Research on the Application of Blockchain Technology in the Field of Cross-border Logistics for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

With the continuous development of the current economic globalization, coupled with the continuous maturity of Internet technology, e-commerce, as a new industry, has been developing rapidly. Cross-border e-commerce has become the mainstream of development in the current economic era. In the process of cross-border e-commerce development, logistics plays an important role. The success or failure of small and medium-sized enterprises also depends on the efficiency and quality of logistics to a great extent. If some cross-border e-commerce enterprises want to get a place in the current fierce market competition, they must choose appropriate logistics channels to effectively promote their own development. This study explores the typical application mode of Blockchain technology in the field of cross-border logistics, and proposes specific implementation path to improve the performance of cross-border logistics management. This study combines the selection of cross-border logistics drive of small and medium-sized enterprises, analyzes the structural framework, core technology and main advantages of Blockchain, and then analyzes the combination of Blockchain technology advantages and cross-border logistics management needs. On this basis, the application mode of Blockchain technology in cross-border supply chain logistics is proposed; the application mode of Blockchain technology in cross-border trade logistics is proposed with information, documents and containers as typical objects; the application mode of Blockchain technology in cross-border customs clearance is proposed with customs declaration as typical carrier. Finally, the paper puts forward the specific implementation path, main success factors and implementation steps of the application of Blockchain technology in cross-border logistics

Understanding the Transformation from E-commerce to S-commerce: Evidence, Path and Inspiration from China

With the rapid application of Web2.0 and the rise of social media, social-commerce has become a research hotspot in the field of marketing and information systems. This new business form which is driven by the user\u27s social interaction, is considered as a new paradigm in current e-commerce research field. However, current studies are mainly limited in the field of marketing, the law of s-commerce’s evolution and its impact on the traditional e-commerce is not been fully considered. In recent years, China’s s-commerce has developed rapidly and has not received enough research attention. This study selects Taobao.com and PingDuoDuo as typical cases to analyze the “network stream dilemma” of the traditional e-commerce platform and the solution in the s-commerce context. We conclude that traditional e-commerce platforms are evolving toward s-commerce driven by the change of network stream distribution mechanism

A comparative analysis of non-relational databases in e-commerce applications

In this article, a comparative analysis of non-relational databases was conducted to determine the best database for e-commerce systems. Non-relational systems such as MongoDB and Apache Cassandra were used for the study and the results were compared with a relational PostgreSQL database. The main research criterion was performance testing of several types of queries based on execution time. To implement the research, typical e-commerce databases were created and then tested in a .NET test application created by authors. In addition, the difference in community support between non-relational and relational systems was determined. The research showed that MongoDB is best suited for e-commerce systems

Pengembangan E-Commerce Tembe Nggoli (Sarung) Khas Bima Berbasis Web Responsive di Desa Nata

Tembe Nggoli is a typical Bima sarong made by weaving which is still preserved by the community in Neta Village, Palibelo District, Bima Regency. Tembe Nggoli is a hand-crafted art that has been passed down from generation to generation for the sake of preserving the weaving art. Currently, the selling process of Tembe Nggoli is still manual or conventional by selling directly to the public without marketing media so that it is only known by the surrounding community. This resulted in relatively lower income from the sale of Tembe Nggoli, so the process of returning capital was very slow. These problems can be solved by developing e-commerce in the sales process or introducing the craft. The purpose of this research is to build an e-commerce selling Tembe Nggoli based on a responsive website. The method used in building this application is the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) with the Waterfall Model. The results of this study have resulted in an e-commerce application selling the Tembe Nggoli Khas Bima sarong that is web-based responsive, so that the appearance of the application can adapt to various types of devices. With this application, it is expected to be able to provide convenience in the shopping process that can assist consumers in finding the desired product quickly and done anywhere and anytime. In addition, this application provides various kinds of information related to Tembe Nggoli products. Testing this system using blackbox testing which states that the system has been running in accordance with the functionality and procedures that are the purpose of developing the system. The functional suitability of the built system reaches 100%

