Ecom- Unit- 5

1) Illustrate how business can better meet their customer’s needs by improving document
management support.
A) Businesses looking to gain an advantage over their competitors know that providing excellent
customer service is the defining factor that puts them ahead.
They take the time and invest in their customer service systems and automate their business
processes to ensure everything runs smoothly and efficiently. It could be as simple as being able to
retrieve information faster than their competitors, and being able to do so doesn’t go unnoticed by
potential customers.
An easy way to get started improving and investing in your customer service is through a document
management system. By organizing your documents and automating your business processes in a
structured, controlled management system, you’ll spend less time searching for documents and
more time helping those who are most important: your customers.
Here are 3 benefits of using a document management system for your customer service needs:
1. Answer Customer Inquiries Instantly
Imagine that a customer calls with questions regarding your product or service. That information is
typically stored on a document your business has created or a customer has submitted. Without a
document management system, the person taking the call will have to put the customer on hold,
leave their area to locate the document, return, and then answer the customer’s questions. What
happens if that employee can’t find the information? How will the customer feel being put on hold
only to not have their question answered?
Being able to answer customers quickly and accurately is important. With a document
management system’s search and retrieve capabilities, the employee has instance access to
documents and information - never having to put a customer on hold.
2. Easily Share Documents
Occasionally documents need to be exchanged between you and other employees. The difficulty
there is that without a document management system, these documents get sent through email –
clogging up your email servers and creating duplicate copies of the files. But with document
management software you now also have a log of who has accessed or taken any action with the
file.
A document management system allows for easy secure sending of documents to and from the
system, making it easier and faster to communicate with customers.
3. Secured Information
No matter what industry your business is in, it’s always reassuring to know your customer’s
information is safe and secure. With a document management system you can control who has
access to what information, no longer have to worry about important and sensitive documents
being left around the office, and have all your files backed up onto a secure sever in an off-site
facility. Your documents are encrypted during the whole process, while they are being transferred
and when they are stored.
Your business has the power to turn its customers into its greatest advocates and promoters or
into its harshest critics. It all starts with how your customer service helps meet their needs.

2) Outline the E-commerce catalogues or directories.

