Overseas models of Internet business models

Here, our China B2B Research Center focuses on analyzing the following three points: In fact, its success is far from limited to these three points.

First, Bezos’ business philosophy is to “build scale as quickly as possible” (GetBigFast).

Second, a core element of Amazon’s business model is customer-centric.

Although the essence of traditional business management is "the customer is always right," Bezos still regards it as the maxim of his own business. Amazon's practices include:

·Designing a customer-centered book selection system: Amazon's website can help readers find books of interest from a large library of books in a matter of seconds;

< p>·Established a customer email database: The company can track readers' choices, record the books they care about, and notify them immediately when new books are published.

·Establish a customer service department: Since the early 2000s, Amazon has hired hundreds of full-time customer service representatives to handle a large number of customer calls and emails. The work of the service representatives sounds very monotonous. For example, we handle customer complaints about slow delivery, customers modifying orders, asking about order status, and even asking some basic questions about online ordering. It is these seemingly inconspicuous service tasks that make Amazon.com rank first in previous customer satisfaction ratings of retail websites.

Amazon studied the book buying habits of customers and found that readers like to browse the content of books regardless of whether they buy books or not. Therefore, in order to meet readers' needs for browsing certain book contents, Amazon's online bookstore has created a unique "Look Inside the Book" service, which has attracted a large number of readers to read online.

Third, horizontal development and vertical tapping of potential.

In 2001, many investment institutions suggested that Amazon’s online bookstore merge with other giant companies. At that time, the merger of AOL and Time Warner caused a stir in the market. Bezos did not accept these merger suggestions, but he chose a horizontal combination. For example, the trading platform built by Bezos serves toy merchants (Toys'R'Us) and electrical appliance dealers (CircusCity). At the same time, it took over the website operation of the second largest book seller in the United States (Borders), consolidating its position in the online book sales market. At the same time, Amazon's online bookstore has opened 6 global websites, located in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan. In this way, consumers in different languages ??can be better served through local language websites.

Beginning in 2002, Amazon’s online bookstore began to launch office supply stores and clothing stores. Today, Amazon's online bookstore sells more than 500 brands of clothing and footwear, thanks to its active implementation of "merchant projects", which means it cooperates with various merchants to continuously expand the space for products and services (as shown in Figure 7).

At present, Amazon's online bookstore is not limited to selling books. The products it sells include: clothing, clothing, electronic products, computers, software, kitchen supplies, homewares, DVDs, video tapes, cameras and photos, office products supplies, children's products, toys, travel services and outdoor products, etc. In addition, businesses and individuals can sell new or second-hand goods, as well as their own collections, through Amazon's website. Amazon can charge a flat fee, a sales commission, and a per-unit fee for specialty items. In September 2003, Amazon launched a sports goods store in conjunction with L.A. Clippers Elton Brand and sporting goods merchants, which distributes more than 3,000 best-selling brands, covering more than 50 sports items, and at the same time, supports youth sports clubs in various places to carry out activities. The most loyal viewers of Electronic Harbor are various collectors, and the items they collect can be described as all kinds of strange.

To become a buyer of Electronic Harbor, you must first register. Registration requires simple information such as a person's name, email, and mailing address. The most important registration step is to understand and accept the user agreement and be familiar with your obligations and responsibilities during the transaction process.

After registration, new members need to create their own Electronic Harbor web page, listing the items they auction, their bidding quantities, the items they purchased, the balance status of their Electronic Harbor account, etc. Electronic Harbor members can use their own web pages to provide payment information, and many members have Electronic Harbor charge credit cards.

Among them, an important feature of Electronic Harbor is that Electronic Harbor encourages all buyers and sellers to fill in online feedback forms, and all of these feedbacks are made public on the website. Through these customer feedback records, including praise and complaints, other members can use this to evaluate whether to buy or sell with members with "stained" records.

