The final reflective statement of e-business

How time flies! I can still remember that I felt curious and excited when I had the first lecture at Wesfarmers theatre with known and new friends. Actually, I thought e-marketing is quite similar with e-business, I did not even know the differences between those two before I started this unit. However, because of the first quiz, I have to go through the first several chapters of textbook, now I know the differences clearly and can also distinguish e-marketing activities and e-business activities. Be different from e-marketing, e-business focuses on the general process of online business including supply chain management, e-procurement, e-marketing and customer relationship management. I don’t want to mention what I have learnt from each lecture here, the section which interests me the most is the Second Life. To have an online lecture with Swiss students through SL is a fantastic experience, and it is my first experience to feel the attractiveness of SL. Now I know why many people spend more time on Second Life, rather than real life communication. I have met several friends (not classmates) on SL; they are patient to teach and tell me about SL, how to buy and sell lands, how to teleport to the place that I have never been to, and how to make my avatar more attractive by fancy clothes. Based on my own understanding of SL, the main reason that many people prefer to spend more time on SL is that they can achieve their dreams easier than in real life. However, this reason has been providing a great chance for online promotion. Until now, only several famous cities have opened their landmarks on SL, the people who do not have chance to visit those cities in the real world can realize their travel by SL. This is a real opportunity for the local governments to spend less money on achieving greater awareness, attracting more visitors in real life thereby. For example, my hometown is Tianjin, the fourth biggest city in China and 30 minutes from Beijing by high-speed train, but due to the location is quite near to the capital, much fewer foreign visitors go there and most of them think the two cities are pretty similar. However, the fact is that my hometown is quite different from Beijing, and the reason for bringing illusions to those foreign visitors is short of international promotion. I think SL is a great chance for promoting the international awareness of my hometown, we can design and build a virtual Tianjin on SL and spend money on putting Tianjin as a “hot spot” of all SL landmarks; more people would visit virtual Tianjin by being attracted. For building Tianjin on SL, we may focus on its history and special culture; emphasize the local living style and tourist attractions. In general, the city design in SL is the first sight for potential visitors; we have to put more effort on the characteristics and local culture. Moreover, the cost is relatively low when compare with advertising promotion and international tourism fair.

Actually, this is a chance for me to know much more about and think about SL, and this virtual platform has the potential to be the most attractive online activity in the future. Well, under the pressure of more fierce competition in traditional promotion area, SL provides an alternative option for those marketers and companies. I would like to continue to pay attention on the future development of SL, even I may never have another chance to link my assignment with it. And for e-business unit, this is a fantastic experience and it gave me the future perspective of online advertising and promotion, and also the possibility of travel around the world by internet.  

the second reflective statement of E-business

From the module 2 of e-business, I have known much more about how to make every application work together in order to make the whole process of e-business more efficient. Instead of reviewing the contents of what I have learned from module 2, I would like to share some my real feelings and deeper thoughts about the second module.
The lecture of supply chain management let me feel really impressive; especially the videos from YouTube, those made me know the process of supply chain management for e-business clearly. And at the second half of the lecture, we were formed as different groups to choose the supply chain management process of a product or service, and drew a flow chart. We chose cheese to analyze, from the raw material collecting in farms to finished products selling at supermarkets. The flow chart made a very clear and general image of the supply chain management. However, for cheese which is a daily basic and relatively simple product, based on our flow chart, there are 3 to 4 procedures for delivering the products to different places, and the main problem is how to preserve it in an environment which is to make it freshest and most tasty. Therefore, from the perspective of supply chain management of fresh produce, cutting the procedures of the whole supply chain is necessary, not only for keeping the freshness, but also for cutting cost. Moreover, to compare with the supply chain management for fresh produce, managing supply chain of online stores is a much more complex operation. For a large online store, there are many customers order different kinds of products every minute, besides processing variety data of different orders and different supplies, the operation centre has to guarantee the quality of every product. Also, at the same time of screening the suppliers, keep the prices as low as possible is the goal, because this is the core advantage of online shopping. What to be noticeable is that Amazon has built its own supply chain and logistic centers which are all over the world; this could not only help to manage supply chain more efficiently and correctly, but also would help to deliver the orders the customers more timely. Before this lecture, I thought supply chain management is just to control suppliers and storage, and put the products in a truck and deliver to those people who need them. Actually, it is a very complex process and need technical tools to assist.

