A WEB APPLICANTION FOR THE TOURISM INDUSTRY IN HANOI by Dinh Huu Son

A research study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration

A WEB APPLICANTION FOR THE TOURISM INDUSTRY IN HANOI

Dinh Huu Son

A research study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master

Hanoi Construction College Hanoi, Vietnam

Asian Institute of Technology School of Management

Bangkok, Thai land April, 2001

I would like to express my sincere thankfulness to my research advisor Dr Bechter Clemens for his invaluable advice and encouragement through out the research work I also highly appreciate the research examination of Dr Truong Quang and Dr Hans Stoessel as well as their helpful and innovative ideas to enhance the value of the research.

Now that I have finished the application, it’s time to stop for a moment to reflect and acknowledge those people who have made this research possible and successful.

First of all, the most important thanks is due to Dr Hans Stoessel and others in Swiss Vietnam AIT Management Development Program and Swiss Government who gave financial support to my study in AIT.

When I think of one-year period living in AIT, I can not help but think of my family for their support and encouragement through my study in terms of both finance and mentality.

I would like to express the deepest thanks and appreciation to my closest friend for her encouragement, to my sister for her help in the survey Special words go to Mr Do Minh Phuong for his valuable ideas to my program.

Finally, special thanks go to my classmates, those with I have been having great lives together in AIT.

This research is carried so that the reality of tourism industry in Hanoi is understood Several scopes such as banking, internet service etc will be assessed Most importantly, a qualitative survey is carried out to understand what tourists and foreigners who live permanently expect from a website for tourism purpose Another qualitative survey of managers and officials of tourism industry is done to uncover their thinking towards Internet What are their current problems of not launching internet as a competitive weapon.

From the problems of “customers” and those of “suppliers”, we come to a solution of how to solve the conflict An application (website) is created as the illustration of the solution The business model can not be a perfect solution Yet, it is worth looking at it so that further innovative ideas can follow.

1.5.2 Web development tools/languages 3

2.2LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.3INTERNET E-COMMERCEOVERVIEW 12

2.4BENEFITSOF INTERNETFOR E-COMMERCE 13

2.6APPLICATIONSOF E-COMMERCE 18

2.8TOWARDS E-PAYMENTS 19

2.8.1 Conventional Payment Mechanisms 19

2.8.2 Electronic Payment Mechanisms 20

2.9INTERNETIN VIETNAM 21

2.10 HANOI 21

2.10.1 Geographical 30

2.10.2 Tourist Potential 31

2.10.3 Hanoi – Point of Departure to neighboring regions 32

2.10.4 The development of Hanoi tourism industry in recent years 35

2.11 OVERVIEWOF LANGUAGESAND TOOLSUSEDFORTHEAPPLICATION 21

2.11.1 Hyper text markup language (html) 21

2.11.2 Active server pages (asp) 22

2.11.3 Javascript 22

2.11.4 Microsoft access 23

2.11.5 Dreamweaver 4.0 23

2.11.6 Dreamweaver UltraDev 24

3.2SURVEY RESULTS (TOURISTSANDLONG-TERMINVESTORS) 37

3.3SURVEY RESULTS (OFFICIALSINTOURISMINDUSTRYIN HANOI) 39

3.3.1 Infrastructure preparation 40

3.3.2 Web site promotion 40

3.3.3 The method of payment through network trading 40

5.5CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 47

5.1THEROLEOF E-COMMERCEFOR HANOITOURISMINDUSTRY 47

5.2LEVELOFPARTICIPATINGIN E-COMMERCEOFTOURISMCOMPANIESIN HANOI 47

5.4DIRECTIONFORFURTHERRESEARCH 48

Chapter 11Introduction

1.1 Background

1.1.1 Tourism industry in Vietnam

In developing countries, tourism industry is often one of the important most industries that attract large amounts of hard currencies from more developed countries On the way of development, VN is no exception In early 1990s to the mid of the decade, the number of tourists coming to Vietnam increased by 30 percents However, there was a decline of 10 percent from 1997 to 1999 There are several causes that are clear:

in region Low quality service could be found everywhere.

other currencies in the region, making it expensive to go to Vietnam.

Yet, tourism industry is coming back to be attractive in the year 2000 with the number of tourists increased by 15 percent.1

1.1.2 Internet in Vietnam

Internet network was launched in December 1997 There has been 5 ISP so far including VNPT/VDC, FPT, Saigon Postel, Netnam and Vietel The number of ICP is 15 providing mainly public medium of the Internet The number of Internet users is growing fast including both individual users and enterprise side With the amazing development of telephone, internet has been, is and is going to be a vital means of communication, of resource exchanging and most importantly, of doing business in Vietnam.

1.1.3 Level of participating in E-commerce of tourism companies

At the current, there are some reasons that make the Internet unattractive to the tourism companies as lacking information and technical skill As the result of unawareness of the opportunities from the Internet, the level of utilization of the new media stayed at the email and some advertisement with low information content from companies’ websites But what foreigners want is not provided Foreigners want to see concrete information referring to the location, means of traveling, hotel booking, boat renting etc But these kinds of websites just reveal mere information describing how beautiful the destination is Therefore, the aid created by website establishment by tourism companies contribute little help to the development of the tourism industry in Vietnam.

1 http://www.vietnamtourism.com

1.1.4 Hanoi

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam It is the second biggest city of the country, behind Hochiminh City in terms of size With the advantage that it is the place where the government locates, Hanoi is the destination for many investors who are ambitiously seeking opportunities to make money Besides, it is very famous for its rich culture with many historical and historic places as well as for its tranquil scenery… As the result, more and more foreigners are coming to Hanoi for the purpose not only of visiting but also of living permanently It has another advantage to attract tourists It is the location advantage Due to the fact that there is only international airport, which is Noibai airport, in the North of Vietnam So, every tourist wanting to visit beautiful scenes in the North of Vietnam has to visit this airport and Hanoi is the first city to stop by after going out of the airport Those advantages above do make Hanoi an attractive place for an investment in the tourism industry.