Business process implications of e-commerce in construction organisations

The need for construction to change its traditional working practices has been repeatedly expressed in government, industry, and academic publications. The Internet has been a major catalyst for change in most industry sectors, including the construction sector. The implementation of Internet-based technologies, such as ecommerce for achieving business targets, bring about changes in an organisation, its current practices, systems, processes and workflows. It is therefore important to evaluate the business process implications of adopting e-commerce in construction organisations. This was the focus of this study. The early stages of the research established the possible benefits, barriers, and drivers for the adoption of e-commerce technologies within construction. This was done by conducting an industry-wide survey that explored attitudes, current usage, barriers and enablers of IT and e-commerce within the UK construction sector. Survey results indicated that the exact benefits of using e-commerce within the construction industry were not known and more needed to be done to establish the effects of incorporating e-commerce applications into construction business processes and to demonstrate the opportunities of e-commerce for construction. To address this need a typical business process model that used the principles of business process re-engineering and demonstrated opportunities for e-commerce, was developed. Using this model it was possible to illustrate how, with the use of ecommerce applications, different members of the construction supply chain could derive business benefits and overcome traditional process inefficiencies. In order to effectively adopt e-commerce technologies in construction, companies may have to reengineer their current working methods, which could lead to a step change in current work practices. To facilitate such a step change it was essential to study and document the impact of specific e-commerce applications on their current end-user business processes. Case studies were conducted for this purpose. The case study findings showed that the end-user companies had accrued several business benefits from using e-commerce tools. Issues related to management buy-in and organisational culture were the main barriers to the wider use of e-commerce within the construction industry. The case studies and earlier findings indicated that e-commerce is ‘here to stay’ and it will not be long before it becomes an industry norm. Taking this into account, construction companies who are currently using, and those who have yet to use, e-commerce tools need to take measures to successfully adopt and benefit from these tools. It is important for companies that seek to adopt ecommerce to assess their ‘e-readiness’ for adopting e-commerce tools to ensure a productive and beneficial implementation of these tools. To address this need an ereadiness model for construction organisations and a prototype application, VERDICT, that assess e-readiness were developed and implemented. The model is based on the premise that for any company to be e-ready, its management, people, process and technology have to be e-ready in order to derive maximum business benefits. The research findings indicate that the use of e-commerce is still in its infancy within the construction industry. The current use of e-commerce has resulted in process automation, however, there is no evidence of process re-engineering. Such practices, although beneficial in the short-term, can have long-term implications in that the end-users are not necessarily making full use of the technology and hence not deriving full benefits from it. The model and e-readiness assessment prototype developed as part of this study will enable construction organisations to successfully adopt e-commerce and exploit its potential

Perancangan Identitas Visual dan User Interface Aplikasi JUALOMBOK

The development of technology and multimedia at this time has been developing rapidly, severalmultimedia applications have also been created and used in various fields. One of its uses is inthe field of e-commerce. Jualombok application is one of the e-commerce that is developing inLombok Island, but it is still tricky in establishing visual identity. In building the right use, acompany needs a visual identity and the correct User Interface for its application. Therefore, inthis study, the author will design a visual identity and User Interface for the JUALOMBOKApplication for the Jualombok marketplace application that has a focus on helping entrepreneurson the island of Lombok develop local MSMEs to promote and sell their products. Thisapplication was designed on November 13, 2017, by one of the companies in the city of Mataram,namely Cv. Sol Interactive. However, the design stage is only limited to the plan because theessential company is information technology, multimedia, and system integration. This researchis a qualitative study by conducting interviews with the company to get the data needed by theauthor relating to the company and the application of Jualombok. The concept used in this studyis the concept of local wisdom in the visual form and color of the logo for the user interfacecharacteristic of the island of Lombok in the log-in display on the user.User Interface Design Juallombok application presents a typical photo of the island of Lombok,namely rice barns and Songket cloth from the Sasak tribe, so that users still recognize thisapplication as an original application made by the company on Lombok Island despite having amodern look. So that both the visual identity and user interface will still remind the audience onthe island of Lombok, following what is desired by the compan

Database server workload characterization in an e-commerce environment

A typical E-commerce system that is deployed on the Internet has multiple layers that include Web users, Web servers, application servers, and a database server. As the system use and user request frequency increase, Web/application servers can be scaled up by replication. A load balancing proxy can be used to route user requests to individual machines that perform the same functionality. To address the increasing workload while avoiding replicating the database server, various dynamic caching policies have been proposed to reduce the database workload in E-commerce systems. However, the nature of the changes seen by the database server as a result of dynamic caching remains unknown. A good understanding of this change is fundamental for tuning a database server to get better performance. In this study, the TPC-W (a transactional Web E-commerce benchmark) workloads on a database server are characterized under two different dynamic caching mechanisms, which are generalized and implemented as query-result cache and table cache. The characterization focuses on response time, CPU computation, buffer pool references, disk I/O references, and workload classification. This thesis combines a variety of analysis techniques: simulation, real time measurement and data mining. The experimental results in this thesis reveal some interesting effects that the dynamic caching has on the database server workload characteristics. The main observations include: (a) dynamic cache can considerably reduce the CPU usage of the database server and the number of database page references when it is heavily loaded; (b) dynamic cache can also reduce the database reference locality, but to a smaller degree than that reported in file servers. The data classification results in this thesis show that with dynamic cache, the database server sees TPC-W profiles more like on-line transaction processing workloads

