Case+Study-Tesco

E-commerce is the commerce conducted over the Internet, most often via the World Wide Web. E-commerce can apply to purchases made through the Web or to business-to-business activities such as inventory transfers. A customer can order items from a vendor's Web site, paying with a credit card (the customer enters account information via the computer) or with a previously established “cybercash” account. The transaction information is transmitted (usually by modem) to a financial institution for payment clearance and to the vendor for order fulfillment. Personal and account information is kept confidential through the use of “secured transactions” that use encryption technology.

However E-commerce have their own disadvantages of which some are-
 * Buyers may order goods that may tend to harm the nations security [[image:images.jpg width="113" height="162"]][[image:qq.jpg width="116" height="163"]][[image:ww.jpg width="107" height="163"]]
 * The vendor may steal the pin code from the credit card
 * We are unsure of what the product is
 * The product can be damaged while being transported
 * It may be physically in a poor condition

[|**Tesco**]which is a public limited company is a United Kingdom-based international supermarket chain.It is linked to E-commerce since it is conducted over the Internet. It is the largest British retailer, both by global sales and by domestic market share, and the fourth largest retailer in the world behind Wal-Mart of the United States, Carrefour of France, and The Home Depot of the United States. [|Tesco] is specialized in food, it has diversified into areas such as clothes, consumer electronics, consumer financial services, selling and renting DVDs, compact discs and music downloads, internet service consumer telecoms and most recently budget software.

Tesco operates ISP, mobile phone, home phone and VoIP businesses. These are available to UK residential consumers and marketed via the Tesco website and through Tesco stores. Though it launched its ISP service in 1998, the firm did not get serious about telecoms until 2003. It has not purchased or built a telecoms network, but instead has pursued a strategy of pairing its marketing strength with the expertise of existing telcoms. In autumn 2003 Tesco Mobile was launched as a joint venture with O2(it is a British Telecommunication), and Tesco Home Phone created in partnership with Cable & Wireless. Tesco Mobile offers both prepaid and PAYG (pay-as-you-go) accounts. In August 2004 Tesco broadband, an ADSL-based service delivered via BT phone lines(British Telecommunications ), was launched in partnership with NTL(provides cable sevices, internet, telephone, television). In January 2006, Tesco Internet Phone, a Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP, service was launched in conjunction with Freshtel of Australia.

Tesco announced in December 2004 that it has signed up 500,000 customers to its mobile service in the 12 months since launch. In December 2005, it announced it had one million customers using its mobile service. In April 2006 it announced that it had over one and a half million telecom accounts in total, including mobile, fixed line and broadband accounts.

Tesco has operated on the internet in the UK since 1994 and was the first retailer in the world to offer a robust home shopping service in 1996. Tesco also has Internet operations in the Republic of Ireland and South Korea. Grocery sales are available within delivery range of selected stores, goods being hand-picked within each store.


 * How goods are sold online by Tesco-[[image:sw.jpg]]**

· This is where the E-commerce Regulations can be used to the seller's advantage. It is possible to sell on-line and take payment by credit card without concluding the contract on-line. The solution is to provide that the customer is making an **//offer//** on the site and that the contract will be formed only if the customer's order is //**accepted**// – and that taking payment from the customer's credit card does not indicate cceptance.

· On-line merchant accounts provide for making refunds to a customer's credit card. Therefore, the terms should explain that, while the customer's card may be debited before the contract is formed, if the customer's order is ultimately rejected, a refund will be made immediately.

· The customer is taken to the order form where he completes the quantity of goods and his delivery details. It would be good practice to offer three buttons: submit, clear and cancel. The "clear" button is needed because the E-Commerce Regulations require a means for the customer to correct any errors.

· At the bottom of the terms and conditions page the purchaser should, ideally, be required to check a box to indicate that he or she has read, understood and accepted the terms and conditions, before clicking the "Accept" button. The "Accept" button should not work until the box has been checked. Equally the page should be designed in such a way that the consumer cannot check the box and click "Accept" until the page has fully loaded onto the screen.

· The terms and conditions should be in a format that can be printed or saved – therefore avoid pop-up windows and ensure that they fit within the width of the page and are presented in a way that they will print properly.

· At this stage, the user should be taken to the page on a secure server where his credit card details are taken. This page should state: "**Your card will be debited with the sum of £X when you click the Submit button. This will be refunded if your offer is refused.**" Repeat the choice of submit, clear and cancel.

· When the card details are validated, the E-Commerce Regulations require that you give the customer an acknowledgement page and send an acknowledgement email. This should not confirm a contract. It must confirm that the order has been received and that the order is being "processed". It is helpful to give the customer an order number at this stage so that he or she can chase-up any problems. It is good practice, though not legally required, to ask the user to click a button on a confirmation page to indicate that he has read the confirmation – e.g. a "Continue" button, linking to the homepage of the site.

· Generally a consumer has a period of seven working days within which to cancel the contract and return the goods to the supplier. The only cost to a consumer will be the cost of returning any goods received by it to the supplier.

· A consumer will not be entitled to cancel a contract after it has been entered into, where the supplier has commenced the provision of services with the consumer's agreement prior to the end of the cancellation period then the consumer will not have the right to cancel the contract for the provisional services.

· Finally, dispatch the goods. If a typo mislabelled an item costing £200 at £2 and someone ordered 500 of them, the site could politely – and legally – refuse the order. This is because by following the procedure set out above the dispatch of goods is in effect the acceptance of the offer made by the consumer at the start of the process. Until this point there has been no acceptance and only an acknowledgment..

__**Works Cited**__ “E-commerce.” __Answers.com__. 13 Feb. 2007 <[|http://www.answers.com/E-commerce>.] __Tesco__. 13 Feb. 2007 <[|http://www.tesco.com/>.] “Tesco.” __Answers.com__. 13 Feb. 2007 <[|http://www.answers.com/tesco>.] “Tesco.” __Wikipedia__. 15 Feb. 2007. 17 Feb. 2007 <[|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco>.] http://www.out-law.com/page-424