1.2 Problem statement

When surveying websites about Hanoi, I found that there are several websites But not enough information is provided The contents of those websites are advertising oriented There are no websites to bring an over view of Hanoi but at the same time to give details about a large number of various services that can satisfy the needs of not only a fastidious tourist but also a permanently staying foreign investor.

1.3 Objectives of study

and lives of tourists and those who stay permanently

historical places, entertainment locations (in Hotel category, list all big hotels with number of rooms, room rates, address, etc.)

short-time tourists and permanent investors

1.4 Scope of study

The research/project mainly focuses on tourism industry in Hanoi Survey is done to understand the most important needs of tourists/ investors Then, another intensive survey is carried out to see what is available in Hanoi Matching demand with supply is achieved by the creation of a Website that provides information about Hanoi such as information about historic places, hotels, restaurants, discotheques, supermarkets etc More importantly, the website makes it possible for visitors to book online some of those services.

1.5 Methodology

1.5.1 Survey methodology

An in-depth pilot interview is carried out first to understand general needs of a typical short-time tourist and a typical permanent investor There are 15 in each category to be interviewed So, there should be a total number of 30 people to take part in this study All these people are selected arbitrarily.

For understanding services available in Hanoi, secondary data is best Sources of information can be taken from magazines, newspapers and the yellow book Information from pilot interview may be useful for this part However, it is necessary to validate all this information by contacting directly by telephone and site-surveying.

Further, I carried out a small qualitative survey of officials in the tourism industry in Hanoi The sample size is only 15 As mentioned above, the sample size for qualitative work is usually small because we do not need to have too accurate result while spending lots of time.

1.5.2 Web development tools/languages

There are several tools/languages used in the website development Here is the list of most of them More are added later

1.6 Limitations of the research

The research is application oriented Therefore, it can not avoid several setbacks.

present the needs of the whole population coming and living in Hanoi.

 The application developed may not be used to the full extent for other locations Modifications should be made as the result.

 The use or the outcome of the application is hindered by the difficult Internet accessibility, low speed of information transmission, and the high Internet use price

convenient to provide a website with the customers interface and another interface for service suppliers to update their own database So, there is no immediate link from the application’s database and the database of the suppliers.

1.7 Organization of the research

 Introduction  Literature review

Internet E-commerce

Tourism industry in Hanoi Tools and languages

 Needed features of a website for tourists and permanent investors (Survey findings)  Website development

 Conclusion and recommendations

Chapter 22Literature Review

2.1 Internet and Ecommerce

2.1.1 Internet history

The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location The Internet represents one of the most successful examples of the benefits of sustained investment and commitment to research and development of information infrastructure Beginning with the early research in packet switching, the government, industry and academia have been partners in evolving and deploying this exciting new technology Today, terms like "bleiner@computer.org" and "http://www.acm.org" trip lightly off the tongue of the random person on the street This is intended to be a brief, necessarily cursory and incomplete history Much material currently exists about the Internet, covering history, technology, and usage A trip to almost any bookstore will find shelves of material written about the Internet

The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure Its history is complex and involves many aspects - technological, organizational, and community And its influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer communications but throughout society as we move toward increasing use of online tools to accomplish electronic commerce, information acquisition, and community operations Now, lets go back step by step to the history of internet.

The first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R Licklider of MIT in August 1962 discussing his "Galactic Network" concept He envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site In spirit, the concept was very much like the Internet of today Licklider was the first head of the computer research program at DARPA, starting in October 1962 While at DARPA he convinced his successors at DARPA, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT researcher Lawrence G Roberts, of the importance of this networking concept.

Leonard Kleinrock at MIT published the first paper on packet switching theory in July 1961 and the first book on the subject in 1964 Kleinrock convinced Roberts of the theoretical feasibility of communications using packets rather than circuits, which was a major step along the path towards computer networking The other key step was to make the computers talk together To explore this, in 1965 working with Thomas Merrill, Roberts connected the

TX-2 computer in Mass to the Q-32 in California with a low speed dial-up telephone line creating the first (however small) wide-area computer network ever built The result of this experiment was the realization that the time-shared computers could work well together, running programs and retrieving data as necessary on the remote machine, but that the circuit switched telephone system was totally inadequate for the job Kleinrock's conviction of the need for packet switching was confirmed.

In late 1966 Roberts went to DARPA to develop the computer network concept and quickly put together his plan for the "ARPANET", publishing it in 1967 At the conference where he presented the paper, there was also a paper on a packet network concept from the UK by Donald Davies and Roger Scantlebury of NPL Scantlebury told Roberts about the NPL work as well as that of Paul Baran and others at RAND The RAND group had written a paper on packet switching networks for secure voice in the military in 1964 It happened that the work at MIT (1961-1967), at RAND (1962-1965), and at NPL (1964-1967) had all proceeded in parallel without any of the researchers knowing about the other work The word "packet" was adopted from the work at NPL and the proposed line speed to be used in the ARPANET design was upgraded from 2.4 kbps to 50 kbps

In August 1968, after Roberts and the DARPA funded community had refined the overall structure and specifications for the ARPANET, an RFQ was released by DARPA for the development of one of the key components, the packet switches called Interface Message Processors (IMP's) The RFQ was won in December 1968 by a group headed by Frank Heart at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) As the BBN team worked on the IMP's with Bob Kahn playing a major role in the overall ARPANET architectural design, the network topology and economics were designed and optimized by Roberts working with Howard Frank and his team at Network Analysis Corporation, and the network measurement system was prepared by Kleinrock's team at UCLA.

