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Other miscellaneous products that range from flowers, pet supplies, spirits and beers, cb radios, rice cookers and steamers, heaters, toasters, waffle makers, pasta makers etc. The presentation of the categories on each site is very important. If consumers want to purchase Canon Powershot A95, they�ll find various types of data on the camera. For example, on Shopping.com, the consumers will be able to compare prices and stores, read reviews and see product details. They also can sort total price low to high or high to low. They�ll find notes telling them whether the camera is in stock or out of stock. More importantly, they�ll find a list of stores from which they can buy the camera. Depending on whether the shoppers want to have more information before making their mind up, they can read reviews by previous shoppers and owners of the camera. To help the shoppers make up their mind, they will be able to read the list of most popular digital cameras. Once they are ready to purchase, they�ll click on the store�s link which will take them to the seller�s storefront. Shopping for the same camera on shopping.yahoo.com will allow the potential buyer to find users� and editorial reviews, product description and full specifications. They will be able to see an overview and compare prices. They�ll see the merchant�s rating, base price, tax, shipping and total price. A �Buying Info� link is provided. Once the shoppers click on it, it will direct them to the seller or merchant�s storefront. The point of these two examples is to indicate some of the competitive factors that Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com may be involved in. If before the acquisition by eBay, shopping.com was just a pioneer in online comparison shopping, once the acquisition is finalized, it has a new set of competitors. eBay�s expansion and recent buying spree show its intent in diversifying its assets and being a global powerhouse intermediary. Some of the ways that Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com can compete are through the product differentiation and personalization. The online transactions give rise to lower search coasts for buyers, speedy comparisons, lower prices and customer service. The previous examples show some of the benefits of e-markets. Since marketspaces reduce the cost of searching for product information, merchants can afford to lower prices. Potential buyers expect to find cheaper or better service from both sites. With all the traffic to yahoo.com from millions of viewers, being able to convert a high percentage of them to buyers can be a boon to advertisers and merchants or e-tailers. Both sites offer speedy comparisons. It can take a shopper a matter of seconds to get the results of a search. Using either Yahoo shopping or Shopping.com allow customers to find what they want and compare prices and merchants in a few seconds.

Another point of great importance is the level of differentiation and personalization that exists on both Web sites. In the area of comparison shopping, Shoppping.com which claims to have started the online comparison shopping appears to have mastered the system. Shopping.Compare is something that was not available anywhere else. In this sense, yahoo.shopping.com appears to differentiate itself by providing editorial reviews on products, real estate, anti-spyware, pop-up blocker, football, soccer, FIFA, premium services, mail services, mutual funds, alliances and communications with SBC Yahoo, mobile etc. In terms of the lower price, if �volume is large enough, prices can be reduced by 40 percent or more� (King & al. 2004). Despite all these considerations, what is really important to remember is that EC supports efficient markets and could result in almost perfect competition. �The characteristics necessary for perfect competition are the following: Many buyers and sellers must be able to enter the market at little or no entry cost (no barriers to entry); large buyers and sellers are not able to individually influence the market; the products must be homogeneous; buyers and sellers must have comprehensive information about the products and about the market participants� demands, supplies, and conditions� (King & al., p 63). We see that both of these companies meet these criteria in their own way.

The differentiation between the two companies is more pronounced in the real estate/mortgage sub-category. Since 1999, Shopping.com has been allowing users to compare mortgage rates and lenders. Consumers can select the loan purpose, the property�s state, enter the loan amount and a down payment. If consumers choose to find lenders and mortgage by state, a list of mortgage lenders is provided. They can get quote from lenders such as LendingTree and getSmartLending, two companies that are featured on the site. It�s worth noticing that it is not uncommon to find the same advertisers on both sites. It must be cost-effective for them. Both Yahoo shopping and Shopping.com appear to give the advertisers a good value proposition. They provide sponsored links where some of the major mortgage companies can become sponsors. Both companies allow consumers to find loans by type and down payment. Besides the users� reviews provided by Shopping.com, Yahoo Real Estate seems to provide the shopper with more tools and resources. Yahoo provides a mortgage payment calculator, affordability calculator, amortization calculator, refinance calculator, and first-time buyer�s guide to mortgages.

