ACCA SBL Syllabus E. Technology And Data Analytics - e-business models - Notes ^{4 / 6}

The world wide web allows for more potential customers and suppliers

The main models, my little moo-friends, are as follows..

• e-shopping

  The one we all love and know well - Think Amazon.  If you need more explanation of this - then please call 1990 as it is where you belong..

• e-auction

  Nice and straightforward, think e-bay

• Freemium

  This is the model on which acowtancy is built. A free trial, or free sections of the site are made available but those who enjoy the site or want more from the site then you need to pay for premium access.

• Free

  This works on advertising. The content is yours for free, but you become the product that is being sold. Your attention is sold to advertisers. Think facebook

• (Dis) Intermediation

  This has already been referred to in the previous section

  It is where you either cut out the middle man and sell direct to your customer (e-shopping). Or you become a middle man on purpose - you do all the hard work on behalf of the customer and take a commission. Think comparison price websites

• New intermediary companies

  With the huge amount of websites and products available - there is now a new breed of businesses online which create more structure and organisation - filtering the web for a particular product

  Think of asos.com, or ‘best deals’ sites such as ‘last-minute.com’

• ’e-procurement’

  This is business-to-business purchasing, by linking up the computer systems of companies with those of their main suppliers.

• Advertising

  Companies advertise their products or services on search engines such as Google, or on the websites of other companies. 

  Companies with popular, high-traffic websites can sell advertising space and earn revenue for their business in this way.

• Marketing

  Marketing messages an be sent by e-mail to potential customers (although this form of marketing is affected by the very large number of ‘spam’ marketing e-mails).

• Customer relationships

  Good customer relationships can be created by providing real time support, user forums and FAQ (frequently asked questions) pages. 

  Big data can also be used to analyse customer interests and preferences