Review of a local, transactional e-commerce site

4:48 PM / Posted by Marcus Teoh / comments (67)


There are many outstanding e-commerce website available in Malaysia market. Today I want to share with the readers on one of the successful e-commerce website that I have dealing with, myeho.com. It is an online travel agency which make available for travellers to book a hotel, choosing a travel package, and entrust a group trip. Their group trip customers include Ernst & Young, ING Insurance, Nike Malaysia and other successful companies.

Nowadays, Malaysia travelling industry has grown vigorously. According to the statistics on Ministry of Tourism, foreign visitors have increased in year 2008 by 5.1%. In order to grab a slice on this market, many travelling agency goes beyond their traditional brick-and-mortar business to setup their online travelling service website.

It is a real story that happened on me. Recently, my Indonesian relatives come to Malaysia for travelling but they do not have any plan and suddenly come to my house and discussing their travelling plan. On that situation, I really do not have an idea to plan a trip for them and really don’t like to travel all the way from Sungai Long to KL area for searching travel agency.

So, one of my friends introduced me a reliable online travel agency called myeho.com. This website is focusing on travel to the famous islands around Malaysia and Thailand. Besides, myeho.com’s homepage is well-organised that allowed users to see their package in the order way. Moreover, the website travelling package gives a special rate with even cheaper than other agencies.

Here I also want to highlight a most powerful tool in the websites is called search engine. It permits users to drop down the option even though the users do not have knowledge on geographic of Malaysia. Other than that, some other user friendly features like peak seasons calendar and currency converter give a clearer picture on pricing and hot seasons to foreign visitors on doing decision.

On the other hand, users can make the payment through most of the online-banking website and other foreign payment method such as China Unionpay. The company will first send user an invoice in PDF format through e-mail and user can make their payment with reference code on the website.

Click to enlarge: Invoice

Once users complete the payment, Myeho.com will send back the payment voucher to user as a reference.

Click to enlarge:Payment Voucher

The only one limitation in the website I found is that the online payment by credit/debit card is not very secure with third party verification. So at that time, I rather to chose bank transfer to the company for making my payment.

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1st Dell physical store in Malysia: Review

10:51 PM / Posted by Marcus Teoh / comments (0)

Article Review: 1st Dell physical store in Malysia
On December 2007, the 1st Dell’s store called Dell Direct Store is open at Mid Valley Megamall, one of the biggest shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur. Here I want to correct that Dell Direct Store@Mid Valley at previous actually is a showroom for public to feel and test out the machine and do not involve of any selling on that time. After a few month later, Dell Direct Store had changed to a real retail store. Why Dell decide to open a brick-and-mortar store and also selling online?

Before starting our discussion on reasons Dell goes retail, I would like to introduce some about the Dell to let the readers have a clearer picture on this post. Dell is founded in 1985 by Michael Dell to offer personal computer via mail order. As the advanced technology and germination of e-commerce, Dell implemented aggressive online order-taking instead of mail-order. Starting 2002, Dell opened kiosk located in shopping across the US in order to give personal service to customer who preferred this method of shopping to using the internet or the telephone-system. On January 30, 2008 Dell shut down all 140 kiosks in the US due to expansion into retail stores.

Reason Dell expanding business to brick-and-mortar
Loss on market share
According to research firm Gartner, HP took an 18.2% market share at year 2007, while Dell’s share slipped to 14.3%. Before the year of 2007, Dell was the largest personal computer manufacturer and hold majority of the market share on the world. It is possibility that Dell wants to follow the way of HP’s success as selling of HP computer in the online stores and also physical stores.

Feel and touch the product
Previously, Dell computer only sell computer online and result the consumers cannot fell and touch the product. Customers nowadays are reluctant to believe what appear in the online world although the online shopping website such as Dell provides 360̊ views of the products where you can rotate the product. The wise move of dell goes retail benefits customer who wish to scrutinize the product before make purchase.

Target User
In the year before 2008, Dell sells its computer with only target those who have the computer and internet connection. Many of the first time users or not online-trading literate like a fresh university students who purchase the computer do not have the idea of purchasing online and further let this great opportunity flow to competitors.

Others reasons
Some other factors such as online fraud is increasing, lower price due to direct sales model hurt brand equity, online payment still not popular in Malaysia, credit card only available for those who have a satisfactory income, and etc are causes of sales of Dell computer drop in Malaysia.

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The threat of online security: How safe is our data?

9:24 PM / Posted by Marcus Teoh / comments (0)

Before to start with the discussion, I would like to give a short scenario to let the readers know more about the importance of online security.

Scenario 1: Andrew, a fresh graduate is willing to buy a camera online but he does not have experience in online shopping. Therefore his first question might ask: “Will I be cheated when I entering my credit card number?”

The above scenario shows that Andrew is worried about credit card fraud. So nowadays, online security has been online users’ main concern in protecting their transaction from potential threat such as denial of service (DOS), phishing (refer to previous post), virus and etc.