The Important Role of Packaging in Operations Management

The chapter focuses on the analysis of the impact of packaging in Operations Management (OM) along the whole supply chain. The product packaging system (i.e. primary, secondary and tertiary packages and accessories) is highly relevant in the supply chain and its importance is growing because of the necessity to minimize costs, reduce the environmental impact and also due to the development of web operations (i.e. electronic commerce). A typical supply chain is an end-to-end process with the main purpose of production, transportation, and distribution of products. It is relative to the products\u2019 movements normally from the supplier to the manufacturer, distributor, retailer and finally the end consumer. All products moved are contained in packages and for this reason the analysis of the physical logistics flows and the role of packaging is a very important issue for the definition and design of manufacturing processes, improvement of layout and increase in companies\u2019 efficiency. In recent years, companies have started to consider packaging as a critical issue. It is necessary to analyse the packages\u2019 characteristics (e.g. shape, materials, transport, etc.) in order to improve the performance of companies and minimize their costs. Packaging concerns all activities of a company: from the purchasing of raw materials to the production and sale of finished products, and during transport and distribution. In order to manage the activities directly linked with the manufacturing of products (and consequently with the packaging system), the OM discipline is defined. It is responsible for collecting various inputs and converting them into desired outputs through operations [1]. Recently, more and more companies have started to use web operations. Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is the most promising application of information technology witnessedin recent years. It is revolutionising supply chain management and has enormous potential for manufacturing, retail and service operations. The role of packaging changes with the increase in the use of e-commerce: from the traditional \u201cshop window\u201d it has become a means of information and containment of products. The purpose of the chapter is to briefly describe a model of OM discipline usable to highlight the role of packaging along the supply chain, describing different implications of an efficient product packaging system for successful management of operations. Particular attention is paid to the role of product packaging in modern web operations. The chapter is organised as follows: Section 2 presents a brief description of OM in order to engage the topic of packaging. The packaging logistics system is described in Section 3, before presenting experimental results of studies dealing with packaging perception by both companies and customers [2; 3]. Moreover, Section 3 introduces the packaging logistics system also including the analysis of the role of packaging in OM and a description of a complete mathematical model for the evaluation of total packaging cost is presented. Section 4 presents background about modern e-commerce and its relationship with OM. Packaging and e-commerce connected with OM is described in Section 5 and a case study on packaging e-commerce in operations is analysed in Section 6. Finally, the conclusion and further research are presented

E-Commerce Within 3D Environment

With the advent of cheap and fast computer, the notion of 3D graphics has been very popular lately, from video games to weather simulations to movies that give us a glimpse of virtual reality. The World Wide Web has gained even more popularity. Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) was born to solve this problem: how to put compelling 3D onto every PC connected to the Web. One of the effective applications of 3D on the Web is 3D E-Commerce. Most of the E-Commerce web sites currently available on the internet are presenting their products to their customers using 2D images. Due to the limitations of text and 2D graphics, the customers can just have a vague picture of the product. They could not really know how the product looks like in reality. With 3D environment or virtual reality, the customer of the E-Commerce web site may rotate a product to have a 360-degree view of that product. Rather than a 2D image, the customer can choose how to look at the model or world, the viewer can navigate the world and the most interesting is the file size can often be much less. 3D E-commerce presents the most realistic and detailed view of products to customers. This project is to investigate the feasibility of E-Commerce within 3D environment. In this project, e-commerce within 3D environment is developed. A case study of a furniture shop is considered in this project. VRML is used to develop the 3D objects and environment in the project. In order to provide text and navigation aids to help the user read about and interact with the VRML world, the web site is developed by integrating the VRML world with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) text. Just like any other typical e-commerce web site, a server side application and database supports is a must. In this project, Java Server Pages (JSP) is used to build the server side program which is responsible to generate the web pages with the combination of static and dynamic contents and to communicate with the database. Tomcat is used as the container for running the JSP web application. MySQL, a DBMS, is used to build and manage the database for the project

