The risks in online shopping

I believe that about half of all Malaysians do at least some shopping online. Online shopping is just a way of life these days. Most people don't even think twice about using their credit cards to make a transaction in online. Shopping online carries the risk of identity theft and fraud so I think it will be useful to provide some guidelines when shopping in online.

First, you need to be aware of the websites because the sites might be a phishing site (fake site). A phishing site is a phony site designed to look like a legitimate site. Phishing sites can easily direct the users to give their personal information, such as passwords and credit card, and bank account numbers. To solve this problem, you need to check and be aware of the web address every time when the websites required you to fill in some personal information. 

Second, be aware and alert when it comes to checking statements. If you do any online shopping it's very important to go over your financial statements every month. Don't just assume that everything is fine because you don't notice a lot of money missing. Many times the identity thieves will simply do a test charge of one ringgit or two to see if the card works. If the card works, they will start to take a lot of money that you don’t ever aware of. So next time if you see any unusual charge, it's best to report it immediately before more damage can be done.

Third, always keep your computer in secure mode. This includes running anti-virus software, keeping your operating system and browsers updated, and securing your internet connection. Besides that, remember install Firewall in your computer too. By installed Firewall in your pc, you are able to block hacker  to hack in your account and stole your personal information.

Shopping online can certainly be convenient and fast, but you do have to be careful. With some of my guidelines above, you should have nothing to worry about when making that next transaction. 

Happy shopping!

Poll analysis 7

   

There are 16 readers who participant in this week poll question. The result shows that there are 10 people get to know online group buying by internet because online group buying sites rely heavily on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to drive sales. Some websites also give credits to shoppers to encourage them to spread the word to their friends and encourage purchases. Besides that, there are 3 people know online group buying by word of mouth. I should say word of mouth is really effective because when consumers purchase good deals in online buying sites, they will tend to share with their family or friends and this will easily makes they be interest to purchase things in online group sites too. There are 2 people know online group buying through newspaper and 1 person choose magazine. Online group buying sites love to advertise their coupon as a redemption in newspaper and magazine. Majority of people will unless read newspaper or magazine once a day so online group buying sites can easily reach to mass audience. Moreover, none of the readers choose billboardd radio t and radio because online group buying sites did not advertise their sites in billboard and radio because the advertise fees is really expensive. By using billboard and radio to reach out the mass media, I should said that internet is more easily and effectively to reach the audience. 

Contest Video

This video is basically talks about some information about the contest and the prizes. Besides that, it also provided some steps of joining the contest.

Live blogging session

On the 24 of March 2012, all the us were having a live blogging session. The purpose of having this is to interact with our readers instantly. We have been writing  all the post and promote our blog all this while. So we think that it will be good if we interact with them once in a while because they can always ask us any question about our blog or even about our contest.

Our live blogging session starts at 1pm to 3pm on that day. Surprisingly there are quite a number of people has ask us different question in our chatbox. Three of us answer their question immediately once they posted in our chatbox. Most of them are unclear about our contest so we are trying to make them clear about how can they join the contest.

We were happy to answer their questions one by one. This can gain the trust and support from them because they are clear about everything that we do in our blog. Lastly, we would like to have another round of live blogging session with our readers if we got the chance to do so.

Poll Analysis 6

For this week, the poll question of the blog is "What is your payment method for Online Group Buying?" This poll question is basically to find out usually consumer would rather to pay credit card, debit card or make payment through online banking. There are 15 readers to participate in this poll question. According to the pie chart above, there are 6 readers which is 40% readers out of 100% are using online banking method to make payment such as Maybank2U.com, Public Bank Southern Bank, RHB Bank and many more. This is a method that making payment through internet with your bank. Then, there are 5 readers which is 33% out of 100% using credit card to make payment while online shopping. To make payment via credit card, you just have to fill in the credit card numbers into the specific blank in web site, then in the end of month, the consumer will receive a statement to pay for the total of spending. Lastly, there are 4 readers which are 27% out of 100% readers make their payment via debit card. Debit card is similar to credit card and it works exactly same with credit card while making payment. Debit card is to fill in the card number into a specific blank in a web site but it has a limited amount which the card holder have. Conclusion, there are more people using online banking as a method of payment but least people using debit card as a method of payment.