A) ➢ A directory performs an essential support function that guides customers in a maze of
options by enabling the organizations of the information space.
Directories are of two types:
1. The white pages
2. Yellow pages
➢ The white pages are used to people or institutions and yellow pages are used to consumers and
organizations.
Electronic white pages:
➢ Analogues to the telephone white pages, the electronic white pages provide services from a
static listing of e-mail addresses to directory assistance.
➢ White pages directories, also found within organizations, are integral to work efficiency.
➢ The problems facing organizations are similar to the problems facing individuals.
➢ A white pages schema is a data model, specifically a logical schema, for organizing the data
contained in entries in a directory service, database, or application, such as an address book.
➢ A white pages schema typically defines, for each real-world object being represented:
➢ What attributes of that object are to be represented in the entry for that object.
➢ What relationships of that object to other objects are to be represented?
➢ One of the earliest attempts to standardize a white pages schema for electronic mail use was in
X.520 and X.521, part of the X.500 a specification that was derived from the addressing
requirements of X.400.
➢ In a white pages directory, each entry typically represents an individual person that makes the
use of network resources, such as by receiving email or having an account to log into a system.
➢ In some environments, the schema may also include the representation of organizational
divisions, roles, groups, and devices.
➢ The term is derived from the white pages, the listing of individuals in a telephone directory,
typically sorted by the individual's home location (e.g. city) and then by their name.
White pages through x.500:
➢ One of the first goal of the X.500 project has been to create a directory for keeping track of
individual electronic mail address on the internet.
➢ X.500 offers the following features:
-Decentralized maintenance
-Each site running x.500 is responsible only for its local part of the directory.
Searching capabilities: x.500 provides powerful searching capabilities i.e. in the white pages; you
can search solely for users in one country. From there you can view a list of organizations, then
departments, then individual names.
This represents the tree structure.
➢ Single global name space: x.500 provides single name space to users.
➢ Structured information framework: X.500 defines the information framework used in
the directory, allowing local extensions.
➢ Standards-based directory: X.500 can be used to build directory applications that
requires distributed information.
ELECTRONIC YELLOW PAGES:
➢ The term Yellow Pages refers to a telephone directory of businesses, categorized according to
the product or service provided.
➢ The traditional term Yellow Pages is now also applied to online directories of businesses.
➢ To avoid the increasing cost of yellow paper, the yellow background of the pages is currently
printed on white paper using ink. Yellow paper is no longer used.
➢ The name and concept of "Yellow Pages" came about in 1883, when a printer in Cheyenne,
Wyoming working on a regular telephone directory ran out of white paper and used yellow paper
instead.
➢ In 1886 Reuben H.Donnelley created the first official yellow pages directory, inventing an
industry.
➢ Today, the expression Yellow Pages is used globally, in both English-speaking and nonEnglish
speaking countries.
➢ In the US, it refers to the category, while in some other countries it is a registered name and
therefore a proper noun.
Third-party directories can be categorized variously:
➢ Basic yellow pages: These are organized by human-oriented products and services.
➢ Business directories: This takes the extended information about companies, financialhealth,
and news clippings.
➢ State business directories: this type of directory is useful in businesses that operate on a state
or geographic basis.
➢ Directories by SIC :( standard industrial classification) directories are compiled by the
government.
➢ Manufacturer’s directories: if your goal is to sell your product or service to manufacturers, then
this type of directory is used.
➢ Big-business directory: This directory lists companies of 100 or more employees.
➢ Metropolitan area business directory: It develops sales and marketing tools for specific cities.
➢ Credit reference directory: this directory provides credit rating codes for millions of US
companies.
➢ World Wide Web directory: this lists the various hyperlinks of the various servers scattered
around the internet

3) Outline why companies are focusing on developing data warehouses.

A) A data warehouse is a central repository of facts and information that sources and maintains
historical and cumulative data from various internal and external systems. Data warehousing
comprises of a mix of technologies that allow users to transform scattered, raw data into
actionable intelligence, get a single version of the truth, and improve the overall decision-making
process.
The main purpose of a data warehouse is to store huge amounts of data for query and analyses. It
facilitates analytical and reporting processes that help users make data-backed routine and
strategic business decisions.
The Importance of a Data Warehouse
In organizations, data is dispersed into a variety of internal and external systems that contain
information in various formats, orientations, and file types. In addition, some of these systems
carry similar data content, causing duplication that may cause inconsistencies in analytics and
reporting processes.
Decision makers require accurate, single version of information without any redundancies
to gauge business factors, market conditions, consumer behaviors, and other aspects. From a
complete list of enterprise customers to the highest number of sales in a month with details of
transactions, users can acquire information at all levels.
Data warehousing is geared towards producing complete, well-defined reports that ensure
a high level of accuracy. This allows business leaders and analysts to drill down into specific details
that they may not be to understand through bits and pieces of information stored in individual
databases. In addition, it helps perform data mining on current and historical trends for identifying
important patterns and extracting intelligible insights for predictive analytics.
Data warehouses increase the performance of operational systems and databases, which
are designed to handle relatively smaller amounts of data, by taking the load of storage and
accessibility off them. Generally, organizations have millions of records accumulated over time,
which can be of terabytes or petabytes in size. With the help of a data warehouse, all the data can
be easily stored without burdening any individual systems.
Why is data warehousing important?
Data warehousing is an increasingly important business intelligence tool, allowing organizations to:

