducted by the help of bots or small programs , known as web crawlers or web spiders. The collected resources are indexed based on the words that the resource includes. Once the resources are linked against the words, the indexing is done. Each of the search result receives a priority value and the final prioritized list is displayed to the user. The search and priority techniques depend on the implementer of search engines (Brin and Page 2012).. The sequence of search results provided by a search engine to a user depends on a number of factors that include: the users preferences based on the users search history, the geographic location of the user, the search pattern of other people in the same location, the popularity of a link, the relevance of a link and the business importance of a link to the search engine implementers. Search marketing is the mechanism of exploiting the search and prioritization algorithms to alter the positioning of links to resources or websites in the search result provided to a searcher by the search engine (Moran and Hunt 2014). The motivation for search marketing lies in the fact that a searcher is more vulnerable to marketing approaches when the searcher is looking for information. The searcher will accept any fact that even remotely resembles the information that he or she is expecting. Marketing in this form is more acceptable to a searcher or individual because this form of marketing does not intrude on an individuals privacy. On the other hand, the marketing method provides marketing information that is actually relevant to the users query as the results of the search produce results that include the searchers query terms (Strauss 2016 and Vinerean et al. 2013). The popular search marketing techniques include Search Engine Optimization or SEO, pay-per-click service or PPC and paid inclusion service( Berman and Katona 2013 and Stokes 2015). Search Engine Optimization is the technique of optimizing a website or resource for better placement of the link in search results. This technique is generally applied to non-paid or organic search results. The developers of the website include relevant words or keywords that are more relevant to the search engines are included in the website. The result of search of a search engine is based on many factors. Including the resources that are more likely to be picked up by the web crawlers or designing resources in a way that influences web crawlers are more likely to be in the top of the search results. SEO can be online or offline. Online optimization is the process of including resources within the website to achieve higher rank or be in the top of the results page. Offline optimization is the technique of including resources and links on other web resources or websites that leads to the optimizers site (Ledford 2015). PPC is the process of including advertisements in host websites that lead to the website of the advertiser. The advertiser pays a price for each click the advertisement receives. This is a paid optimization technique which offers payment for traffic that the website receives. Google Adwords comes under this category of advertising (Kapoor, Dwivedi and Piercy 2016). PIS is the technique of including or altering the relevance or rank of a link or web resource in the search results of a search engine for a price. Search engine charges the advertisers to include their links or resources and prioritize their links for a fee. Charges can be on a pay-per-click basis or based on time (Li et al. 2014 and Kritzinger and Weideman 2013). Local search Local search is the process of searching and retrieving information based on specific location; a search technique allows retrieval of geographically constrained information. Generally, the information is provided based on the location of the searcher. This enables the searcher to access information related to his or her region or neighborhood. The reach of the internet and the ease of access to the information provided by the search engine encourage the searcher to find information that is geographically local to him; a nearby Italian restaurant or car parking lot. This is the basic concept behind local search. Search engines are incorporating features to optimize local search. Local search engines are already functional in the market. Ranking algorithm of search engines consider the region of search as an important parameter. User search patterns indicate that they are prone to conduct local searches more than global search. Small businesses have the scope of increasing their visibility in the locality by appropriate optimization techniques. The availability of information however depends on the availability of resources on the internet as search engines display data that are already available in the internet (Marketing 2012). Conclusion Internet is a global platform that provides massive reach to people across the globe. It has become mandatory for a business to be online to retain its customer base. Businesses that do not have a physical existence can flourish and grow by the proper use of internet. Marketing is an integral part of business and internet marketing is a necessity in the digital era. Every major and minor business is exploiting the connectedness that the internet provides. New business models are emerging to provide foundation for businesses on the internet. Search engines are an integral aspect of the internet. Most internet users rely completely on the search engines to obtain information from the internet. This provides immense opportunity for businesses to make themselves visible to the internet audience. The repeated use of the optimization techniques, however, might undermine the actual purpose of search engines from the users perspective. A person resorts to search engines to find out information on the web about resources due to the overwhelming amount of information available in the internet. Consumers will stop trusting search engines if they receive biased information. 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