The Digital Filipino: An E-Commerce Guide for the eFilipino Book

[June 10, 2000] Digital Filipino is a book about electronic commerce that covers a multi-disciplinary approach. It tackles the building blocks of electronic commerce, the developments in the Philippines and neighboring countries reflecting the latest research.

 

Using in-depth case studies of companies that have used unique strategies to win the trust and confidence of the Internet community.

 

A comprehensive analysis on the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned of companies and the government.

 

There a lot of e-commerce books available in the bookshelves but are mostly published in Western countries and covers only situations in their part of the world. There’s a need for a book that speaks more about our country that can be used as a reference by aspiring entrepreneurs who wanted to venture in e-commerce.

 

The book can be used by students and SMEs in understanding the e-commerce paradigm and make them aware beyond the theories that they may have already read.

 

Why do we need a book on e-commerce? You might say, “There’s a lot of information already on the Internet. A book on e-commerce might just become useless in a short span of time.” Well, I disagree on that. True, there’s a lot of information on the Internet and we’re now even experiencing information overload. But note that only those who has access to information and know how to use them to their advantage will be the ones to succeed. The information is there but how you organize and analyze it to come up with bright decisions is a different story.

 

To the best of my knowledge, e-commerce has never been covered this way. Most schools and universities around the world are gearing up to offer an e-commerce course and curriculum as early next year. I believe there will be a very big demand for an educational and reference material such as this.

 

Table of Contents

I. Foreword by Senator Ramon B. Magsaysay Jr.

II. Introduction

• What is e-commerce?
• Why do some refer to e-commerce as B2B and B2C?
• How long has the Philippines been practicing e-commerce?
• Why should companies do e-commerce? Is this only for big companies?
• What is the implication of e-commerce to the supply chain?
• What are the ways of doing e-commerce?
• What are the media used in doing e-commerce?
• How can SME benefit from e-commerce?

 

III. Doing E-commerce Through EDI

• What is EDI?
• What is a trading partner?
• What does a VAN do?
• What do I need to do EDI?
• What does a VAN do?
• Dealing with trading partners in a B2B environment.
• Who are the companies using EDI locally?
• What makes an EDI/e-commerce projct successful?
• What makes an EDI/e-commerce project fail?
• What is the different between EDI and the Internet? Which is better?
• Which is better? VANs or Internet?
• Are standards such as EDI important? How is it different from other free form data structures?
• How many VANs do we have in the Philippines? Who are they?

 

IV. Establishing Your Presence on the Internet

• What is a domain name?
• Registering a domain name
• Choosing a web site hosting service
• Building your site
• Collecting payment
• Securing your site
• Getting venture capital
• Marketing your site
• Case studies on Internet-based sites

 

V. Legal Issues on E-commerce

• FAQ on the E-commerce Bill

 

VI. E-commerce initiatives by government

• An interview with President Joseph Estrada

 

VII. Statistics

VIII. Opportunities and challenges

Appendix A Senate Bill 1902

Appendix B House Bill 9971

Appendix C Senate Bill 2025

Appendix D The DigitalFilipino Webring

Appendix E The eFilipino Web Awardees

 

We would like to take note of the following significant corrections in the book:

 

On page 69, we gave you a perspective on the DigitalFilipino.com survey. Unfortunately, bullets were inserted in our data summary that tends to misinterpret the information presented. It should be read as:

 

1.) 51% of the total survey respondents are male. 25% of the total male respondents are in the 26-35 age group with an average income of P36,173.68 per month. 63% of shop online. 53% have purchased products online at an average of P83,920 per online spender last year. 90% of transactions are done through the use of credit card.

 

100% own a personal computer. 92% with Internet access. 68% uses MS-Internet Explorer.

 

2.) 57% of respondents are from the 18-25 age bracket. Of this age bracket, 36% are female whose income is on the average of P15,384.50 per month. 38% of them shop online.

 

19% have purchased products online at an average of P46,000 per online spender last year. 20% of transactions are done through the use of credit card.

 

96% of them own a personal computer. 88% with Internet access. 77% uses MS-Internet Explorer.

 

3.) 64% of respondents are college graduate. 21% finished graduate school.

 

4.) 85% of respondents are single. 14% are married. Of married, the average number of children is 2.

 

5.) 36% of respondents are IT professionals. 25% are students.

 

Should you wish to verify any information in the book, feel free to email me at janette@digitalfilipino.com.