Page 43 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

20 1 Overview of Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

• Hailing a taxi in South Florida and other major cit- • Supermarket shoppers in Finland are using camera-
ies is much easier today. As of August 2012 you equipped smartphones that can scan the bar code
can e-hail taxi if you have a smartphone with an of an item to find its ingredients, nutrient value,
application by ZABCAB (zabcab.com). All you and exercise time needed to burn the consumed
have to do is to push one button. Your exact loca- calories.
tion (on a map) will appear automatically on the • Bicycle computers (by Bridgestone Cycle Co.) can
portable device screen of all subscribing taxi driv- automatically keep track of your travel distance,
ers. There is no cost for the user. Over 500 million speed, time, and calorie consumption. For cycling
active users download songs, games, and videos on communities, see bikewire.net and cyclingforum.
Apple’s iTunes store. (A selection of over 50 mil- com.
lion songs, TV episodes, etc.). The store also serves • Champions of the World Series of Poker used to be
575 million mobile devices users. Total revenue is people in their 50s and 60s who spent years playing
estimated to reach $11 billion in 2016. The store is the game to gain the experience needed to win. But
considered the most popular music store in the in 2009, Joe Cada from the USA won the main
world. Since its inception in 2003, it sold over 30 event at the World Series of Poker, at the age of 21.
billion songs by spring 2016. At the same time, the To gain experience quickly, Cada plays extensively
iPhone store offered over 1.1 million apps. online. Joe McKeehen won in 2015, at the age of 24.
• Ford Company is using “My Ford Touch” system to
calculate the fastest, shortest, and most fuel-effi-
cient way to get from a given place to a destination. The above list can be extended to hundreds or even
The system charts a route that avoids congestion thousands of items. For more applications, see Pepitone
(based on historical and real-time traffic data). (2012).
Results are shown on a dashboard. Initial deploy-
ment was in the 2012 model of the Ford Focus. Disruptive Impacts
• A new Japanese hotel is staffed entirely by robots
(see Moscaritolo 2015). Digital technologies in general and EC and related technolo-
• As of 2014, guests in several Starwood Hotels & gies such as m-commerce and social commerce may have a
Resorts can enter their rooms by using a smart- disruptive impact on economies, industries, business models,
phone as a room key. and people (see the “Disruptive Technologies” video of
• An international research project is developing a 2013 at mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_inter-
computerized system that enables monitoring net/disruptive_technologies. See also McCafferty (2015).
patients at home in real time, conducting a diagno- For a 2014 video interview of MIT’s Andrew McAfee and
sis, and providing medical advice. The objective is McKinsey’s James Manyika titled “Why Every Leader Should
to reduce traffic to medical facilities while increas- Care about Digitization and Disruptive Innovation,” see mck-
ing the quality of care. The project is managed in insey.com/business-functions/business- technology/
Israel with collaboration of experts from several our-insights/why-every-leader-should-care-about-
European countries. For details, see haifa.ac.il/ digitization-and- disruptive-innovation.
index.php/en.
• Union Pacific, the largest U.S. railroad company, is The Social Customer
using a large number of sensors on their trains and
other equipment to collect data that is transmitted An important component in the digital society is the social
via wireless and wireline networks to a data center. customer. Social customers (sometimes called digital
There an analysis is performed to determine opti- customers) are usually members of social networks who
mal preventive maintenance by using predictive share opinions about products, services, and vendors, do
analytics. Over 10 billion data items were collected online social shopping, and understand their rights and
in 2011 alone. The analysis increased the annual how to use the wisdom and power of social communities to
revenue by $35 million. For details, see Murphy their benefit. The number of social customers is increasing
(2012). exponentially due to wireless shopping and new online
• Water loss involving many influencing variables in shopping models and opportunities (Chapter 7). The high-
the Valley of the Moon Water District in California lights of the social customers are shown in Figure 1.6.
has been considerably reduced by using smart ana- As the figure illustrates, social customers expect better
lytical computing from IBM. service, are willing to provide feedback, product reviews, and
connect with like-minded peers. This new behavior pattern