CRM, Customization and Personalization are offered by Yahoo shopping and Shopping.com At this point, it�s important to define personalization which is the ability to tailor a product, service, or web content to specific user preferences. On shopping.com, shoppers or buyers can join, have an account (a reason to return to the site later), purchase products from merchants, review other products they are familiar with. Thanks to its various services, users have many reasons to return to the site. Whether it�s for communications purposes as revealed in the use of its most popular, free Internet-based e-mail accounts, yahoo messenger, yahoo has a way of insuring stickiness. Heavy traffic is made possible by a variety of sub-categories that offer near real-time data. This is true mostly in the aggregation of news on various events. Users get things done on Yahoo. They are the creators and active participants. �A whole new Web is emerging from the wilds of cyberspace. It's no longer all about idly surfing and passively reading, listening, or watching. It's about doing: sharing, socializing, collaborating, and, most of all, creating. It's the second coming of the Web� (Eckart Walther, Yahoo! Inc.'s (YHOO) vice-president for product management).

Yahoo shopping and shopping.com are easy to navigate. Both of them offer various ways to the shopper to find the links and items they want. They can start with a search, sort by categories, brand and sponsored links or featured sites. When the shoppers are motivated by money, low prices and great deals, they will stay on the sites for some time. This is true for Shopping.com which allows users to build a page, personalize and customize it to their liking. Then, through their reviews, they can earn eroyalties which can be converted into money. Reviewers must have at least $10 in their account to request payment. As for Yahoo Shopping, most merchants are too happy to advertise on the various sub-categories of its vast infrastructures.

We have seen that Shopping.com and Yahoo shopping are not stores that sell directly to customers. They are shopping search engines that help consumers compare products, prices and stores online. Once these web sites have found a store with the product the consumers want, they can click on a link to go directly from these sites to the online store or e-tailers, where they can learn more about the deal and, if they want, purchase the product. That�s the ultimate goal for the merchants who advertise on the sites. It goes without saying that both companies have invested lots of money in building the infrastructures. With venture capitalists� funds, revenues from advertisers and the sale of proprietary software, both companies have been successful. �Shopping.com is a global leader in online comparison shopping with sites in the U.S., the U.K. and France. With approximately 50 million unique visitors a month, according to comScore Media Metrix, it is the third largest shopping destination on the web. The company's mission is to help shoppers everywhere use the power of information to find, compare and buy anything� (Press Release accessed on September 22, 2005 from ebay.com). In it�s forward looking statements, eBay made sure to include some prognostics on the impact of the acquisition of Shopping on the company�s financial results. Some of the factors that the leaders of the company have to consider are the reaction of the users of ebay and shopping.com to the transaction, that of competitors to the transaction, and the future growth of shopping.com�s services. Furthermore, if eBay is the World�s Marketplace and the premier online destination for shoppers and Shopping is the 3rd destination, Yahoo occupies the second rank. Both companies provide information on what and how they collect information. Their privacy policies are easy to read and are devised in such a way to promote trust in the consumer. In the end, through cookies and other datamining devices, a trove of data is collected on the Web sites.

What does the business environment in which these companies are operating look like?

The first thing that comes to mind is that the competition will be very intense. Already, we see a series of Web sites that embrace the online shopping comparison tools. Unless Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com continue to develop technologies and provide good CRM to give them a competitive edge, they may be caught by the competitors such as shopper.com, roboshopper.com, pricewonders.com, pricegrabber.com, compare.net, bottomdollar.com, pricescan.com, the likes of Amazon.com etc. This list does not include the thousands of company sites and manufacturers that want to sell directly to the consumers. B2C is huge enough to accommodate all these players. The consumers tend to benefit from this huge access to information allowing them to compare prices before making their purchasing decision. Another area of great concern is the rise of unsolicited electronic ads as in e-mail spamming, pop-ups and pop-unders. So far, Yahoo has given a list of the companies it has formed alliance with. Some of them are major advertisers whose ads are automatic. Some of the names correspond with the who�s who in the online advertising industry. They are as follows: 24/7 Real Media, Inc., Adteractive, Inc., Advertising.com, Inc., Atlas DMT (atdmt.com,) avenuea.com) Autotrader LLC, Bluestreak, Inc., Centrport, Cossette Media, (adcentriconline.com), Claria Corporation, DoubleClick, Inc., Dynamic Logic, (questionmarket.com), eBoz, Inc. (linkbuddies.com), EyeBlaster, Inc. (serving-sys.com), eyeReturn, EyeWonder, Inc.(xlontech.net), FastClick.com, Inc. (adserver.com), FactorTG, Inc.(factortg.com, suitesmart.com), Interpolls Network, Inc., Insight Express, Klipmart Corporation (kliptracker.com), Mediaplex, Inc., NexTag, Inc., Performance Marketing Group (partner2profit.com), Planning Group International (bridgetrack.com), Poindexter Systems (ru4.com), PointRoll, Inc., QuickFlicks, Inc., (streamexchange.com, rn11.com), TruEffect, LLC (adlegend.com), UniCast Communications (dmpi.net), United Virtualities, ValueClick, Inc., Video Banner, Zedo, Inc. Yahoo�s advocacy and proactive moves to protect its e-mail services may endear it to users.

