1. Executive Summary

Selling online can help your business reach new markets and increase your sales and revenue gains. Those who are interested in selling to other businesses, can use the Internet to find sales leads, announce calls for tender, and to offer products for sale. Searching for products and services online can save time and money by allowing to find the best prices without having to do all the legwork. You can use the Internet to find new suppliers, post buying requests or search for products and services. The benefits of effective B2B e-commerce include lower costs associated with selecting suppliers, establishing prices, ordering, and finalizing transactions. Online trading networks can also be used to support efficient information exchange between buyers and sellers.

2. Business description

Mission —The mission of Budget Cars will be to buy and sell a desirable mix of quality used cars, trucks, and vans, and to create a friendly atmosphere where Budget Cars will be known for being your family used car center.

3. Industry analysis

Immediately following World War II, there were roughly nine buyers for every new car produced. Sales personnel merely had to find out who could afford a new car. "Afford" was defined as paying cash. This condition existed until the early 1950s when supply began to discover that some new terms were creeping into the retail salesperson's vocabulary. Words like "overallowance," "discount," "deal," and "terms." The emphasis, however, was still not on product but on price. In addition, the asking price was no longer final. There was also, if you could haggle a little, a taking price. It was possible to bargain with the dealer for the first time.

During the 1960s, other new merchandising techniques were introduced. "Sticker price," "fleet price," "hard sell," "50 over invoice," "high-powered advertising," and "free" accessories were but a few new innovations. The buyer was becoming better educated, better able to buy—thanks to 24- and 36-month payments—but still confused and fearful of price. "Good deals" became "bad deals" after talking to friends and neighbors. Caution became the watchword when buying a car.

The advent of the 1970s brought more confusion to buyers with new procedures like leasing, 48-month payments, credit unions, rebates, and consumer advocates. However, in defense of the consumer, books on "How to Buy a Car," "Invoice Prices U.S. Cars," and "Used Car Buyers Guide," were published and sold by the millions.

During the 1970s automobile salespeople became conditioned to the notion that customers were interested in only one thing—the very lowest price. The automobile showroom atmosphere didn't change very much from the 1970s to the 1980s. Most retail salespeople saw the business of selling automobile as an "us against them" hard-sell game. Those who sold popular Japanese products became arrogant and insensitive to their customers and those who sold American vehicles continued with the approach that price, and price alone, sells vehicles.

As the 1980s came to a close, however, the winds of change began to impact the retail automobile marketplace. Today, in the mid 1990s, the business of retailing automobiles is quite different than it has ever been in the past.

In today's marketplace, 5 out of every 6 cars sold in the United States are used. Knowing this fact and trying to organize and be able to provide as many possible offers in one place in mid 1990s many new second hand car advertising magazines came to market. The popularity of second hand cars made those magazines sold good. But with today’s technology and high internet usage just a print magazine is not enough to have for a successful company. There are more and more car selling online site, where is gathered a great amount of advertisements.

4. Market analysis

There are many different online car shoppers’ sites which offer their service.

CarsOnlineFree.com is a unique site exclusively established by a few students with a view to provide online car buyers and sellers with the best friendly services, and the most competitive online advertising opportunity, Free of costs. Search cars and sell cars free online, no catch! As they say: We hope potential buyers, and sellers would be greatly benefited from this site. Our rigorous effort is just to make a difference.

In addition, CarsOnlineFree.com is also offering Free Auto Dealer Memberships with a number of Exciting Features. Online visitors can search Dealer Vehicle Inventories from CarsOnlineFree.com's search page or they can search Available Member Dealers within certain distance of their Zipcodes.

The other site which we found of car sellers is Carzone.ie. Carzone.ie is Ireland’s number one motoring website attracting over 720,000 monthly unique users, who carry out over 35 million searches a month for used cars. Carzone works with Ireland’s franchise and independent car dealers, and private sellers, to provide the biggest online showroom of used cars in the country. Over 60,000 used cars are listed on the site at any one time. Carzone’s unique search function means finding the perfect car is easy – with no specific make or model in mind required.

5. Marketing plan

Business model

In the most basic sense, a business model is the method of doing business by which a company can sustain itself -- that is, generate revenue. The business model spells-out how a company makes money by specifying where it is positioned in the value chain.

For the company Second Hand Car Mart we offer the best online business model which is combine advertising – subscription business model.

The web advertising model is an extension of the traditional media broadcast model. The broadcaster, in this case, a web site, provides content and services mixed with advertising messages in the form of banner ads. The advertising model works best when the volume of viewer traffic is highly specialized. Second Hand Car Mart Company will provide classified information for both second hand car sellers and buyers. This will attract specialized audience of website and could be the best advertising area for car service providers, car accessories seller, car salons, cars selling companies (such as Ford, Mercedes Benz, Toyota and etc.), car loans providers. These would be the companies which would be highly advertised in the online site. Meanwhile any other advertisement could be place in the online site, such as popular online shopping sites with the best offers, news online site and etc.

