Background – Mini-Research Project: e-Transaction Broker
Flourishing e-businesses fuelled by proliferating popularity of online trading among the IT savvy Generation Y. One of the most popular e-business modes is e-commerce TRANSACTION BROKER whereby they act as informediary for their one-stop services such as mass price comparison. A transaction broker can be further define as an intermediary who retains fee for negotiating or conducting transactions over the cyberspace as a third party, and does not take possession of or own the goods or services. In recent times, e-commerce transaction broker are also known in short as
Cybermediary [created by Forrestor Research].
Research Report: on Ctrip.Com
Ctrip.com is a Business-to-consumer (B2C) eCommerce transaction broker with the aim of selling travel related services to traveler. It operates as consolidator of hotel accommodations and air tickets in China. The company primarily engages in the provision of travel related services including hotel reservation, air ticketing, packaged-tour services, and Internet-related advertising and other related services.
Revenues consist mainly of commissions from hotels. In order to satisfy the needs of quick growth, CTRIP has a operating headquarter located in Shanghai. However all services and transactions are carried out through an advanced transaction and service platform consisting of its centralized toll-free, 24 hour customer service center and bilingual Web sites
Payment System
Ctrip.com offers the standard mode of payment that can be found inline. For example, for China hotel reservations, the most common way to pay is at the check-out using either cash or a credit card. Only a handful of hotels may allow prepayment. Whereas for flight reservations, payment can be make before or upon receiving the using either credit card or PayPal system.
Trusted international service provider, Verisign, guarantees their private information security. For transaction to be possible, user’s browser must supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption. SSL encodes the credit card number before disseminating in a format that prevents data theft. Once received by ctrip’s secure server, the data will not be transmitted over the Internet again. Additional verifications are required for payment using non-Mainland Chinese credit cards in order to prevent possible international credit card fraud. Their secure transaction technology has proven to be well fortified since hundreds of thousands of Ctrip customers have transmitted their credit card numbers online without much hitch.
Strengths of Ctrip.com
1. Flexibility
Having an online service will remove all the constraints of time. People can send in their report at anytime of the day. There will not be any office hours that remove flexibility, hence work can be done in a flexible way.
2. Globalization
As having an online service is a international business, hence there will be no constraints to boundaries. Business can be performed in a globally way without having offices to situate in any part of the world.
3. Time and Cost Saving
As offices do not have to be physically around, therefore rental fee of spaces for offices can be eliminated. Since administration work can be done through computer's technology, it can help in the reduction of redundant manual work and thus labor cost can also be saved. Customers also need not travel down in person to the physical office to have their orders being sent in as this can easily be done easily via internet. This help the customers to save a lot of time and transportation cost.
4. A Variety of Choices
As there is a wide variety of choices on the website, people need not search around the web searching for products. Just by surfing through the website, plenty of information on different choices will be made available for them.
5. Informative
Numerous information on different products can be found online, including descriptions on hotels, availability of types of rooms, reviews and photographs, facilities available in the hotel, locations, and even maps of the situation of the hotel.
6. Handy Features
The website has features that ease the search for hotels based on the customers’ choice. The website enables customers to have their choices found specifically according to their budgets and location. These features aid customers to find hotels that match as closely to their interests.
Weaknesses of Ctrip.com
1. Concern on Risk and Security
Ctrip.com uses e-payment for any transactions made to them. Though there is the presence of security password and all but ctrip.com have to face the risk of fraudulent purchases that uses stolen credit cards or fraudulent repudiation of any online purchase.
2. Verifiable
Some hotels do not provide customers with pictures that are detailed and have accurate descriptions of the various hotel rooms. Hence these pictures being shown maybe misleading for customers to assume that the rooms which they have seen online will look the exactly the same as what they will be getting.
3. Internet Savvy
Customers who are internet savvy, will not be able to go online. Therefore they will have to travel all the way down to the travel agencies in order to book their rooms. This will cause inconvenience to the customers.
Conclusion on Ctrip.com
In conclusion, ctrip.com allows us to save time and effort in searching for hotels. With ctrip.com, more varieties of choices are made available to us. Now, we can simply book the rooms through the website and thus saving time traveling to the travel agencies. E-commerce has become a necessity in our lives and is essential to us. In future, we will be expecting more travel agencies to move towards e-commerce.