Despite the widespread trouble caused by spammers, it�s very difficult to stop them. �They use different methods to find their victims. They scour Web sites and chat rooms for addresses and they send e-mails to common names at mail servers, hoping to find a match� (King, D.& al., 2004). These spammers can also shift Internet accounts to avoid detection. They also use computer programs that generate thousands of addresses. While pop-ups and pop-unders can be bothersome to the surfer or potential shopper, they are advertising tools used to bring in revenue. They can be part of a consumer�s permission marketing agreement. In fact, both Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com provide detailed information on security and privacy. They don�t hide the fact that they collect and aggregate information whenever the visitors are on their sites. Yahoo shopping and Shopping will have to pay close attention to the development and maintenance of secure networks. Consumers would like to know for sure that their information is not going to be compromised, stolen to be sold to third parties. They have to provide EC services amidst all types of threats and attacks. They may be non-technical and technical attacks. The denial of service (DoS) attacks against Amazon.com, Buy.com, CNN.com, eBay, ETRADE, Yahoo, ZDNet, and other well-known sites was the type of disruption that any online businesses must be aware of. The following year, January 2001, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, Hotmail, Carpoint, HomeAdvisor and WindowsMedia entertainment came under attack from a Canadian youngster. Besides these technical problems, Yahoo and Shopping.com have to contend wit h malicious codes such as viruses, worms and Trojan Horses. Yahoo invests in antivirus software which accompanies its e-mail service. Shopping.com encourages users to have an antivirus software to participate in its site.

CRM is important to EC because it can help create happy customers. Yahoo and Shopping will continue to be more appealing to advertisers than other non-interactive media such as TV. They will continue to be relevant to advertisers' needs because of these reasons.
a). Metrics: Advertisers are able to measure the impact their ad campaigns
b). Demographics: They can focus on a specific demographic
c). Rotation of ads in the midst of the campaign. They are more flexible to changes
d). Datamining, cookies and other means of data collection will lead to more customized and personalized ads.
e). Access to other Web sites that form alliances with others: banner exchanges are very common.
f). Lower costs and duration of campaign: Advertisers will benefit from the placement of their ads in key channels. They will get more for less. Their ads can reach the global market.

Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com are about the 4 Ps of Marketing: product, place, promotion and price. They relate to EC in this manner. "Any product in any place promoted at any time for many different prices that are personalized" (Robert Park, Week Three Chat, Sept. 16).

We have seen how competition can be good for advertisers. It drives down the costs of advertising on both sites. They present cost effective advertising. Both Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com deliver ready to buy shoppers to the advertisers' web sites.

Conclusion

If Yahoo shopping did not take Shopping.com seriously before, now it will have to, especially after its acquisition by eBay, the World�s Online Marketplace. After analyzing the e-business platforms, directory of categories of both sites, their navigability, we can say that technology drives the success of both sites. They have managed to create loyalty in shoppers thanks to the services they offer. They may not be able to rest on their laurels because the competitors are not too far behind. All it takes is a new e-business model to become popular with the masses and create a platform where communities can congregate to socialize, communicate and transact.

It�s clear that Yahoo shopping has done a pioneering job with EC, but with shopping.com, we see the evolution of what EC can become. If anything sticks out in the comparison between Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com is the level of interest given to CRM, its technologies and EC connection. CRM is fast becoming a necessity for doing business as it is being facilitated by IT. That�s what Oracle has known all along. In the case of those two companies, CRM is implemented by satisfying customers� needs. CRM is provided by e-mail, phone, on the corporate Web site, at customer interaction (call) centers, by automated responses, in personalized Web pages, by the use of datamining an warehousing, by online networking, and by intelligent agents. The main characteristics of online CRM are that it is media rich, effective and usually less expensive than off-line services.

References

Ebay.com press release on August 30, 2005.

King, D., Lee, J., & Viehland, D. (2004). Electronic Commerce 2004: A Managerial

Lowe, J. (2001). Bill Gates Speaks. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Perspective. Upper Saddle River: New Jersey. Pearson Prentice Hall.
http://www.shopping.com, accessed on September 21, 2005.
http://shopping.yahoo.com, accessed on September 21, 2005.