Interorganizational Trust in Business to Business E-Commerce

Most previous research in the Information Systems discipline focused on information systems and technology, e-commerce applications such as Inter-Organizational Systems (IOSs), competitive advantages, and security issues. The emphasis on IOSs' gave rise to concerns about Inter-Organizational Relationships (IORs), as trading partners became aware of the social-political factors that affected their relationships. IOSs involve the sharing of e-commerce applications in different locations. When this study was initiated in 1997, universal standards were not fully developed. This posed a security concern for Small-Medium-Enterprises, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. This study examines the importance of inter-organizational trust (trading partner trust) in ecommerce participation. The objective of this study is to empirically examine the importance of interorganizational- trust in e-commerce participation. Despite the acknowledged importance of trust, only limited research has examined the role of trust among trading partners in business-to-business e-commerce, when this study was initiated in 1997. As the participation in e-commerce increased, the need for trust among trading partners became more pertinent in business-to-business e-commerce. Exploratory research was carried out via three case studies in the automotive industry. The automotive industry was selected as a critical and typical case for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Value-Added-Networks, and the findings emphasized on the importance of interorganizational trust in e-commerce participation. The exploratory study, together with a literature review, provided the theoretical foundations for the development of the conceptual model. Theories from multiple disciplines including the marketing, management, sociology, information systems and e-commerce were applied in the conceptual model. The research question developed for this study is: How does inter-organizational trust (trading partner trust) influence the perception of ecommerce benefits and risks of e-commerce, thus influencing the extent of participation in ecommerce? The conceptual model was then tested using a multiple-case-study research strategy that aimed to solicit qualitative and in-depth understanding of inter-organizational trust in the context of business-tobusiness e-commerce. Ten organizations from a cross-industry selection that formed four bi-directional dyads and two uni-directional dyads participated in the study. They included a public sector organization involved in customs clearance; their Internet service provider; a customs agent (broker); an importer; two organizations in the computer and data communications industry; two organizations in the telecommunications industry; and two organizations in the automotive industry. The primary unit of analysis in this study is the uni-directional dyad. The case study participants included e-commerce coordinators, IT managers, and senior executives involved in e-commerce. In addition, e-commerce applications, existing documents, and standards contributed to secondary data sources. For example, trading partner agreements, organizational charts, web sites, and internal security policies gave evidence of the organizations' best business practices and background information on the organization and their products. The findings of the four bi-directional dyads (eight organizations) and the two uni-directional dyads indicated that trust was important for participation in e-commerce. The findings differed by the type of e-commerce application used and the industry. For example, organizations that developed extranet applications had only one trading party (the supplier) undertaking the implementation process. Suppliers were involved in the installation of their websites that provided product information. In addition, suppliers had to train their buyers to use extranet applications. The products consisted of many different parts, (such as data communications, computers and telecommunications) which made the task of placing an order complex. These inter-organizational dyads (Cisco-Compaq NZ, and Siemens-Telecom NZ) experienced relational risks arising from the need to establish trust among their trading partners. On the other hand, Avery Ford NZ and Toyota NZ applied intranet applications and Internet-based EDI for routine orders between the manufacturers and suppliers. Smaller organizations such as the customs broker and the importer experienced a smooth e-commerce adoption due to their application "Trade Manager" which was not connected to the Internet. The study contributes to theory, practice and research in the following ways: First, rather than inferring characteristics of e-commerce adoption from a technical and economic background, this study examined behavioral characteristics of trading partners in business-to-business ecommerce from theories in multi-disciplines. The primary emphasis of prior research was on transaction economics, its competitive advantages and/or external pressure (socio-political). This study focused on the importance of inter-organizational trust in e-commerce participation. The findings of the study led to the development of a model of inter-organizational trust within bi-directional dyads in e-commerce participation. Second, the study contributed to practice as it increased the awareness of e-commerce practitioners, who will check the trust behaviors of themselves and that of their trading partners. Trading partners will be better able to select and evaluate trust and security-based mechanisms in e-commerce, thus protecting themselves against opportunistic behaviors of their trading partners. Third, the study contributed to research as it paved the way for longitudinal studies. This study only took a micro-perspective of inter-organizational trust within dyadic relationships as it was intended to be an exploratory study. Further research should extensively test the model using a field survey with business-to-business e-commerce organizations.This thesis aims to empirically examine the role of inter-organizational trust (trading partner trust) in e-commerce participation. By doing so, trust behaviors in business relationships were identified. The findings from ten organizations that formed four bi-directional dyads and two uni-directional dyads contributed to a model of inter-organizational trust within bi-directional dyads. The model identified the development of inter-organizational trust in three stages and identified trust behaviors and characteristics involved in the gradual development of trust from one stage to the next stage, thus providing an awareness of trust behaviors that trading partners need to develop. For example competence trust emphasized on an individual or team's ability and skills to operate e-commerce system and applications (i.e. is at a technical level). Predictability trust examined the reflections and interpersonal experiences of the trading partners based on past experiences, and a consistency of trading partner behaviors. Goodwill trust examined the institutional (i.e. the organization's image, reputation that determines the strategic benefits). Overall, the findings indicated that trust in inter-organizational relationships clearly matter