Due to Kleinrock's early development of packet switching theory and his focus on analysis, design and measurement, his Network Measurement Center at UCLA was selected to be the first node on the ARPANET All this came together in September 1969 when BBN installed the first IMP at UCLA and the first host computer was connected Doug Engelbart's project on "Augmentation of Human Intellect" (which included NLS, an early hypertext system) at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) provided a second node SRI supported the Network Information Center, led by Elizabeth (Jake) Feinler and including functions such as maintaining tables of host name to address mapping as well as a directory of the RFC's One month later, when SRI was connected to the ARPANET, the first host-to-host message was sent from Kleinrock's laboratory to SRI Two more nodes were added at UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah These last two nodes incorporated application visualization projects, with Glen Culler and Burton Fried at UCSB investigating methods for display of mathematical functions using storage displays to deal with the problem of refresh over the net, and Robert Taylor and Ivan Sutherland at Utah investigating methods of 3-D representations over the net Thus, by the end of 1969, four host computers were connected together into the initial ARPANET, and the budding Internet was off the ground Even at this early stage, it should be noted that the networking research incorporated both work on

the underlying network and work on how to utilize the network This tradition continues to this day.

Computers were added quickly to the ARPANET during the following years, and work proceeded on completing a functionally complete Host-to-Host protocol and other network software In December 1970 the Network Working Group (NWG) working under S Crocker finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol (NCP) As the ARPANET sites completed implementing NCP during the period 1971-1972, the network users finally could begin to develop applications.

In October 1972 Kahn organized a large, very successful demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC) This was the first public demonstration of this new network technology to the public It was also in 1972 that the initial "hot" application, electronic mail, was introduced In March Ray Tomlinson at BBN wrote the basic email message send and read software, motivated by the need of the ARPANET developers for an easy coordination mechanism In July, Roberts expanded its utility by writing the first email utility program to list, selectively read, file, forward, and respond to messages From there email took off as the largest network application for over a decade This was a harbinger of the kind of activity we see on the World Wide Web today, namely, the enormous growth of all kinds of "people-to-people" traffic.

The original ARPANET grew into the Internet Internet was based on the idea that there would be multiple independent networks of rather arbitrary design, beginning with the ARPANET as the pioneering packet switching network, but soon to include packet satellite networks, ground-based packet radio networks and other networks The Internet as we now know it embodies a key underlying technical idea, namely that of open architecture networking In this approach, the choice of any individual network technology was not dictated by a particular network architecture but rather could be selected freely by a provider and made to interwork with the other networks through a meta-level "Internetworking Architecture" Up until that time there was only one general method for federating networks This was the traditional circuit switching method where networks would interconnect at the circuit level, passing individual bits on a synchronous basis along a portion of an end-to-end circuit between a pair of end locations Recall that Kleinrock had shown in 1961 that packet switching was a more efficient switching method Along with packet switching, special purpose interconnection arrangements between networks were another possibility While there were other limited ways to interconnect different networks,

they required that one be used as a component of the other, rather than acting as a peer of

the other in offering end-to-end service.

In an open-architecture network, the individual networks may be separately designed and developed and each may have its own unique interface which it may offer to users and/or other providers including other Internet providers Each network can be designed in accordance with the specific environment and user requirements of that network There are generally no constraints on the types of network that can be included or on their geographic scope, although certain pragmatic considerations will dictate what makes sense to offer.

The idea of open-architecture networking was first introduced by Kahn shortly after having arrived at DARPA in 1972 This work was originally part of the packet radio program, but subsequently became a separate program in its own right At the time, the program was called "Internetting" Key to making the packet radio system work was a reliable end-end protocol that could maintain effective communication in the face of jamming and other radio interference, or withstand intermittent blackout such as caused by being in a tunnel or blocked by the local terrain Kahn first contemplated developing a protocol local only to the packet radio network, since that would avoid having to deal with the multitude of different operating systems, and continuing to use NCP.

However, NCP did not have the ability to address networks (and machines) further downstream than a destination IMP on the ARPANET and thus some change to NCP would also be required (The assumption was that the ARPANET was not changeable in this regard) NCP relied on ARPANET to provide end-to-end reliability If any packets were lost, the protocol (and presumably any applications it supported) would come to a grinding halt In this model NCP had no end-end host error control, since the ARPANET was to be the only network in existence and it would be so reliable that no error control would be required on the part of the hosts.

Thus, Kahn decided to develop a new version of the protocol which could meet the needs of an open-architecture network environment This protocol would eventually be called the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) While NCP tended to act like a device driver, the new protocol would be more like a communications protocol.

Kahn began work on a communications-oriented set of operating system principles while at BBN and documented some of his early thoughts in an internal BBN memorandum entitled "Communications Principles for Operating Systems" At this point he realized it would be necessary to learn the implementation details of each operating system to have a chance to embed any new protocols in an efficient way Thus, in the spring of 1973, after starting the internetting effort, he asked Vint Cerf (then at Stanford) to work with him on the detailed design of the protocol Cerf had been intimately involved in the original NCP design and development and already had the knowledge about interfacing to existing operating systems So armed with Kahn's architectural approach to the communications side and with Cerf's NCP experience, they teamed up to spell out the details of what became TCP/IP.

The give and take was highly productive and the first written version of the resulting approach was distributed at a special meeting of the International Network Working Group (INWG) which had been set up at a conference at Sussex University in September 1973 Cerf had been invited to chair this group and used the occasion to hold a meeting of INWG members who were heavily represented at the Sussex Conference.

The original Cerf/Kahn paper on the Internet described one protocol, called TCP, which provided all the transport and forwarding services in the Internet Kahn had intended that the TCP protocol support a range of transport services, from the totally reliable sequenced

delivery of data (virtual circuit model) to a datagram service in which the application made

direct use of the underlying network service, which might imply occasional lost, corrupted or reordered packets.