1. Ensure consistency. Data warehouses are programmed to apply a uniform format to all
collected data, which makes it easier for corporate decision-makers to analyze and share
data insights with their colleagues around the globe. Standardizing data from different
sources also reduces the risk of error in interpretation and improves overall accuracy.
2. Make better business decisions. Successful business leaders develop data-driven strategies
and rarely make decisions without consulting the facts. Data warehousing improves the
 speed and efficiency of accessing different data sets and makes it easier for corporate
decision-makers to derive insights that will guide the business and marketing strategies
that set them apart from their competitors.
3. Improve their bottom line. Data warehouse platforms allow business leaders to quickly
access their organization's historical activities and evaluate initiatives that have been
successful — or unsuccessful — in the past. This allows executives to see where they can
adjust their strategy to decrease costs, maximize efficiency and increase sales to improve
their bottom line.

4) Compare pull-based and push-based advertising.

A) Active or push-based advertising:
Active or push-based advertising is of two types they are :
The broadcast model:
➢ Broadcasting message provides a means for reaching a great number of people in short period
of time.
➢ It mimics the traditional model, in which customer id exposed to the advertisement during TV
programming.
➢ It basically uses direct mail, spot television, cable television.
➢ Text-based broadcast messages also used in advertising in Usenet news groups.
The junk mail model:
➢ Disadvantage of the direct mail include relatively high cost per contact.
➢ Junk mail is the just poorly targeted direct mail.
➢ It is most intrusive of all forms of internet advertising, because it is easily implemented using
electronic mail.
➢ Junk mail creates unwanted expense as well as an annoyance.
Passive or pull-based advertising :
Pull-based advertising provide a feedback loop, company and customers.
On-line pull-based advertising includes the following:
➢ Billboards
➢ Catalogs or yellow pages directories:
➢ endorsements
Based on the above three we have the following models:
The billboards or www model:
➢ Billboard advertising is often used to remind the customer of the advertising messages
communicated through other media.
➢ The advantage of this model is no customer charges.
➢ In this message must be simple, direct.
Catalog and yellow pages directory model:
➢ Traditionally, the most visible directory service of advertising is the yellow pages.
➢ Catalog model is the least intrusive model but requires active search on the part of customer.
➢ Yellow pages are low in cost in terms of production and placement.
➢ Disadvantage of yellow page include lack of timeliness and little creative flexibility.
Customer endorsement model:
➢ In endorsements people tell their experiences with products and services.
➢ These are in question and answer format.

5) Identify how Information Based Marketing change the roles of business, retailers,
manufacturers and media companies
A) The new age of information-based marketing differentiate interactive marketing into four areas:
➢ Retailers vs manufacturers
➢ Target and micromarketing
➢ Small business vs large business
Retailers’ vs Manufacturers:
➢ The role of Retailers and manufacturers are fast reversing in electronic commerce.
Retailer’s vs Manufacturers have the following methods:
➢ Market research and customer prospecting
➢ Market presence method
➢ Product or services building method
➢ Information-based products pricing and priority method.
Target and Micromarketing:
➢ Electronic commerce, technology has put target and micromarketing within the research of
small business.
➢ It gives information to the micro marketers not only about its own business but also consumer’s
information.
➢ Consumer target is two-way flow of communication between seller and buyer.
➢ Direct mail and telemarketing are two fast growing ways to micro market.
➢ Technology is an essential tool in micromarketing
There are two main types of micromarketing:
➢ Direct-relationship micromarketing: is aimed at stimulating sales at retail establishments
through direct contacts with consumers.
➢ Direct-order micromarketing: is focused on selling products directly to consumers in their
homes or businesses.
Small vs large: Thread avoid vs goliath syndrome
➢ The key distinction between small and large business remains access to national and
international marketing for advertising purposes.
➢ Today, exorbitant advertising cost represents the barrier to reaching the customer effectively.
Internet and other networks plays good role in advertising.
➢ The major difference between the internet and other I-way advertising media are ownership
and membership fees.
➢ Due to the empowering effect of internet-facilitated advertising however, the balance of power
between large and small companies may change in future.