In addition, Electronic Harbor only acts as an auction intermediary. It has no inventory, does not have ownership of the items after the auction, and does not involve in the transfer of funds between buyers and sellers. Of course, Electronic Harbor charges for its own intermediary services, and the charging standards are also very complicated. Small items charge between US$0.30 per item and US$3.30 per item, while large items such as cars and real estate charge sales agency fees. , generally charged at 5% of the sales price. In addition, E-port also charges service fees for specific transaction items according to customer requirements.

In fact, Omidale did not expect to create a big company at all. He just regards his website as a "big laboratory" - a laboratory for e-commerce. He is just obsessed with the "efficient market theory" and hopes that supply and demand will be balanced to achieve real value. In June 1996, Omidale resigned from his job and devoted himself to the construction of Electronic Harbor. In order to make up for his lack of management, he hired an MBA to help him conduct strategic analysis and planning.

In mid-1997, Omidale faced a choice. Should we sell Electronic Harbor or seek external financing? A major media company offered to pay $50 million to buy his company, and because his experiments were not yet complete, Omidale began seeking venture capital support. By June 1997, Benchmark Capital, a well-known venture capital firm, agreed to invest US$5 million so that Electronic Harbor could sustain itself for nearly a year. The top priority is that Electronic Harbor still needs to be publicly listed in order to protect the income of investors and maintain the sustainable development of the enterprise.

The challenges faced by Electronic Harbor are:

First of all, the challenge comes from any guarantee of safe operation of the website. The influx of a large number of members brings difficulties to the smooth operation of the company's network, especially occasional hacker attacks and virus intrusions. In the first few years, Electronic Harbor only had one server. Once it ran into trouble, it had no choice but to switch to offline auctions. This greatly affected the reputation of Electronic Harbor. In particular, on June 10, 1999, Electronic Harbor was closed for nearly 24 hours, although SUN assumed part of the responsibility. In the second half of 1999, a series of website closures were followed by a fall in stock prices.

Secondly, the challenge comes from how to ensure that the items auctioned on the website are legal. Just as Whitman had foreseen, some items harmful to society, including weapons and boring souvenirs, appeared on the Electronic Harbor. In May 2000, a French court ruled that Yahoo violated French law by prohibiting the sale of any Nazi-related items, and Electronic Harbor immediately began to clean up its own auction items. Including the removal of an ad a few months ago in which a member was selling his own kidney.

Again, the challenge comes from how to prevent e-commerce from facing a large number of online frauds. In order to prevent online fraud, Electronic Harbor hired a former federal prosecutor to preside over the trial of fraud cases and developed software to track some large transactions. However, fraud incidents continued. By the end of the new millennium, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was beset by numerous auction frauds. In 2000, the Federal Trade Commission received nearly 11,000 complaints related to online auctions, compared with just over 100 complaints three years earlier. In the summer of 2001, the National Fraud Information Center reported that auction fraud was the most common type of fraud on the Internet. According to independent agency surveys, various online auction frauds account for 76% of all Internet users being defrauded.

Finally, challenges not only come from the above aspects, but the biggest challenge comes from competition. Likewise, competition also comes from many aspects. For example, the online auction model is challenged by Yahoo and Amazon. Yahoo quickly promoted online auctions to Japan and became the largest online auction website in Japan. Amazon drew on the experience of Electronic Harbor and made up for some loopholes. For example, Amazon first launched a repayment guarantee for users who purchase more than 250 US dollars. . Because the transaction volume of online auctions is generally relatively small, Amazon's strategy is to attract buyers and sellers to be trustworthy and actively trade. Under Amazon’s attack, Electronic Harbor was forced to adopt a similar strategy.