However, the initial effort to implement TCP resulted in a version that only allowed for virtual circuits This model worked fine for file transfer and remote login applications, but some of the early work on advanced network applications, in particular packet voice in the 1970s, made clear that in some cases packet losses should not be corrected by TCP, but should be left to the application to deal with This led to a reorganization of the original TCP into two protocols, the simple IP which provided only for addressing and forwarding of individual packets, and the separate TCP, which was concerned with service features such as flow control and recovery from lost packets For those applications that did not want the services of TCP, an alternative called the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) was added in order to provide direct access to the basic service of IP.

The early implementations of TCP were done for large time sharing systems such as Tenex and TOPS 20 When desktop computers first appeared, it was thought by some that TCP was too big and complex to run on a personal computer David Clark and his research group at MIT set out to show that a compact and simple implementation of TCP was possible They produced an implementation, first for the Xerox Alto (the early personal workstation developed at Xerox PARC) and then for the IBM PC That implementation was fully interoperable with other TCPs, but was tailored to the application suite and performance objectives of the personal computer, and showed that workstations, as well as large time-sharing systems, could be a part of the Internet In 1976, Kleinrock published the first book on the ARPANET It included an emphasis on the complexity of protocols and the pitfalls they often introduce This book was influential in spreading the lore of packet switching networks to a very wide community.

Widespread development of LANS, PCs and workstations in the 1980s allowed the nascent Internet to flourish Ethernet technology, developed by Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC in 1973, is now probably the dominant network technology in the Internet and PCs and workstations the dominant computers This change from having a few networks with a modest number of time-shared hosts (the original ARPANET model) to having many networks has resulted in a number of new concepts and changes to the underlying technology First, it resulted in the definition of three network classes (A, B, and C) to accommodate the range of networks Class A represented large national scale networks (small number of networks with large numbers of hosts); Class B represented regional scale networks; and Class C represented local area networks (large number of networks with relatively few hosts).

A major shift occurred as a result of the increase in scale of the Internet and its associated management issues To make it easy for people to use the network, hosts were assigned names, so that it was not necessary to remember the numeric addresses Originally, there were a fairly limited number of hosts, so it was feasible to maintain a single table of all the hosts and their associated names and addresses The shift to having a large number of independently managed networks (e.g., LANs) meant that having a single table of hosts was

no longer feasible, and the Domain Name System (DNS) was invented by Paul Mockapetris of USC/ISI The DNS permitted a scalable distributed mechanism for resolving hierarchical host names (e.g www.acm.org) into an Internet address.

The increase in the size of the Internet also challenged the capabilities of the routers Originally, there was a single distributed algorithm for routing that was implemented uniformly by all the routers in the Internet As the number of networks in the Internet exploded, this initial design could not expand as necessary, so it was replaced by a hierarchical model of routing, with an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) used inside each region of the Internet, and an Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) used to tie the regions together This design permitted different regions to use a different IGP, so that different requirements for cost, rapid reconfiguration, robustness and scale could be accommodated Not only the routing algorithm, but the size of the addressing tables, stressed the capacity of the routers New approaches for address aggregation, in particular classless inter-domain routing (CIDR), have recently been introduced to control the size of router tables.

As the Internet evolved, one of the major challenges was how to propagate the changes to the software, particularly the host software DARPA supported UC Berkeley to investigate modifications to the Unix operating system, including incorporating TCP/IP developed at BBN Although Berkeley later rewrote the BBN code to more efficiently fit into the Unix system and kernel, the incorporation of TCP/IP into the Unix BSD system releases proved to be a critical element in dispersion of the protocols to the research community Much of the CS research community began to use Unix BSD for their day-to-day computing environment Looking back, the strategy of incorporating Internet protocols into a supported operating system for the research community was one of the key elements in the successful widespread adoption of the Internet.

One of the more interesting challenges was the transition of the ARPANET host protocol from NCP to TCP/IP as of January 1, 1983 This was a "flag-day" style transition, requiring all hosts to convert simultaneously or be left having to communicate via rather ad-hoc mechanisms This transition was carefully planned within the community over several years before it actually took place and went surprisingly smoothly (but resulted in a distribution of buttons saying "I survived the TCP/IP transition").

TCP/IP was adopted as a defense standard three years earlier in 1980 This enabled defense to begin sharing in the DARPA Internet technology base and led directly to the eventual partitioning of the military and non- military communities By 1983, ARPANET was being used by a significant number of defense R&D and operational organizations The transition of ARPANET from NCP to TCP/IP permitted it to be split into a MILNET supporting operational requirements and an ARPANET supporting research needs.

Thus, by 1985, Internet was already well established as a technology supporting a broad community of researchers and developers, and was beginning to be used by other communities for daily computer communications Electronic mail was being used broadly across several communities, often with different systems, but interconnection between

different mail systems was demonstrating the utility of broad based electronic communications between people.

The recent development and widespread deployment of the World Wide Web has brought with it a new community, as many of the people working on the WWW have not thought of themselves as primarily network researchers and developers A new coordination organization was formed, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Initially led from MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science by Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the WWW) and Al Vezza, W3C has taken on the responsibility for evolving the various protocols and standards associated with the Web.

Thus, through the over two decades of Internet activity, we have seen a steady evolution of organizational structures designed to support and facilitate an ever-increasing community working collaboratively on Internet issues.

2.1.2 Commerce

The meaning of commerce as follows:

Commerce n [MF, fr L commercium, fr com- + merc-, merx merchandise] (1537)

 The exchange or buying and selling of commodities on a large scale involving transportation from place to place

The commerce is, quite simply, the exchange of goods and services, usually for money We see commerce all around us in in millions of different forms When you buy something at a grocery store or at Wal-mart you are participating in commerce In the same way, if you cart half of your possessions onto your front lawn for a yard sale, you are participating in commerce from a different angle If you go to work each day for a company that produces a product, that is yet another link in the chain of commerce

When you think about commerce in these different ways, you instinctively recognize several different roles:

Buyers, these are people with money who want to purchase a good or service.