6) Identify how market research helps in developing the business.

A) Market research is an effective tool to assist your business planning. It is about collecting
information that provides an insight into your customers thinking, buying patterns, and location.
In addition, market research can also assist you to monitor market trends and keep an eye on what
your competition is doing.
Successful businesses undertake market research on a regular basis to:
● identify potential new customers
● learn more about existing customers
● inform their decisions regarding existing and new products or services
● better understand their competitors
● test new markets
● identify performance, pricing or promotion opportunities
Marketing Research
➢ Market research is extremely important for companies in terms of how they allocate their
advertising dollars in sales promotions, how they introduce new products, how they target new
markets.
Broadly marketing research is divided into three faces:
➢ Data collection
➢ Data organization
➢ Data analysis and sense making
Data collection:
➢ Markets mainly relied on source database for understanding consumer behavior.
➢ Source data base mainly comprise of numeric information.
➢ Delivery of source database services fallows two main patterns.
➢ Data collect and collate data, making it available by data base producers.
➢ Data collect and collate data, making it available by central hosts like CompuServe, American
online..etc.
Data organization:
➢ Everyone is collecting data from electronic commerce, but very few are organizing it effectively
for developing a marketing strategy.
The key abilities in their environment are:
➢ Leverage its established database into customized offerings by audience and markets.
➢ Leverage its established database in terms of horizontal growth.
Data analysis and sense making:
➢ The ability to link database to analytic tools like econometric programs and forecasting models
is called data analysis.
➢ Market research is undergoing major changes; the next generation of source database will
definitely include multimedia information

7) Identify how Information search and retrieval helps in dealing with large volumes of data.
A) Data is an observed fact and when any meaning is assigned to data or when it is processed, it
becomes information. Information reduces uncertainty and it is communicable. Information leads
to confirmation but when information is processed and internalized it becomes knowledge. Today,
plenty of information is available in print and non-print format which leads to information
overload. The Internet is one of the vital sources of information. Sometimes it becomes impossible
for the users to understand the available information or they do not understand where to find it or
they are unable to access the right information. These factors lead to their stress, delay in decision
making, waste of time etc.
Information search and retrieval:
➢ Search and retrieval begins when a user provides a description of the information being to
an automated discovery system.
➢ Using the knowledge of the environment, the system attempts to locate the information
that matches the given description.
➢ An information retrieval method depends on the libraries.
➢ The challenge is to develop user in domains such as electronic shopping.
➢ Search and retrieval methods that refine queries through various computing techniques
such as nearest neighbors, them variants of the original query.

State-of-the-art approaches to retrieving information employ two generic techniques: (1) matching
words in the query against the database index (key-word searching) and (2) traversing the database
with the aid of hypertext or hypermedia links.
Key-word searches can be made either more general or more narrow in scope by means of
logical operators (e.g., disjunction and conjunction). Because of the semantic ambiguities involved
in free-text indexing, however, the precision of the key-word retrieval technique—that is, the
percentage of relevant documents correctly retrieved from a collection—is far from ideal, and
various modifications have been introduced to improve it. In one such enhancement, the search
output is sorted by degree of relevance, based on a statistical match between the key words in the
query and in the document; in another, the program automatically generates a new query using
one or more documents considered relevant by the user. Key-word searching has been the
dominant approach to text retrieval since the early 1960s; hypertext has so far been largely
confined to personal or corporate information-retrieval applications.