In addition, traditional retailers and wholesalers pose a greater threat to Electronic Harbor. Dealing with seasonal goods and overstocked goods is a headache for traditional retailers. Now, JCPenney, SharperImage and Lands’ End have begun to launch their own online auction websites. Leaders in the field of mobile Internet

Since the 1990s, developed countries have actively explored and implemented: from narrowband, voice-only digital networks (second generation) to broadband and mobile networks, and provided various digital services, including Image and sound transmission is the third generation of mobile communications. Undoubtedly, from the perspective of mobile Internet access technology, this may be another investment hotspot.

In the first half of the 1990s, the future of the Japanese wireless market was not clear. The market is strictly regulated by the government, registration fees are very expensive, and individual users can only rent handheld devices rather than own them. But in 1994, the Postal Service and the Ministry of Communications delegated power to the wireless market, allowing free operation. Individual users could own their own mobile phones, and the mobile phone market was suddenly activated. By the second half of the 1990s, Japan's wireless market had achieved tremendous development, and Japan had become the fastest-growing mobile phone country in the world. From 1994 to 1999, mobile telephony grew tenfold. Growth from 26 million users to 278 million users

NTT DoCoMo was separated from parent company NTT in 1992. On February 22, 1999, NTT DoCoMo launched the I model. I refers to information, interactive, and Internet. At the same time, the pronunciation of I in Japanese is similar to Chinese, which means "love".

This is a wireless Internet service and the first of its kind in the world.

I-mode was a pilot project before the development of 3G, initially as a service for corporate customers (DUPA, a mobile phone virtual network service provider). At that time, NTT DoCoMo had mastered PDC language network technology and developed package service technology. However, the company's customers were unsuccessful in promoting it. In other words, the packet-based network already exists, and the initial investment in I mode is almost zero. In Japan, telephone Internet access is very expensive. In 2000, phone and Internet service provider charges were approximately $67.12 per 20 hours per month, one of the highest rates in the world and twice that in the United States. To this end, in a sense, I-Mode and its competitors played a role in popularizing the Internet in Japan, just as AOL played a similar role in the United States. Many people got their first experience with the Internet through I-Mode. Moreover, the difference from the United States is that American consumers have been dominated by the concept that "information should be free", and the computer penetration rate in the United States is 60%, which is 20% higher than the penetration rate of mobile phones, so , once it is necessary to promote the I model in the United States, it will be very difficult. Many users are accustomed to using computer keyboards rather than handheld device keyboards, and more importantly, American users are not willing to accept the practice of paying for information.

In mid-2000, after less than 18 months of operation, I-mode has attracted more than 10 million registered users. Users can use their handheld devices to send emails, receive messages, and even perform various tasks. E-commerce transactions.

At the beginning, NTTDoCoMo did not expect that the I model would be so successful. NTT DoCoMo focuses on 3G technology and develops its own WCDMA standard (widebandcodedivisionmultipleaccess). In fact, the I model makes full use of existing technologies to create a business model for wireless Internet users and mobile phone users. It establishes alliances with service providers that provide content by establishing a user-friendly platform. In the 15 months from July 2000 to October 2001, NTTDoCoMo's I-mode users grew from 10 million to 30 million, and I-mode packaged sales revenue reached US$2.8 billion, an increase of 840%. At the same time, the number of users of I-mode competitors KDDI and J-Phone has also continued to rise, so that the total number of mobile Internet users in Japan has exceeded 46 million. As of July 2003, the number of registered users of I-mode exceeded 44.19 million, accounting for 57.2% of the Japanese mobile phone service market. At the same time, NTTDoCoMo ranks 16th in the Fortune 500 rankings.

In order to meet the needs of users, the company continues to introduce new products. In 2000, I-mode launched color-screen mobile phones, and in January 2001, handheld devices with Java technology were introduced. By December 2001, such users accounted for almost one-third of all users. The advantages of Java handheld devices are: they can download game software and run it online; they can support information updates such as weather forecasts, stock prices, schedule information, etc.; they have improved security capabilities and ensure simple and easy payment.

We firmly believe that the I model can provide business reference value for China's wireless Internet operators not only today, but also tomorrow.