Sellers, these are the people who offer goods and services to buyers Sellers are generally

recognized in two different forms: retailers who sell directly to consumers and wholesalers or distributors who sell to retailers and other businesses.

Producers, these are the people who create the products and services that sellers offer to

buyers A producer is always, by necessity, a seller as well

The producer sells the products produced to wholesalers, retailers or directly to the consumer You can see that at this high level, commerce is a fairly simple concept! Whether it is something as simple as a person making and selling popcorn on a street corner or as

complex as a contractor delivering a space shuttle to NASA, all of commerce at its simplest level relies on buyers, sellers and producers.

When you get down to the actual elements of commerce and commercial transactions, things get slightly more complicated because you have to deal with the details However, these details boil down to a finite number of steps The following list highlights all of the

elements of a typical commerce activity In this case, the activity is the sale of some product

by a retailer to a customer:

If you would like to sell something to a customer, at the very core of the matter is the something itself You must have a product or service to offer The product can be anything from ball bearings to back rubs You may get your products directly from a producer, or you

might go through a distributor to get them, or you may produce the products yourself.

You must also have a place from which to sell your products Place can sometimes be very ephemeral - for example a phone number might be the place If you are a customer in need of a back rub, if you call "Judy's Backrubs, Inc." on the telephone to order a back rub, and if Judy shows up at your office to give you a backrub, then the phone number is the place where you purchased this service For most physical products we tend to think of the place as a store or shop of some sort But if you think about it a bit more you realize that the place for any traditional mail order company is the combination of an address or a catalog and a phone number or a mail box

You need to figure out a way to get people to come to your place This process is known as

marketing If no one knows that your place exists, you will never sell anything Locating

your place in a busy shopping center is one way to get traffic Sending out a mail order catalog is another.

There is also advertising, word of mouth and even the guy in a chicken suit who stands by

the road waving at passing cars! You need a way to accept orders At Wal-mart this is handled by the check out line In a mail order company the orders come in by mail or phone and are processed by employees of the company You also need a way to accept money If

you are at Wal-mart you know that you can use cash, check or credit cards to pay for

Business-to-business transactions often use purchase orders Many businesses do not require you to pay for the product or service at the time of delivery, and some products and services are delivered continuously (water, power, phone and pagers are like this) That gets into the whole area of billing and collections.

You need a way to deliver the product or service, often known as fulfillment At a store like Wal-mart fulfillment is automatic The customer picks up the item of desire, pays for it and walks out the door In mail-order businesses the item is packaged and mailed Large items must be loaded onto trucks or trains and shipped.

Many products today are so complicated that they require customer service and technical support departments to help customers use them Computers are a good example of this sort of product On-going products like cell phone service may also require on-going customer service because customers want to change the service they receive over time Traditional items (for example, a head of lettuce), generally require less support that modern electronic items You find all of these elements in any traditional mail order company Whether the company is selling books, consumer products, information in the form of reports and papers, or services, all of these elements come into play

2.1.3 Internet E-commerce overview

Internet Commerce Opportunity Phenomenal growth has occurred and is expected to continue for the Internet World Wide Web Estimates for the numbers of consumers and businesses online vary considerably for markets around the world Still, experts believe that more than 36 million households will have access to the Web by the year 2000 in the U.S alone In Europe this number is lower, based on lower penetration of personal computers, but still approaches and dazzling figure of near 20 million households In Japan approximately 12 million households will have access to the Web in the year 2000.

The number of business Web sites is equally impressive, reaching more than approximately 2 million by the year 2000 in the U.S., and as many as 1 million each in Europe and Japan This significant adoption of the Internet World Wide Web by businesses and consumers presents two tremendous opportunities for businesses First, a growing standard means for businesses to communicate transactional information with other businesses more cost-effectively: "business-to-business commerce." Second, a growing channel for efficient delivery of goods and services to consumers: "business-to-consumer commerce." In this section, we take a quick look at trends in these two areas of opportunity Common requirements are then explored Business-to-Business Commerce Opportunity EDI for All Businesses

Businesses today transact with trading partners in one of two generalized fashions First, the majority of businesses use non-automated means of communicating commerce-related information with trading partners: mail, telephone, and fax Second, a small number of primarily the largest companies in the world—fewer than 50,000—conduct a significant portion of their transactions in an automated fashion such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) EDI conducted either with leased lines or, more commonly, through Value Added Networks (VANs)—can be costly and complex Large companies maintain full-time EDI staff for the ongoing management of translation systems and auditing of the operation EDI VAN-based systems, because of their complexity and ensuing cost, exclude small and medium-sized businesses from participation in automated trading communities.

Electronic commerce is decreasing the importance of geographical location, as the buyer and seller can be physically located on the other sides of the world and yet conduct business on-line This is particularly relevant for non-physical, information products, which can be sold, paid for and distributed globally by electronic means Although physical products are also traded electronically on international markets even to consumers (e.g Amazon.com

selling books to consumers all around the world), distance plays a role because it adds to the time and cost of the delivery.

The Internet will bring radical change to automation in trading By providing a ubiquitous public network and standards for communication, the Internet will help businesses lower costs in EDI-like transactions More importantly, the Internet will make it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to participate in automated commerce transactions Many businesses—small, medium, and large—will soon send and receive the majority of their purchase orders and invoices over the Internet.

2.1.4 Benefits of Internet for E-commerce

 Ease of access and global search: there was a consensus that the World Wide Web

(WWW) is an ideal mechanism for providing relevant information to the public globally It allows organizations an opportunity for publicizing their products and services at minimum cost By putting information on routinely asked questions on the home pages, organizations are saving costs by reducing the number of customer service representatives Also, customer can place order through the Internet once security issues are worked out The WWW holds the potential to increase the market share and helps expand into new market by virtue of its global reach Additionally, easy access to information through the Internet gives the opportunities to compare the costs and characteristics of products and services (R Nath et al).

