Page 100 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

3.5 Online Real Estate, Insurance, and Stock Trading 79

3. Why is LinkedIn so useful for job seekers and for employ- (anonymously). Sellers can see prices of similar homes.
ees? List the specific tools provided by EC to job Buyers can contact the sellers via anonymous e-mail. The
seekers. company also provides free listings (including photos).
4. List the specific tools provided by recruiters. Users can also participate in a blog or wiki, start a discus-
5. What are the limitations of electronic job markets? sion, and engage in other social-oriented activities. Zillow
also offers mortgage calculators and current loan rates.
Zillow makes money from advertisers and was listed on the
3.5 ONLINE REAL ESTATE, INSURANCE, stock market in 2012. Zillow has several competitors (e.g.,
AND STOCK TRADING ziprealty.com and listingbook.com). Zillow offers its brand
via more than a dozen websites (e.g., zillow.com/homes/
Online infrastructures enable additional marketing channels, for_rent, and agentfolio.com). Zillow generates revenue by
new business models, and provide new capabilities. The selling ads on its companion websites.
infrastructures provide a different way of delivering products Craigslist has a major classifieds section for real estate
and services. Some major services are presented in this and (“for sale” and “for rent” listings). Listings are free except in
the following section. some large cities, where brokers must pay a fee for placing
ads.

Real Estate Online
Insurance Online
Changes in online real estate information search and
transactions significantly impact the way that business is An increasing number of companies use the Internet to
conducted. offer standard insurance policies, such as auto, home, life,
To get some idea of the changes, see realtor.org/research- or health, at a substantial discount, mostly to individuals.
and- statistics, and for statistics on the growth of the online Furthermore, third-party aggregators offer free compari-
and off-line real estate markets, see realtor.org/research- sons of available policies. Several large insurance and risk-
and- statistics/research-reports. For example, in 2012, 74% management companies offer comprehensive insurance
of all realtors used social media tools regularly. Additional contracts online (e.g., allstate.com, ensurance.com, state-
studies by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) have farm.com/insurance, progressive.com/insurance-choices,
®
shown that over 42% of real estate buyers begin their searches geico.com). Although many people do not trust the faceless
for properties on the Internet, and 87% of all recent buyers insurance agent, others are eager to take advantage of the
used the Internet at some point in their home search (National reduced premiums. Many insurance companies use a dual
Association of Realtors 2015). strategy, using sales agents in the field but also selling
®
E-commerce and the Internet are slowly but surely having online (e.g., advertising on e-mails and Google searches).
an ever-increasing impact on the real estate industry. For Like real estate brokers, insurance brokers send unsolicited
example, despite the changes that are beginning to emerge, e-mails to millions of people. The stiff competition will
real estate agents have not been disintermediated. Home probably reduce the commission for the surviving agents.
buyers today tend to use both real estate agents and the
Internet. One possible impact is declining commissions that Example
sellers pay agents. The insurance industry has seen that over 86% of potential
insurance customers are researching and gathering informa-
Zillow, Craigslist, and Other Web 2.0 Real tion on the Internet. Thus, insurance companies are trying to
Estate Services capitalize on this trend. Many insurance companies are
quickly rolling out a variety of online tools to meet this need
Craigslist (craigslist.org) and Zillow (zillow.com) are (bain.com/publications/articles/for-insurance- companies-
examples of Web 2.0 free real estate services. Both reduce the-day-of-digital-reckoning.aspx).
the use of newspaper classified advertising, and allow buyers
to find housing information and do price and location com-
parisons on their own. Online Stock Trading and Investments
Zillow operates the “Make Me Move” (zillow.com/make-
me- move) service (free) that allows you to see for what price The commission for an online trade is between $1 and $15
you would be willing to sell your home without actually put- (“dirt cheap brokers”) to $15–$30 (“mid-priced discount bro-
ting it on the market (zillow.com/wikipages/What-is-Make- kers”), compared with an average fee of $100–$200 per trade
Me-Move). Homeowners may be motivated to sell when from a full-service broker (see investopedia.com/university/
they see the price they can get when they list their homes broker/broker1.asp). With online trading, there are no busy