INTERNET COMMERCE IN HONG KONG:AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

This research explores the use of internet, in particular World Wide Web, by businesses in Hong Kong to promote and sell their products and services. Content analysis of Web pages and selected interviews are used to gain insight into the role of internet in marketing channels, the prodeuct/service variety offered and transaction formats provided on the Net. It is found that most of the Hong Kong businesses engaging in internet commerce have the following characteristics: (l ) using internet to supplement their regular marketing channels; (2) having a local market focus; (3) concentrating on certain product categories; and (4) offering licited product varieties on -- line. These characterishcs may be explained by Hong Kong’s special environmental factors. In addition, cultural reasons, current and potential internet commerce customers in Hong Kong may belong to a rather small segment of the general population.

Customer Value Analysis in the Context of Internet Commerce of Industrial Robots

Internet commerce of industrial robots has the potential to provide higher value to customers in downstream industries. Aiming to transform the potential to a reality, customer values are systematically analyzed on basis of Value-Focused Thinking, which includes five aspects of identification, expression, organization, measurement and utilization. Nine types of heuristic questions are firstly used to identify customers＇ value statements. These statements are then transformed into a common expression. Then means-ends analysis and part- whole analysis are used to infer the relationships among statements, and result in a means-ends network and a hierarchical value tree for organizing them. To measure achievement of customer values, a decision model is used to identify and select the measurable attribute of each value statement, and a value model is then constructed from the set of measurable attributes. Finally, customer values are actively applied to support decision customer procurement, website design, creative or improved design of industrial robots. making of

Features of the Software as an End Product in the Modern Market

The developing market of information technologies i s the most dynamical and thriving business in the modern world. The law of supply and demand establishes repeating, steady cause and effect relation between three economic phenomena-price, supply and demand. Demand is an ideal need and a real opportunity of the customer to buy the goods. Supply is an ideal readiness and a real opportunity of the commodity producer to put the goods on the market . A plethora of factors affect the supply and demand. There is inverse dependenc e between the market price of the goods and the quantity which is in the demand. There is direct dependence between the market price of the goods and the qu antity which is offered to the buyer. The following features distinguish the sof tware from the usual goods in the consumer market: high science intensity, simpl icity of replicating, relative simplicity of modification and updating, high req uirements to quality of the software, at sale the buyer gets it, but it does no t disappear in sale, there is no physical deterioration, but there is a fast ob solescence. To protect the programs against the non-authorized access (the copy ings and operation) technical and legal methods are used: the patent protection, status of industrial secret, license agreements.