What makes the Online Group Buying Sites boosting up E-commerce Business in Asia

 

Online group buying sites offer discounts on various products and services, over a limited amount of time. If more people buy the deal, then all the customers will be receive discount on the price. Otherwise, the purchases made by the members are refunded and nobody gets any discount. As a result, these group deal sites have become very popular and successful for all parties involved. Most online group buying sites offer short-term daily deals that discount products and services by more than 50% off and therefore usually sell out of such offerings within just a few hours. Supported by the group buying sites, E-commerce market is growing at a rapid pace in Asia, and today we are going to discuss about what is the reasons makes the Online Group Buying sites boosting up E-commerce Business in Asia in such a short period time.

The first reason I should said is the power of social media sites. When it comes to the rise of online group buying and E-Commerce, social media has a huge role to play. I believe everyone unless have a social media’s account and these people can easily see the daily deals in the social media sites. For example, you’re surfing your Facebook account, and I believe that you can see your friends are posting some awesome deals in their wall and this can make you feel interest and somehow will lead you to click on the deals. 

Besides that, the online group buying sites will feature their ads on Facebook or other social media portals, and even send out Twitter updates to promote their deals because they know is easy to reach the mass audience since everyone is using internet nowadays. Attracted by the discounts being offered, consumers will tend to refer them to their friends, family members and other people they are connected to on social networking sites, and that enables the whole viral marketing, needed  by group buying sites to sell products and expand their business.

Na, H. (2011, May 16). Group-buying companies find trust is not for sale. Retrieved March 17, 2012, from Access: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-05/16/content_12513894.htm

Rules and Regulations

ORGANISER AND ELIGIBILITY

1. This Contest is organised by a group of students from Inti College Subang Jaya and is open to all Malaysian residents that live in Klang Valley.
2. The following groups of persons shall not be eligible to participate in this Contest: Organiser (including other groups that are related to this subject matter)

DURATION

This Contest will run from 26 March to 31 March, 2012. The Organiser shall reserve the right to amend the contest Period at any time without prior notice. All entries received outside the Contest Period will be automatically disqualified.

Few Way To Make Your Web Store Famous

There are few step to make your online store more attractive and famous.Just follow the few step here, your store going to be famous as branded store.

1. Search engine and directory submission
 Start with the major search engines(Google,Yahoo) and the carefully select and submit to other search engineds targeted towards your product and clothes.Beyone this you may wish to submit to the many others search engines available, or pay someone to do it for you.

How to market with online group buying websites

Thanks to the wonderful development of the Web that enable online group buying nowadays, we can indulge in the beauty of this group buying/social shopping business model for the business opportunity. Anyhow, opportunity is when preparation met with fortune. Now that online group buying is on trend, how prepared are you to catch this business opportunity? Here we have simply three steps as a guide of how to market with online group buying websites

STEP 1: Define Your Offer

Before you spend any time contacting group buying sites it is imperative that you pinpoint what you’re offering down to its most important details. Many times businesses will put out offers that may seem like a fantastic deal since the cost is being deeply discounted, but once consumers are lured in it is not uncommon for these consumers to find that their offer was just the “cheese in the mousetrap” to spend up to two or three times as much as the offer advertised.

This is obviously a plus for many business, but remember that group buying is also social shopping. Anything social on the web now can also become extremely viral, good or bad. Just make sure your deal is desirable, transparent and inviting. If you can combine those three things into a promotion then you will successfully leverage any group buying website.

Buying with Paypal

There are some payment method for Online Group Buying. I would like to talk about one of the payment method -- PayPal, the way money works online. PayPal is a global e commerce business. Basically it is a online banking, it allowing payments, money transfer and accept payments through the internet. It's Fast, Easy, and Secure online payment. 

Group Buying Sites in Malaysia

Dealshelve aggregates daily deals from group buying sites in Malaysia and several other countries in the region and host them in one place.

All deals from group buying sites in Malaysia are aggregated from up to 50 great daily deals sites including Groupon, Everyday, Dealmates, MyDeal, MilkADeal, JackCow, StreetDeal, ILoveDiscounts, WeBuy, DealHangat, EziVoucher, Groupego, SuperDeals, Hulala, Myooo, JigoCity, MyMetroMall, CouponHouz, jvBuyer, Hahah, MadnessDeal, MyCoupon, GoodDeals2u, e9deal, myiMart, Coolpon, Deal4Real, Squarelet, iPayLess, Aibay, Hotvoucher, JuzDeal, QmuRate, eBay Kuponan, BuyDiscount, Syokdeal, SmartDeal, DealTok, BuyNett, JoyDeals, RedElephant, GroupASave, SayGoodDeal, Qpon, Qponkini, BuddyDeals, Dealbuss, MagicDeal, PayLess, PoinzCoupon.