 Low cost advertising medium: there is no doubt that Internet has become an

inexpensive advertising medium for organizations and is being effectively used by some firms for commerce The comments made by the president of a large IT international firm allude to this issue as: the purpose of Internet offerings is to open their products and services to a new customer base who prefers to use the Internet for their shipping needs and to maintain a leading edge technology position and image in the market place and against their competitions (R Nath et al).

 Low barriers to entry: small and large firms alike have the opportunity to be on the

WWW and conduct business on the Internet The barriers to entry to the Internet are minuscule The home pages give equal footing to small organizations with large national firms (R Nath et al).

 Perceived image enhance: For many companies, they have to present on the Internet

because their competitors are already on the Internet Without it their reputation can be tarnished and they will be perceived as laggards in employing state of the art technologies (R Nath et al).

 Establish direct link to customers: To deliver new services or by pass intermediaries,

Internet enables build direct connections to customers That means more than just designing a web site to market a company’s offerings The behavior of customers who are already buying goods and services on line clearly indicates that companies can build momentum in their digital channels by using Internet technology to deliver three forms

of services to customers First of all, companies can give customers just about the same level of service through the Internet that they can currently get directly from a

salesperson Secondly, companies can use the Internet technology to personalize

interactions with their customers and build customer loyalty One way is to tailor the information and options customers see at a site to just what they want Finally, companies can provide valuable new services inexpensively Company can draw on data from its entire customer base to make available wide-ranging knowledge of some topic The combination of the three levels of services can make the Internet channel very compelling for customers (Shikhar Ghosh,1998)

 Bypass other in the value chain: companies may find they have little choice but to risk

damaging relationships in their physical chains to compete in the e- channel The ubiquity of the Internet, the fact that anyone can link to anyone else, makes it potentially possible for a participant in the value chain to usurp the role of any other participant (Shikhar Ghosh,1998)

 Develop and delivery new product and service: instead of or perhaps in addition to

pirating value from others in the value chain, company that establishes Internet channels can choose to introduce new products or services to customers Not only in the Internet channel a direct connection to customers or to any participant in the value chain, it is also a platform for innovation It is a way to produce and distribute new combinations of digital information or to create new transaction models or services without incurring the traditional costs of complexity that exist in the physical world Through Internet, companies can create new value by taking away bits of some one else’s business First, a company can use its direct access to customers, each time customers visit a company’s web site is an opportunity to deliver additional services or provide a path for other businesses that want to reach that customers The second one, a company can mine its own digital assets to server new customer segments Lastly, a company can take advantage of its ability to conduct transactions over the Internet to take away value from others (Shikhar Ghosh,1998)

 Controlling access to customer and setting new business rules: companies can

conceivably use the Internet to become the dominant player in the e- channel of specific industry or segment First, there are number of reasons that make the companies are not invalid on the Internet as the physical distance between customer and suppliers, single store can differentiate services, thus as the result, a small number of companies can meet the diverse needs of large segments Furthermore, if customers are not willing to learn how to navigate hundreds of different sites, each with its own unique layout, then the web site will turn out to be naturally concentrating medium Therefore, in any cases, it is conceivable that some companies will attempt to control the e- channel by becoming the site that can provide everything that customers want, i.e Companies can become magnets by introducing new business models that take advantage of the interactive capabilities of the Internet (Shikhar Ghosh,1998)

2.1.5 Trading environment

Business-to-business model:

Business-to-business electronic commerce, or B2B e-commerce, refers to that portion of electronic commerce that takes place between businesses Unlike B2C, or business-to-consumer e-commerce, B2B e-commerce emphasizes supply chain integration, direct marketing over the web, and electronic marketplaces B2B e-commerce over the Internet can be as basic as a manufacturer putting up a bare-bones Web site to let distributors securely order a handful of products

It can be as complex as a distributor offering thousands of customers company-specific pricing and content, complex product configuration tools and near real-time access to inventory levels for its entire product line Compared with traditional electronic data interchange (EDI) systems that run across private networks, Internet-based B2B e-commerce is seen as less of a headache to implement, especially for companies that want to reach smaller customers and suppliers that can't handle EDI's cost and complexity.

Potentially, the most productive and profitable electronic commerce applications for small and large businesses alike are B2B transactions on the Web For example, a company can streamline its purchasing process by posting its supply requirements on the Web for open bidding And the Internet can be used to profile prospects, qualify leads, and deliver proposals before a sales representative and a corporate prospect actually meet B2B sales productivity can be significantly improved by providing technical information, pricing, scheduling, and other information to customers over the Internet, enabling sales reps to focus their efforts on personalized customer relationships Most companies probably do business with only 10 to 15 percent of their customers a year, but with B2B direct marketing over the Internet, a company with limited resources can create demand across its total customer base through all sales channels In addition, feedback from Web sites, online surveys and e-mail can be an important source of leads and market data A smaller company can use the Internet to reach and serve business customers nationally or internationally without having to expand geographically.

Business-to-consumer model

Online spending (business to consumer) from five Industry sources Forecasts for the year 2000 range from $17 - $33 bllion Forecasting online business to consumer sales depends upon the number of people online (maximum is total USA population), the average likelihood of buying, and average annual online spending per person According to the WVTM2, the longer someone has been using the Internet the more likely they are to buy (Figure 1) and the more they spend (Figure 5) In 1998, for example, buyers that had been using the Internet for 12 months had a median annual purchase amount of $180 whereas buyers that had been using the Internet for 60 months had a median annual purchase of $300 Assuming the number of online Internet users was 55 million in July 1998, we applied our likelihood to buy data and spending data to forecast total online retail sales in

the USA Estimates for the growth of Internet usage in the United States average 2.5% per month (e.g., Broersma 1998; Court 1997; Emmerce, 1998).