Today, I would not just discuss about the threats being bring by technical attack such as virus, but also will provide readers more understanding about the threats of nontechnical attack as well.

Technical attack
Technical attack refer to an attack perpetrated using software and systems knowledge or expertise. Some examples of threat in this category are virus, Trojan horse, and phishing.

Denial of service (DoS) or distributed denial of service (DDoS)
DoS or DDos is the threat that attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. The perpetrators of DoS usually use specialized software to send a flood of data packet to target computer, with the aims of overloading its resources. However DDoS attackers target a group of interrelated computer such as network and server. One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communication requests, such that it cannot respond to internet traffic, or respond slowly.

Trojan horse
The name of this technical attack is derived from the legend of the Trojan war in Greek mythology. Trojan horse is a programme that appears to be useful function but actually contains a hidden function that presents a security risk. It is designed to allow hackers to remote access to a target computer system and these hackers’ motives to remote computer system are mainly for data theft such as credit card information and use of machine as part of a Botnet to perform DDoS attack.

Virus and worm
Virus and worm are type of malicious programme that can cause damages to your computer such as deleting the files or corrupting the hard drive. A computer virus attached itself to a programme or file enabling it to spread from one computer to another. Almost all viruses are attached to an executable file which means the virus may exist on your computer but cannot infect your computer unless you run for it. However a worm is similar to a virus by design but unlike a virus, a worm can spread itself without any human intervention.

Nontechnical attack
Nontechnical attack is an attack that tricks people into revealing information or performing action that can compromise the securities of a network by only just deception or persuasion of perpetrator. Social engineering is a type of nontechnical attack that uses some ruse to trick users into revealing information or performing an action that compromises a computer or network. For example, the attacker could send an e-mail to inform the receiver he or she has won a grand prize and need to reveal their credit card number for certification purpose but actually the money has been embezzle.

As a conclusion, prevention is better than cure as personal information and intellectual property data is important. So internet user should install anti-virus programme and firewall to prevent technical attack and do not trust at any suspected e-mail and website to revealing information.

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An example of an e-eommerce success: Amazon.com

1:26 PM / Posted by Marcus Teoh / comments (0)

According to a survey done by Verdict Research on 15 January 2009, Amazon.com was the UK’s favorite music and video retailer, and came third in overall retail rankings. In the financial perspective (source from Yahoo Finance), amazon.com has increased its revenue by 28.86% and increased on its net income by 35.50% in 2008 and it maintained its position as the No.1 e-tailer in 2008.

Nowadays, e-commerce has become relatively popular and many companies have been thinking to be benefited from e-commerce. But how does Amazon.com gain more competitive advantage and stand the best above others?

Evidence generated from case studies and literature reviews have shown that the success of amazon.com is depends on four main factors: customer service, variety of product, easy navigation on its website, and the value position.

Customer Service
Amazon.com is proud of its customer services and desires to be the best customer centric company. A study shows that more than half of the Amazon.com’s customers are repeat customers. This success is based on customer value proposition, which is conducted by Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. He suggests that amazon.com must give a positive impression to its visitors, so that the potential buyers will visit the virtual store again. For example, a cookie file will be store in the users’ computer and next time, the users will be greeted with the words such as “Welcome back, Marcus Shopper”. After that, shoppers will proceed to recommend new book from the same genre by Amazon.com according to shoppers’ previous purchases. Besides, Bezos also mentioned that Amazon.com need to fulfill their promises such as on time delivery. As a result, Amazon.com can strengthen its customer relationship.

Variety of product
Initially, Amazon.com is an e-tailing pioneer selling books via an electronic catalog from its websites. In order to cope with changing environment and meet customer needs, Amazon.com has expanded its business from selling books to variety of products and services which include media, electronics, other merchandise, and other services.

Easy navigation
The homepage is a company’s first impression to customer and most important opportunity to serve the customer. Easy for use and navigate must start from the homepage to give customer convenience. Amazon.com’s homepage provides personalized product recommendations, e-mail notices, reliable payment system, and interactive support for all the customers.

Value position
Value is like a goal of the organization and plays an important role in Amazon.com’s success. There are 2 strong values that are practiced by Amazon.com. These include customer satisfaction and operational frugality (cost saving). The value of customer satisfaction can be referred back to the “customer service”. In the other hand, the operational frugality helps Amazon.com to save cost in order to spend huge money on branding and business expansion. For example, Amazon.com’s employees are paid based salaries that are obviously less than competitive rate. However, Amazon sustains employee loyalty through employees’ ownership of company shares and let employees benefit from the business success with their contribution.

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About our blog's authors

7:47 PM / Posted by E-commerce Change the World / comments (2)

Charlie Tan Hui Chew

Hi everyone, my name is Tan Hui Chew, you can call me Charlie. I’m 21 years old and from Banting, Selangor. Currently, I’m a year three semester one student who is taking Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) Accounting in University Tunku Abdul Rahman. My father is a part time insurance agent, 54 years old and mother is a business woman, 47 years old. Besides, I got three brothers and a sister.