Poll analysis (week 5)

Our poll question for this week is to know how often will consumer visit the online group buying sites. So after one week of placing the poll in our blog, we have collected the result for this question. Other than that, we provide 4 possible answers that might vote by them. There are 10 people who participated in this poll and this figure above showed the result of their votes. 

There are 2 votes for daily, 4 votes for weekly and when there are any new discount deals. No one have selected monthly mainly because most of them will check those online group buying sites regularly and quite frequently. They do not check the deals once a month because they might miss the chance to get the best deals from the sites. 

Poll analysis 4

There are 21 readers who participant in this week poll question. The result shows that there are 16 people response that they perceive online group buying as online marketing . One of the readers response that online marketing and online group buying are directly related to one another. By using online group buying sites, it is the best tool and most effective way to brand seller's product line or service and to increase their visibility online. Besides, there are 6 readers choose online advertising.  They think sellers is using online group buying sites to advertise their product because it is the fastest way to reach out mass consumers. Due to society are online everyday, so they can more easily to view the online group buying sites. Other than that, there are only 4 readers choose online shopping.

The rise of online deal seeking and couponing

  Discount coupons, long used by American families to make their budgets go further, but almost every people is using coupons purchase in online nowadays and it have been undergoing a digital revolution. Where people once browsed in magazines or newspapers, they can now browse the internet

for coupons, and even download them to their smart phone.

  In 1888, the Coca-Cola company creates the first coupon, advertising a free glass of Coke to help promote the soda. It create a huge impact to Coca-cola company, many people love the way how the company promote their soda. After that, many grocery stores use the same way to attract customers from local markets too. In 1990, the internet leads to downloadable and printable coupons and online deals. However there are no specific online group buying sites launched on that time until in the year of 1998, first online buying sites "Coupons" launched. Since then, many online group buying sites started to launched like  "CouponMom!", "Woot!".

Besides that, the way people to redemm coupon now  is very different compare to last time. Before 1990, all the coupon is in the newspaper or magazine, consumers need to cut down the coupon to redeem it. After 1990, all the printable coupons is in the internet and people can even used QR code to redeem the coupon. There is a graph from Creditscore websites shows that internet redemption growth has skyrocketed, rising 263% in 2009 but the newpaper redemption had rising 89% only.

Billy,S. (2010,August 4). Rise of online deal seeking and couponing. Retrieved March 3, 2012,

From Access: http://www.creditscore.net/online-deals-couponing/

The Features of Online Group Buying

There must be features in Online Group Buying so that it can attract the social consumer to look at it.

1. Rating System

Online Group Buying usually has a rating system. Rating system has different type such as star rating system or like or dislike rating system. This is to let the consumer to do rating on online group buying.

2. Social Network Widget

Social network widget is a widget that allow the consumer to share the information on their social network sites. There will be a few selected social network's icon for the consumer to click on it and share the information. For example Facebook and Twitter.

3. Comment System

Comment system is to allow the consumer to comment about the online group buying. Consumer can change the comment system to Facebook so that people can comment it through Facebook as well. For example, when a person post comment, it will pop out a dialogue box asking whether the consumer wants to share it on Facebook page or not.

4. Contest

Contest is one of the feature of online group buying. Before the consumer are qualify to get a certain benefits from the online group buying, consumer has to fulfill some action gave by the company. Consumer don't have to buy something but need to fulfill the criteria of the company, such as Groupon. Then, consumer will get certain benefits. For example, Ribena company celebrate 5 years anniversary and all the lucky numbers of consumer that related to the number 5 can get the offer of buy 1 free 3, like the number of identity card, height, weight, day of birth, telephone number and many more. But before the consumer join the contest, consumer has to share the website of Ribena company for at least 5 times on the social networking site. Then only can join the contest.

Who is social consumer?

Have you wonder who is the target market of online group buying? Marketers are smart nowadays. They tend to target social consumer. Why are they present in the market nowadays? This is because the rapid change of the web and its uses has given us the social consumer. For comparison, the old style of consumer would make a buying decision by considering the brands available and looking at the good and bad based on the information provided from the advertiser to the products. Word-of-mouth might be one of the factors to influence their decision too.