Electronic Commerce based Business's Activities and Functions

There are nine key activities in electronic commerce:

The specific functions associated with these activities in an electronic commerce setting are discussed below Note that not all of these activities are performed in every transaction, nor are they necessarily performed in this order; indeed, they may be performed in parallel Also, the activities are not necessarily all conducted electronically Finally, these activities can vary in complexity and importance depending on the size and scope of the transaction

Advertising and Shopping

Advertising and shopping can include the following: A potential buyer browsing electronic yellow pages and catalogs on a network An agent shopping on behalf of one or many buyers and/or sellers A buyer sending an electronic request for proposal (RFP), and sellers responding with various offers; Sellers advertising their products and services; and Buyers electronically navigating and/or browsing through the World Wide Web's online services A major problem associated with the advertising and shopping activity is the cost and time expended in developing, maintaining, and finding relevant information, products, and services, given the plenitude of available information Obviously, this problem will become increasingly complex as more data and services become available online and the choices and possibilities multiply exponentially We need new and better ways to find services and information and to publish and update this information

Negotiating

Buyers and sellers may elect to negotiate the terms of a transaction (i.e., the terms of exchange and payment) These terms may cover delivery, refund policies, arranging for credit, installment payments, copyright or license agreements, usage rights, distribution rights, and so on These terms can be standardized for routine commodity use, or customized to suit unique individual situations Often, in the case of two parties with a well-established business relationship, the terms of exchange are prenegotiated as standing contractual terms for all their future exchanges Often, this process will also include authentication of the two parties

Ordering

The buyer eventually issues a contractual agreement of the terms of exchange and payment This contractual agreement is generally issued as an order, which sets forth the quantity, price, and other terms of the transaction The order may be verbal, in writing, or electronic It usually includes an acknowledgment of agreement by the various parties in order to help prevent any future repudiation This agreement can be confirmed electronically through cryptographic techniques such as digital signatures.

In the case of some commodity purchases, the entire transaction may begin at this ordering stage, bypassing the advertising/shopping and negotiating activities The ordering activity applies to all transactions, regardless of whether billing will be involved For example, even requests for free public information should be issued as formal orders so that the service provider can record and account for information requests

Billing

Once a seller has delivered goods or services, a bill is sent to the buyer This bill generally includes remittance information that should accompany the payment Sometimes, a seller may require payment in advance Sometimes, a supplier sends advance shipping notification, and the customer agrees to authorize payment upon confirmation of the arrival of the products And in some cases, as with the free information example cited above, this activity is eliminated entirely

Payment and Settlement

The buyer, or some financial intermediary, eventually sends some form of electronic payment (this could be some form of contract or obligation, such as authenticated payment instructions or digital cash), usually along with some remittance information to the seller This payment may occur for a single item, on a usage basis, or with a single payment for multiple items or usage Settlement occurs when the payment and remittance information are analyzed by the seller or the seller's agent and accepted as valid

Distribution and Receipt

Either before, after, or concurrent with payment, the seller arranges for delivery of the purchased goods or services to the buyer, and the buyer provides the seller with proof of receipt Policies regarding customer satisfaction and return should be negotiated prior to this activity and made part of the contract between buyer and seller For larger, more complex orders, distribution may involve more than two parties and entail complicated distribution coordination strategies An ancillary distribution service involves acting as a fiduciary, and holding goods, certificates, bonds, stocks, and the like in trust

Accounting

This activity is particularly important to corporate customers and suppliers Both buyer and seller must reconcile all electronic transactions in the accounts receivable and accounts payable, inventory information, and accounting systems Account and management information system records must also be updated This activity can involve third parties, if the transacting businesses outsource their accounting services

Customer Service

Customer service entails the following:

Providing the buyer with timely information as to the progress of a transaction Handling customer requirements when transactions go awry that is, resolving any mistakes, disputes, or complaints concerning product quality, delivery, or payment (this includes managing returns and refunds, further exchanges, and/or repairs);

Providing expert advice and assistance in the use of the products and services.

Customer service also involves providing general cash management advice, including addressing foreign exchange imbalances and risk exposures, collection of delinquent payments and late fees, and repossessing products for which payment is long overdue Information and Knowledge Processing

A final key activity in electronic commerce is the collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the various data to make more intelligent and effective transaction-related decisions Examples include collecting business references, coordinating and managing marketing strategies, determining new product offerings, granting and extending credit, and managing market risk Performance of these tasks often involves the use of advanced information management techniques, including models and simulations and collaborative computing technologies to support conferencing and distributed workflow processes

These tasks will become more difficult as the sources of information grow in number and are of increasingly diverse and uncertain quality Additionally, procurement of this information may raise significant privacy concerns and issues

2.1.6 Applications of E-commerce

On Line publishing: The web was designed in order to share the information in the

network It was used as the distribution channel for the published documents The on line publishers can earn their own money through some different ways as revenue returning from the advertisements or fee charged for searching and assessing information (Raymon S Bamford, 1997).

Advertising: Advertising through Internet is one revenue source, as mentioned, for the

Internet businesses The traditional advertising only presented a simple prototype, but with the WWW, it can create a multiple prototypes that can offer and deliver value closely to the need of potential customers (Raymon S Bamford, 1997).

Retailing Through the shop site, customers not only be served the information, full

description about products and services, also can do the on line shopping Their orders can be automated delivery by linking the organization process, customer support system and banking system (Raymon S Bamford, 1997).

2.1.7 Levels of internet exploitation

The applications of the Internet to the world now are so diversified and companies of any level can find a suitable Internet application for its operations In general, the implementation of the Internet for business can be classified to the following levels as categorized by US Academy of Business and Community Resource.