In subscription online business model users are charged a periodic -- daily, monthly or annual -- fee to subscribe to a service. It is common for sites to combine free content with "premium" content. We offer combine advertising online business model with subscription. Mainly subscription model will be offer for companies which put the car sell advertisement and as an opportunity to be first in search, assure that the company’s offer will come up in the first page. Also subscription would let the car seller put as many advertisements as want during any period of time.

The free subscription would be offered for customers who are selling their own cars as an individual advertisement.

Portal - a search engine that may include varied content, in our case will be gathered information of car sellers. A high volume of user traffic makes advertising profitable and permits further diversification of site services.

Combining two business models will help Second Hand Car Mart to increase their profit. Nowadays the companies have to be creative and not to apply just one business model. We believe that those companies which can combine different models and use what suits best for them will become successful.

So we chose the business model which we are offering to apply for Second Hand Car Mart online site.

Domain name

The domain you use for a web site can have a huge impact in the way that humans and search engine spiders perceive it. Domain names were once so expensive that only those wanting to protect a brand or who could afford them owned them, now they are commonplace and if you know where to look, you could pick up a domain name for free. Now that they are much easier to obtain, it is hard to take any site that does not have it's own domain name very seriously. Without a domain name, a company is likely to be passed off as amateurish or seen to want to cut corners to save money. The best domain names are those that people can remember, because if your visitors can remember it, they are more likely to come back.

That is why we came up with domain name: www.carmart.com.my. This domain name is available and it represents the company. We believe that this domain name is not too long, is easy to remember and make sense. Using carmart.com.my domain name will let the company to add the possibility of advertising new cars as well as second hand cars.

The second offer would be www.secondhandcar.com.my domain name. This domain name is available and could be used by company. It is more directly associated with the magazine name and will attract the existing users. But we also see few disadvantages which first domain name doesn’t have – it might be too long to remember and it narrows the company possibilities advertising new cars.

Domain name for an online business this could mean the difference between a new customer or losing one. It could also mean the difference between an one time or returning visitor. It also makes it easy for people to remember your site. In any case, if they like it, they might recommend it to a friend. This will help build traffic to website over a period of time. Because people remember website addresses based on domain names, choosing a good domain name is crucial when creating a website. Generally, short, easy-to-remember domain names are best. It is also helpful if they are easy to type and easy to say. Finally, the domain name describes the content of the site well. Domains ending with ".com" are the best, but ".net" and ".org" are also good options. Domains like ".cc," ".name," and ".info" are not as well indexed by search engines, so steer clear of those if you can. Choosing domain ending with “.com.my” will direct that online is based in Malaysia.

Website design

When we discussed how the website design should look we search and look at different car sale sites. When designing the website for Second Hand Car Mart we asked, "What are the viewers of this web site looking for?" After much thought, we came up with these items.

• Clean, simple and uncluttered appearance

• The viewers are there to view the cars

• The viewers want a good description of the car and its features

• They want to have access to a Car Fax report

• They want pictures, at least ten

• They want pictures big enough to see some detail

• They want the dealers location information

• They want the phone number, fax number and email address of the dealer

In creating website, we think that the website designer should use templates of their own design. This makes for a quick, simple process that allows them to have the site on the web very quickly. It also allows editing and updating site and having it back on the internet in no time.

Each website consists of the welcome page, vehicle description page and the vehicle pictures page. The welcome page has a picture of sales lot, and all the contact information and small photos of inventory with links to the vehicle description page for each vehicle:

• Car lot name

• Address

• Phone number

• Fax number

• A tag line

• pictures of all your inventory with links to the vehicle description page of each vehicle

The vehicle description page:

• Vehicle make and model

• Options on the vehicle

• A side view picture of the vehicle

• A link to the pictures page of the vehicle

• Any other information

• A link to Car Fax

• Your email link

• A link back to the welcome page

The vehicle pictures page:

• Up to ten photos of the vehicle

• A link back to the vehicle description page

E-commerce supplier requirements (questions to be asked)

1. Is the EPoS software robust? Are system crashes the norm? And if you have a catastrophic failure that may or may not be your fault, will you be helped back on your feet ASAP? And what’s the supplier’s definition of ‘ASAP’?

2. Support. Is it there? Are you confident there are enough bods in the support department to service the client list now and in the future? This has been a key failure of bike trade specific EPoS systems in the recent past.

3. Who does your product file maintenance and updating? Does the EPoS system come pre-loaded with key lines and are they easily updated by email?

4. Can you see reports on screen as well as on a printer?

5. Can the system run a series of jobs overnight? For instance can it automatically close end of month; print valuation reports and movements reports for month end audit; communicate with other branches; receive pricing and availability information from your key suppliers and, finally, make a tape backup of the system as a single task?

6. Can the re-order system adapt as your business changes? Can the system perform intelligent re-order suggestions that adapt themselves by learning about the popularity or non-popularity of items? Can it learn what the sales rate is of any item that you stock?

7. How difficult is it to temporarily suspend a sale?

8. Do they dongle? Who owns the rights to the software? Is it the EPoS company or have they bought in a software package from another supplier?

9. Do they have experience with businesses like yours? Are they knowledgeable about the issues and technologies relevant to your organization?

