February 11
Online Shopping Picks Up in Latin
America
Latin American companies are beginning to embrace the Internet as a tool
for targeting shoppers.
In the next two years, the number of Internet users in the region is
expected to soar from 8.5 million to about 34 million, according to some
analysts.
The number of Latin Web sites, most of which are operated by businesses,
could triple in the next year, to over 500,000. Universo Online, a
Brazilian access provider and Web site jointly owned by the Abril Group
media conglomerate and Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, includes a
virtual mall featuring 26 stores and companies.
Flowers, compact disks, books, and clothing are sold, as well as PCs from
Compaq’s Brazil site.
European Union Tries to Forge Rules for Worldwide
Internet Business
The European Commission has attempted to take the lead in efforts to
forge a worldwide system of rules for doing business on the Internet,
and unveiled plans for an international charter to encourage
co-operation among countries on online data protection, copyright,
taxation and pornography.
“If we don’t agree to terms globally, each of us will try to set our own
regulations, which will lead to over regulation,” said Martin Bangemann,
the EU commissioner in charge of telecommunications.
A recently adopted EU law on data protection makes it illegal after October
this year for EU businesses to export personal data for commercial purposes
to countries that lack comparable privacy laws–including the U.S.
The E.U. has proposed a specific international ministerial conference to
discuss these issues.
(Financial Times, Britain; February 5, 1998)
British Airways to Shut U.S. Offices, Move Onto the
Web
British Airways is closing all 17 of its U.S. city ticket offices
because customers are buying tickets directly through the airline’s
Internet Web site, over the telephone, or through independent travel
agencies.
Last year, the airline enlarged its own Web site, and has future plans to
introduce electronic ticketing facilities at its 22 airport locations.
(Associated Press; February 4, 1998)
Extranets: The Future of Business-to-Business
Commerce
Implementing an Extranet with suppliers may be one of the most important
moves a company can make, according to QCS, a U.S. electronic commerce
company that recently released a report on Extranets in the retail sector.
Extranets are cheaper than EDI, and also help eliminate the lengthy “paper
chain” that precedes the sending of a purchase order.
General Electric’s switch to an Extranet in 1996 allowed the company to cut
the time taken to generate queries from two weeks to less than a day using
an Extranet-based trading system called TPNPost.
GE claims it sourced around $1 billion of goods and services in 1997
using TPNPost and predicts this will grow to $4 billion this year. The
company also claims to have obtained overall cost savings of 5 to 20 percent
through more competitive tendering.
TPNPost has been running since 1996 and now includes about 2,500 suppliers
and more than 50 buyers.
(Financial Times, Britain; February 4, 1998)
Christmas Internet Shopping Fails to Deliver in
Europe
Christmas shopping online has been a general commercial disaster in
Europe.
“We really thought electronic commerce would pick up faster,”
said Thierry Hamelin, an analyst with IDC in Paris.
“There has been a lot of curiosity, but hardly any purchases,” added Serge
Desrochers, marketing director of Edicom, an online service that developed
a Swiss Christmas store.
Reasons include a lack of consumer confidence in online payment methods,
poorly designed Web sites, insufficient promotion, and underestimated
logistic and legal problems.
Surf-and-Buy, a French Web site backed by IBM, has been contacted 185,000
times in three months, yet just 1,400 people actually purchased an item.
“We’ve learned a lot about the market, the need for good and timely
promotion, and consumer behavior,” explained Jean-Luc Szymansky, sales
manager at IBM France.
Cybermall managers also had to deal with a variety of import-export
restrictions and duties. “Logistics is crucial, yet it is often
overlooked,” said Maja Kuenzler, public relations manager with Microsoft.
(New York Times; February 3, 1998)
New Zealand Firms to Spend Half Million Dollars on
E-Commerce Systems
About 10 percent of New Zealand’s top organisations expect to spend
more than half-a-million dollars each setting up electronic commerce
systems over the next two years, according to a survey of 300 companies
carried out by Wellington-based Price Waterhouse.
About 30 percent of the respondents expect up to 10 percent of their annual
revenue to come from Internet-based electronic commerce during the next two
years.
Senior consultant Michael Wilson says this is an indication that larger
organisations in New Zealand are serious about electronic commerce and
selling over the Internet. 58 of the 105 survey respondents expect to
be advertising on the Internet in two years, compared to no respondents
last year.
(InfoTech Weekly, New Zealand; February 2, 1998)
Australian Officials Address Internet-Age
Crime
The Australian Institute of Criminology has released a book called
“Crime in the Digital Age,” by criminologists Paul Grabosky and Russell
Smith.
The authors say that despite the challenges it presents, the information
superhighway does have its benefits for the new cybercops.
Photographs displayed on the Internet have already led to the arrest of
people on the U.S. FBI’s most wanted list. The FBI is also considering using
virtual reality technology to recreate the faces of decomposed murder
victims.
A conference planned for February 16 and 17 at the University
of Melbourne will consider whether the Internet is the 1990’s equivalent
of Dodge City, where crime is rampant, and how to beat it.
(The Australian; January 31, 1998)