Level 1: Unaware or do not care

Companies of this type:

The majority of businesses and organizations have done just fine without the Net for generations

Level 2: Aware but not on line

Companies of this type know of the Internet and can see the value Some of them may be just entering this stage They use Internet for:

Level 3: On line

This means those companies will purchase a home or business computer and will contact with an Internet service provider for services Level 3 companies will use the Internet to regularly access information, to purchase products or do on line research and they will use the Internet

for product support Level 3 companies can take advantage of many Internet communications and public relations advantages:

cost Internet communication features

Level 4: Create a Web site

There are many types of Web sites that can meet the needs of organizations ranging from one page brochure type-site to a full-fledged interactive E-commerce site

Level 5: E-commerce on the World Wide Web

The implementation of this level varies  Advertise on line but sell off line

Level 6: In house server

The final evolutionary level of Internet use is where an entity becomes its own Internet service provider (ISP)

2.1.8 Towards E-payments

2.1.8.1 Conventional Payment Mechanisms

Value has been conventionally transferred using a variety of techniques, including:

Cash

century largely by national governments;

1960s and 1970s, when the intrinsic value of the metals in the coins exceeded their face

 money orders written by an accepted authority such as a national post office;  letters of credit;

These mechanisms have various characteristics, such as the extent to which the parties are identified, the traceability of the transaction, and the taxability of the transaction The reason that so many mechanisms exist is that there are many different circumstances in which value is exchanged, and each of the mechanisms has niche-markets in which it is perceived by at least some parties to have advantages

2.1.8.2 Electronic Payment Mechanisms

Information technology has created, and continues to create, many new possibilities for value-exchange Some of the new techniques represent automation of existing methods, whereas others are novel or revolutionary

The following mechanisms exist, are in pilot, or are being designed: * electronic funds transfer at point of sale (EFT/POS)

EFT/POS involves the use of plastic cards in terminals on merchants' premises It actually comprises two distinct mechanisms:

 debit-card transactions These were a new form of value-transfer, whereby an

account-holder, authenticated by the presentation of a token (a data-bearing card) and the keying of a PIN, uses a terminal and network to authorise the transfer of value from their account to that of a merchant;

 credit-card transactions These represent the automated capture of data about

purchases against a revolving credit account, replacing what have hitherto been 'flick-flack'-generated hard-copy vouchers

* direct data entry transactions

Direct data entry provides a less circuitous path for transaction data than is the case with cheques It is also of two types:

 direct credit This involves an instruction by a payer to their financial institution to pay

funds into a payee's account with that or another financial institution A particular

sub-class of the direct credit is the standing order, which is a payment instruction activated

at regular intervals (e.g monthly or quarterly);

 direct debit This involves a payer authorising a payee to initiate the collection of funds

periodically, and is appropriate in circumstances where the amount of the payment varies from period to period (e.g electricity and telephone bills);

* financial electronic data interchange (F-EDI)

F-EDI involves the transmission of payment transaction data, and associated remittance advice data, from a payee to their bank, for onforwarding (via banks and/or value-added network operators) to the payee's bank and the payee;

* 'home banking'

This term is used for a variety of related methods whereby a payer uses an electronic device in the home or workplace to initiate payment to a payee In addition to computer technology, it can be performed using the telephone and interactive voice response (IVR);

* stored-value cards

This is a form of automation of cash, in which the tokens are not physical (like notes and coins), but electronic It is targeted at circumstances in which the card-holder is present at a point of sale or service There are several variants:

magnetic-stripe cards;

tokens;

value-tokens, but also perform the functions of a debit-card and credit-card This is often

referred to as an electronic purse or wallet;

* electronic cash

This is another form of automation of cash into electronic form It addresses circumstances

in which the payer is *not* present at the point of sale or service, but has electronic

communications facilities available, e.g is connected to the Internet, or to some other manifestation of the emergent global information infrastructure, such as a cable-TV installation with enhanced capabilities

A (very provisional) classification of the kinds of schemes for electronic cash is as follows:

 integrated approach:

stored-value card payment

2.2 Internet in Vietnam

2.3 Overview of Languages and Tools used for the application

2.3.1 Hyper text markup language (html)

HTML, or HyperText Markup Language is designed to specify the logical organisation of a

document, with important hypertext extensions It is not designed to be the language of a

WYSIWYG word processor such as Word or WordPerfect This choice was made because the same HTML document may be viewed by many different "browsers", of very different abilities Thus, for example, HTML allows you to mark selections of text as titles or

paragraphs, and then leaves the interpretation of these marked elements up to the browser.

For example one browser may indent the beginning of a paragraph, while another may only leave a blank line.

HTML instructions divide the text of a document into blocks called elements These can be

divided into two broad categories those that define how the BODY of the document is to be displayed by the browser, and those that define information `about' the document, such as the title or relationships to other documents The vocabulary of these elements and a description of the overall design of HTML documents is given in the rest of Section 2 The Last part of the section also describes standard naming schemes for HTML documents and related files.

The detailed rules for HTML (the names of the tags/elements, how they can be used) are defined using another language known as the standard generalized markup language, or SGML SGML is wickedly difficult, and was designed for massive document collections, such as repair manuals for F-16 fighters, or maintenance plans for nuclear submarines Fortunately, HTML is much simpler!

However, SGML has useful features that HTML lacks For this reason, markup language

and software experts have developed a new language, called XML (the eXtensible markuplanguage) which has most of the most useful features of HTML and SGML

2.3.2 Active server pages (asp)

Server-side programming used to be pretty difficult Making something work via CGI required some knowledge of arcane programming languages like Perl or C To boot, it was inefficient Each time someone hit a CGI script, a new process was created on the server; if your script was written in an interpreted language like Perl, the server had to start up another Perl interpreter, taking up processing time and memory The situation got even hairier when it lived on a site that was getting a few thousand hits a day