10. Do they understand your business and its specific needs?

11. Are they flexible and scalable enough to serve both short-term peaks and long-term business needs?

12. Do they offer proactive and responsive customer service - in your language?

13. Do they understand both telephony and networking requirements, so they can give you a robust solution?

14. Can they ensure that your site is available to the people who need it, when they need it?

15. Is their infrastructure vulnerable to attacks by hackers and other threats?

16. Can they respond quickly to evolving market conditions?

17. Do they offer proactive monitoring and reporting services that can alert you to potential failures?

18. Do they have the technology leadership to exploit new innovations?

6. Competitive analysis

The used car sales industry is continuing to grow at or above population increases. Vehicles are the second largest purchase most consumers make, and more people are buying new and used vehicles than ever. Relatively good margins have resulted in some success in the local used car industry. Used car dealers are notorious for unethical sales practices. Customers are inherently cautious and untrusting as a result. The more we can provide a high-quality sales experience, the more successful we will be.

An online car dealership is an automotive retailer who specializes in selling cars via the Internet. In most cases, an online dealership also has a physical showroom, with online sales serving as a supplement to traditional face-to-face sales. Furthermore, an online car dealership may complete all facets of the transaction, including paperwork, via the Internet or mail, while others merely specialize in listing their cars online while still requiring you to visit to complete the transaction. In either case, an online purchase can be an easy way to find a vehicle that meets your needs. This guide highlights two types of online dealerships: virtual dealerships and physical dealerships.

Virtual dealerships are those that do business exclusively on the Internet. Although virtual dealerships must maintain a dealer license, they choose to focus on selling only to Internet clients. You may visit the dealership to pick a vehicle up, but oftentimes virtual dealerships have close relationships with shipping companies and can get you a good freight quote. The most common place to find virtual dealerships is via eBay Motors. The low overhead associated with selling via online auctions has attracted many sellers to this medium.

7. Threats and risks in ecommerce security

It is very important for any individuals to understand the risks and threats facing their business running on ecommerce system. The possible impact on the security measures should be clearly known to stop it at very early stage.

What are the Possible Threats?

The threats in the ecommerce security system can be either accidental or malicious. The control measures and procedures can help to protect the website and minimize the vulnerabilities. The malicious threats could be: hackers penetrating the system to alter or read the sensitive information, burglars stealing the system or server that contains unprotected sensitive information, and fakers posing as legitimate users.

Other possible malicious threats are: imposters creating websites similar to the original, receiving emails that may contain hidden components to attack the server or system, and sometimes hidden component can send sensitive data to the unauthorized users. The real threat may not be most obvious one and sometimes it becomes hard to find out. Attacks from the registered users are more common than the unknown users or hackers.

The possible threats and vulnerabilities to the sensitive data stored on the server or computer systems should be considered from three different ways. They are: identifying the potential sources of security threats and problems, finding out the level of expertise of the hackers who are accessing the system, Finding out the effort of the hackers to spend in attempting to the break in to the ecommerce security systems, and analyzing the tools and facilities are available to the hackers. This analysis could help to improve the security measures and standards.

A risk assessment on the ecommerce systems should be done to understand the risk facing the ecommerce system, risk in the business processes followed, and the possible impact on the ecommerce system if any security threats occur. The important part of any assessment is clearly defining the business data access needs and it should include all the standards and rules of accessing for all sets of users. For example, different conventions may be used for employees, managers, customers, government agencies, and so on.

8. Conclusion

Buyers with access to the Internet have certain opportunities that may affect what they purchase, when, and where they take their business. A buyer has the ability to search for a product or service; to compare sellers on important attributes such as price, quality, delivery and service; to read product reviews and consider the opinions of other buyers; and to do all of this quickly, cheaply, and with relatively little effort. This can be done regardless of whether or not the buyer chooses to complete the purchase online. Never before have buyers been able to know so much, so easily, about what they purchase and from whom.

9. References

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2. Ten key questions to ask when selecting an IT service provider. Viewed 24.11.2012 http://www.computerweekly.com/tip/Ten-key-questions-to-ask-when-selecting-an-IT-service-provider

3. The Top 10 Technical Considerations for Evaluating E-Commerce Platforms, 2011. Viewed 23.11.2012 http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/atg/top-10-considerations-ecommerce-333324.pdf

4. Security Guide - Website Security 101, 2010. Viewed 24.11.2012 http://www.brighthub.com/computing/enterprise-security/articles/70340.aspx

5. Why Domain Names Are So Important, 2011. Viewed 25.11.2012 http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/internet-domain-names/681-1.html#axzz2DMSPvOE4

6. Mahindra First Choice. India’s no.1 Multibrand Certified Used Car Company. Viewed 25.11.2012 http://www.mahindrafirstchoice.com/

7. Cars.com. Viewed 25.11.2012 www.cars.com

8. http://www.cartrade.com/company/profile

9. http://www.carsonlinefree.com/about/

10. http://www.carpoint.com.au/carpoint-info/about-us/

11. http://www.tradermedia.ie/display-advertising.cfm

12. How to buy a car, 2009. Viewed 25.11.2012 http://auto.howstuffworks.com/buying-selling/car-buying.htm