8a) Identify why E-Commerce catalogues or directories are an essential support function to guide
customers.
A) Refer 2A and conclude your opinion

8b) Identify why consumers and organizations rely on computing methods to filter and
disseminate information.
A) INFORMATION FILTERING
➢ An Information filtering system is a system that removes redundant or unwanted information
from an information stream using (semi)automated or computerized methods prior to
presentation to a human user.
➢ Its main goal is the management of the information overload and increment of the semantic
signal-to-noise ratio. To do this the user's profile is compared to some reference characteristics. ➢
A notable application can be found in the field of email spam filters.
➢ Thus, it is not only the information explosion that necessitates some form of filters, butalso
inadvertently or maliciously introduced pseudo-information.
➢ On the presentation level, information filtering takes the form of user-preferences-based
newsfeeds, etc.
➢ Recommender systems are active information filtering systems that attempt to present to the
user information items (movies, music, books, news, webpage) the user is interested in.
➢ Information filtering describes a variety of processes involving the delivery of information to
people who need it.
➢ This technology is needed as the rapid accumulation of information in electronic databases.
➢ Information filtering is needed in e-mails, multimedia distributed system and electronic office
documents.
The features of the information filtering are:
➢ Filtering systems involves large amounts of data (gigabits of text).
➢ Filtering typically involves streams of incoming data, either being broadcast by remote sources
or sent directly by other sources like e-mails.
➢ Filtering has also been used to describe the process of accessing and retrieving information
from remote database.
➢ Filtering is based on descriptions of individual or group information preferences, often called
profiles.
➢ Filtering system deal primarily with textual information.
Information is of utmost importance in the operation of every market, including, recently emerged,
on-line markets for products and services. Market participants utilize available and relevant
information to decide upon their actions and improve their welfare by trading and consuming
resources. An important component of all information that market participants utilize, is
information that pertains directly to the products and services that are traded.
Write your opinion.

9) Identify why Advertising on the Internet has become contentious and divisive.
A) Advertising on the Internet
➢ The notion of advertising and marketing became inevitable after 1991 when the internet was
opened for commercial traffic.
➢ There are very good reasons for embracing the inevitability of growing of commercial
advertising on the internet:
- Advertising conveys much needed information
- Advertising generates significant revenue
Write something about push based advertising and pull based advertising and your own opinion.
10) Analyse the Online marketing process.
A) Online marketing is the process of using web-based channels for promoting your e-commerce
store and spreading a message of your brand, products, and services.
Email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, Google AdWords are some of the ways
of online marketing. All these methods are used to reach your potential customers and increase
traffic to your website.

Identify your Audience

The purpose of online marketing is understanding your customers, their requirements, and
identifying the target audience. So, to begin with marketing, first, divide the market into different
customer groups. By doing so, you will determine the differences among your customers. When you
proceed with this, understanding who is interested in your products and to which group you need
to convince more becomes far easier.

Create an Advertising Plan

After dividing your customer base, developing an effective marketing plan is necessary. You need to
identify what you want to achieve with your marketing. Be very specific with your advertising goals.
These include attracting new customers, retaining existing ones, generating sales leads, spreading
awareness about your brand, etc.

Make Your Content Reach to Your Target Customers

Use newsgroups, emails, newsletters, blogs, social media, and various other online mediums to
reach your target customers.

Interact With Your Potential Customers

While marketing online, if your customers approach you, interacting with them becomes necessary.
Answering your customers queries develops trust about your brand among them.

While interacting with your potential customers, you learn about their requirements and what they
expect from you. This helps in making your services better for your consumers.

Provide Customer Support

Online customer support is also necessary. It helps in resolving customer’s problems. The more
quickly your customer’s issues are resolved, the more they develop trust towards your services, and
hence they become your loyal customers for an extended time.

When your target customers spend time in watching, reading your marketing that are attracted
more towards your brand. It is the best way of letting them reach your online store, make
purchases, and boost your sales.
11) List different types of Digital document.
A)