By the way, let me describe more about myself to you. In fact, I’m a talkative girl who likes to be friend with anyone and share the joy and sorrow with my best friend. Besides, I enjoy watching drama during my leisure time especially Taiwan drama as I can see all the actors that I like. Hence, watching drama is one of my hobbies as well. Sleeping also can be considered as my hobby because sleep can reduce my stress and unhappiness. Therefore, my housemates and best friend always called me “lazy pig”. Another hobby is to be a mountaineer as climbing can refresh my mind and relax my body as well.

Now, let me share the top 5 websites that I frequently visited. They are www.facebook.com, www.baidu.com, www.gougou.com, www.hotmail.com, and www.youtube.com. Baidu.com and gougou.com are the most websites that I visited as I can download all the music that I like from baidu, and download all the drama that I want to watch from the gougou.com. These websites can help me pass my time especially when I’m feeling bored. On the other hand, the top 5 activities that I frequently did are searching music, drama, play games, photos of artists, and view friend profile from facebook.

If you want to know more about me, feel free to visit my website.
Lim Ker Pei
I am Lim Ker Pei, Melissa who is currently a Year 3 student of University Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) from Bachelor of Commerce (HONS) Accounting. I’m from Kuala Lumpur which is the centre of Malaysia therefore I’m a typical city girl that lives in a world of Information Technology. I will have contact or deal with IT in my day-to-day life for example blogging, checking mails and keep in touch with my friends all around the world via MSN messenger. Therefore through this blog, my friends and I will share some information about E-Commerce so that readers will have a clearer idea or picture of what E-Commerce is actually all about.

My hobbies are reading blogs, hanging out with my friends and will play piano in my leisure time. The 5 top websites that I visited the most are Google, Facebook, Hotmail.com, Blogger.com and theStar.com. I visit all these websites to search for information, keep connected with my friends and also to entertain myself. Besides that, I’ll update myself with the latest news and the current issues from theStar.com.

The 5 top internet activities that I’ll do are playing online games, checking my e-mails, chatting with my friends via MSN messenger, update my facebook account by uploading photos and lastly searching for new information.

Lastly, if you guys want to know more about me please do not hesitate to visit my personal blog: Ker Pei's Blog.


Marcus Teoh Kim Hung
I am glad to have this opportunity to introduce myself in this E-commerce Web Log (Blog). My name is Teoh Kim Hung, everyone called me “Ah Teoh”. Let me write a bit about myself, I am an undergraduate student of University Tunku Abdul Rahman and major in accounting. I like to travel and swim during my leisure time because these activities help me to open my mind and keep my body fit. The only sentence to describe myself is “I am who I am”, because I believe that everyone is special.

Internet has played a major role in my life since I entered into university. The top 5 activities I always do are chatting via live messenger, blogging, reading news, gaming and searching for information. Although Internet brings a lot of benefit but I am not addicted to it. This is because if a person gets addicted to internet, it will cause damages to relationships and also the growth of individuals.

The 5 websites I visited the most are YouTube, Facebook, My blogger’s blog, ChinaPress dotcom, and Viwawa. Among these websites, YouTube is my favorite as I can view many funny videos, news, and even my favorite artist’s music video followed by Facebook and My blogger’s blog because it helps me to get the latest updates of my friends’ status. In my opinion, reading English articles and news is a headache for me, so I would rather read Chinese news as ChinaPress dotcom provides this service to public.


Fum Phaik Yin
My name is Fum Phaik Yin and I was just got into the world of 21 years old in May. I come from a family of five. My family and I are currently living in Puchong. I am taking my bachelor course in Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) and this is my third year in the course. I am currently staying in a rented condominium unit due to my study in UTAR, Sg. Long.

Whenever I am free, I will read some books or magazines. I prefer reading novel and short paragraphs that discuss issues about life. Besides, I like to watch movie and listen to music when I am free. I usually check out for the latest movie and songs online. Besides that, I also surf the net quite often to search for the information I want, perform selling and purchasing, and also keep in contact with my friends.

If possible, I will visit Friendster.com, Sosot.net and WBLE everyday. I will check my comments in Friendster everyday to keep in touch with my friends. On the other hand, the purpose of surfing Sosot.net is to shop for things that I need and also selling things whereas surfing WBLE is to check any latest lecture notes or tutorials worksheets were uploaded. Besides, I also use Google to search for the information I want frequently, I choose Google because it gives a wider results for my searching. For entertainment purpose, I surf Meetoto and Kongregate to relax and reduce stress. Meetoto is a singing game; it is a place that provides stages and rooms for your avatar to sing whereas Kongregate is a games library which has thousands and millions of games to get rid of your bored.

I am trying to enjoy the life I am having now because I think life will be tougher after graduation since working life will starts.

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