Mobile Computing and Networking

Mobile Commerce Shopping

There are two areas of mobile commerce that are widely applied in our daily lives; Web Storefronts and Virtual Shops. Web Storefronts restrict one seller to market and sell products and services on the Internet. Customers around the world search the products and services they desire from online catalogs, which show the price, feature, recommendations, etc. Items are then added to a virtual shopping cart and rely on various forms of online banking as payment. The online market is by design more effective and efficient than a real-world shopping environment because consumers are able to compare products and services from different suppliers to find a bargain. Virtual Shops are similar to Web Storefronts but without the one seller limitation. For example, Amazon allows customers to purchase products from different sellers, bundle the products together in a single sale, and ship to their home addresses.
The big issue for mobile commerce stems from the need to make quick, easy and safe transactions over the Internet. Customers want fast service and an interface that organizes their purchases/sales. However, what customers most care about is their money being safe online. An increasing number of resources have been invested in protecting data on internal networks with the use of firewalls, intrusion prevention software, and intrusion-detection software (Aldhizer 59). According to the Ponemon Institute’s 2014 cost of data breach study, the total average cost paid by organizations was $5.9 million in the last year (2014 Cost of Data Breach Study). Companies spend time and money because they cannot risk losing money of their customers, or of their own. Banks have a large presence on the internet due in large part for the need of accessible virtual money for mobile commerce. Mobile banking allows customers to manage their money virtually, in a safe and effective manner, for various types of transactions on a series of devices and platforms.