1) Document Imaging: An imaging system passes a paper document through a scanner that
renders it digital and then stores the digital data as a bit-mapped image of the document
Keywords for each document that help in indexing and retrieval are entered during scanning.
Problem with imaging approach is that the output contains only images, not encoded text.
Standards used in imaging
• TIFF (tag image file format): Format for interchange ofbit- mapped images
• ITU-TSS ( International Telecommunication Union – telecommunications standardization
sector ) This standardis used for compression and exchange of bit-mapped files
2) Structured Document: Structured documents apply database structuring capabilities to
individual documents and document collections to allow tools to manipulate document content
just like fields within database tables – Document manipulation is compounded by the problems
such as they are often lengthy, complex, cross referenced, and encrusted with new information
types like spreadsheets, computer-aided design, graphics, multimedia etc – Towork effectively with
the digital document, a database approach is most appropriate – It is similar to TOC(Table of
Contents) approach which provides a structure that serves as an effective index to underlying
document content.
Structured document standards
• SGML ( standard generalized markup language) – an ISO standard for interchange and
multi-formatting, description of text documents in terms of their logical structure
• ODA ( office document architecture) – an ANSI and ISO standard for interchange of
compound office documents ODA specifies both content and format
 • CDA ( compound document architecture ) – defines a set of ground rules- content and
format- and services for the interchange of compound documents between applications
• RTF ( rich-text format) – developed by Microsoft for interchange of text between
Microsoft desktop product
3) Hypertext Documents: – Hypertext is a way of making document-based information more
mobile.Mobility of information is necessary for • Information in enterprise is seldom located on
one node or server but is distributed throughout the organization • Accessing and retrieving large
monolithic documents is time consuming Support for hypertext functionality, enabling cross-
referencing and conditional branching to related parts of an electronic document, is an essential
requirement • Reuse of document fragments for composing new document is more effective when
information stored on individual systems and servers across an enterprise can be accessed from
remote locations.Relationships between documents can be represented through hypermedia links
(hyperlinks) that allow the production of complex, richly connected and cross-referenced bodies of
knowledge This structuring and navigation mechanism has been used effectively to deal with the
presentation of large amounts of loosely structured information, such as on-line documentation or
computer-aided learning.
4) Active Documents: Active documents ( or compound documents) represent what is known as
document-oriented computing Active documents provide an interactive interface where all
documents, applications, and data related to a particular task are assembled, arranged, and
interlinked in such a manner that the user can focus on the task at hand and be shielded from
non-task-related issues like access, storage, data formats, location, computing, or delivery
mechanisms. Active documents are especially powerful because they combine the notion of
composition of information with the distributed nature of information. Active documents allow
spreadsheet, word-processing and other multimedia objects belonging to different applications to
be dragged and dropped.

12) List the Search and resource discovery paradigms

A) Search and resource discovery paradigms
Broadly speaking three information search and resource discovery paradigms use
1. Information search and retrieval
2. Electronic directories and catalogs
3. Information filtering
1. Information search and retrieval
Information search is sifting through large volumes of information to find some target
information.
It is designed to deal with
1. semi structured
2. unstructured data
In contrast to database applications involving only structured data.
The process of searching for text in large collection of documents can be divided in 2 phases.
Example
Query to find all documents containing the string E-commerce
Publisher indexing phase consists of entering documents into the system and creating indexes and
pointer to facilitate subsequent searches. The process of loading documents into the system and
updating indexes in normally not a concern to the user.
2. Electronic directories and catalogs
Information browsing and organizing is accomplished using directories and catalogs. Organizing
refers to the human guided process of deciding how to interrelate information usually by placing it
into same sort of hierarchy.
Browsing refers to the corresponding human guided activity of exploring the organization and
contents of a resource space. [email protected]
The main weakness of information organizing is that it is typically done by “someone else” and is
not easy to change but this is also the main strength because people prefer fixed system to be
used.
Information browsing depends heavily on the quality and relevance of the organization.
3. Information filtering: - The goal of information filtering is to select all and only that information
is relevant and reduce it to a manageable and understandable set. The focus here is on providing
efficient access to the [email protected] constantly changing information for a
specific task. This access is controlled by software filters are of two types.
1. Local filters: - work on incoming data to a PC such as news feed.
2. Remote filters: - are often software agents that work behalf on users.