the first reflective statement of E-business

From the first lecture of e-business, I have been thinking of how we can generate more profits or revenue by this new technology compared with traditional market or traditional marketing tools. Actually, before having this unit, I am touching with this technology every day, because I go on internet every day. However, I have never thought about it deeply, thought about how we can use this technology to get benefits. Well, one of my expectations of this unit is to learn it, know more about it, and take advantage of it. Other expectations including how those online businesses be operated and managed, how to use online marketing tools effectively and efficiently. From the first section which is the first five weeks of the unit, the most attractive part for me is debate; I also did it on week three. It is really impressive, I can learn quite a lot from preparing it, participating it and watching it. Moreover, the debate topics are usually core arguments or contents of the chapters which might help us remember the knowledge better.

Although lecturer rarely went through each chapter of the text book, quizzes have made me know more about the text book, even the details in the corner. Through the 40 multiple choices of each quiz, they almost cover everything important in the text book. Well, my expectation of quizzes should be around 10-20 multiple choices, and will only cover the information like different definitions or different functions. At this point, I have to say the web links which lecturer gave to us at the first lecture are quite useful; those helpful web links can summarize the important information and knowledge as the form of multiple choices, after reading through the chapter, we can use those multiple choices to make a self-test which should help us to consolidate the important information.

In general, this is a useful unit which has helped me know more about e- Business, even got some differences with my expectations. I would like to learn more under participating debates, quizzes and group discussions.      

The Irish man is leaving for Melbourn!

Like I told u guys in my previous blogs, staying in Perth for the Irish guy is just a step of his world tour, as I talked with him, it is quite to find a proper job in Ireland, even for local Irish, because that EU country is in great recession. However, this provides him the chance to see the rest of the world and also can save a sum of money. He will leave Perth in early June, the next station is Melbourn, hope his trip and his future will be shiny.  

My housemate is back from China !

As I mentioned to u everybody, I have a housemate who is from Ireland. Although he is speaking a little bit different English, he is a quite nice guy. He is living a quite different way with us. He came to Australia last Christmas, before he arrived here, he has spent a month in Thailand and met his girlfriend who is American in Bankok. He is working in Australia just for his expenses of travelling the world. Now the first destination which is China is done. By chatting with him, he told me the next stop would be Canada and the US. And he also told me a new backpacking way which is called Couchsurfing. Ive never heard of it, but sounds interesting. Haha, you guys can know more about that from search engine, Im a learner anyway. If u get some comments on this kind of travelling. Do not hesitate to share with me. Im thinking of if we have that kind of hotels or motels in China.

some comments about my 2nd semester

So far, I have already got used to the way of studying here. These days I am feeling very busy but significative. Now Im feeling that I am learning business, not only the theory. I like the way what lecturers use here to inspire us with creative business ideas. They also invite several guest lectureres to show us their real experiences at workplace. You know my friends, Chinese business is based on relationship, good relationship between each other is the foundation of everything. And we thought Western people are doing business based on principle. Actually, they treat relationship as important as us. But a little different from us, they begin to build good relationship before they have an intention to do business with the people involved. Think about this, is it a easier way than start dealing with relationship during business?

continue travelling in Margaret River

After busy days in university, I will continue to show u around the WA. As I said before, although every student only got 4 units for each semester which seems less stressful, because of language and different academic background, the university life has been very busy for me. However, after experiencing the first semester, I am not worrying about  university life, including presentation, essay and test. I hope I have already got used to this kind of life. Well, Let's continue the travel. You guys can search from the internet that Margaret River is famous for wine and winery. See the pic on the top. Everywhere is like this. Because we have to drive back to Perth on that day, so we didnt have a glass of wine in the beautiful winery. Through talking the staff in the winery, I knew that in each season of grape paciking, they will hire many workers with quite comparative hourly rates. And they also provide the workers meals and accommodation. So every grape picking season, the winery attracts many people especially backpakers. Try to image, my dear friends, earning more money in such beautiful winery without spending living expenses for one or two months, then keep backpacking with enough money. Try to think about can we go like this way in China? Earn from travelling and afford the travelling. Living in a small peaceful town in Southwest China or wherever, will you do that like the backpackers in Australia? If you are interested in working for a Western Australian winery in Autumn, I can provide you more information. My suggestion is try to earn living expenses during your travelling. This is another way to know more about the local culture and people. What do you think?