Secondhand Market And Its Future

Literature review is about the background information of my project. I will present the related online secondhand market items in the first part. The second part I will review of 3 existing secondhand systems to find inspiration of my project. At last I will talk about open source software and how they can help me in developing system.

2.2 Secondhand Items

A secondhand or used good is one that is being purchased by or otherwise transferred to a second or later end user. In another word it can simply mean it is no longer in the same condition as it was when it was first transferred to the current end user. Secondhand items may be transfer between friends or family for free, or they can be sold at a lower price at garage sales.

Many people prefer to buy new goods, since new goods can make them feel safer. A warranty is provided for new goods they can fix for free or simply change a new one, buy new goods also can avoid buying stolen goods.

But buy secondhand goods has significant benefits such as prevent them becoming waste and saves costly production of equivalent new goods. It can conserving natural resources and protecting the environment, and may from part of a simple living plan.

2.3 E-commerce

E-commerce (Electronic Commerce) is any form of business transaction in which the parties interact electronically over the internet rather than by physical exchange or conduct. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.

The main business uses of the internet include:

The ability to buy, sell and advertise goods and service to customers and consumers.

To communicate with businesses and customers around the world

To promote products and services by electronically publishing brochures, manuals, product updates etc

To give business the competitive edge by researching information on specific industries.

E-commerce can be divided into 4 categories which are business-to-business (B2B), business-to-customer (B2C), customer-to-business (C2B) and customer-to-customer (C2C).

B2B is conducted between businesses. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market). Such as manufactures selling to distributors and wholesalers selling to retailers. Pricing is based on quantity of order and is often negotiable.

B2C is conducted from businesses to consumers. Business selling to the general public typically through catalogs utilizing shopping cart software. This is the type of electronic commerce conducted by companies such as Amazon.com.

C2B is conducted from customer to business. A consumer posts his project with a set budget online and within hours companies review the consumer’s requirements and bid on the project. The consumer reviews the bids and selects the company that will complete the project. Elance empowers consumers around the world by providing the meeting ground and platform for such transactions.

C2C conduct from customer to customer. There are many sites offering free classifieds, auctions, and forums where individuals can buy and sell. Thanks to online payment system like PayPal where people can send and receive money online with ease. eBay’s auction service is a great example of where person-to-person transactions take place every day since 1995. My Secondhand market system is belongs to C2C category.

2.4 Secondhand market and its future

Secondhand markets are used for sell or exchange secondhand items. Secondhand items can often be found for sale in thrift stores and pawnshops, auctions, garage sales, and in more recent time’s online auctions. Some stores sell both new and used goods, while others only sell new goods but may take used items in exchange for credit toward the purchase of newer goods. These stores are all can be seen as secondhand market.

The secondhand market is exciting developing now. Since global financial crisis hit, people turn to shopping in an economy way. So the secondhand trading market benefit from this struggling economy. (Lynn Ducey, 2008) Secondhand markets are busier than ever, it appears a bucking retail trends. (Elizabeth Millard, 2008). Report by CNN 2th January 2009, one of Buffalo (a Manhattan consignment shop) privately held company says it has $50 million in annual revenue and is concluding its third consecutive year of sales growth and also of the resale market’s overall performance. Secondhand stores are profiting from the recession. (Maggie Overfelt, 2009) The second-hand trading market is booming as bargain-hunting consumers turn to buying quality second-hand items online, from the latest plasma screens to designer togs. Popular online trading sites like eBay and Trading Post both report a spike in trade of second-hand item.

2.5 Secondhand markets in campus

The secondhand market has a huge potential in campus, there are many things can supply such as books, stationery, MP3, computer, etc. These items have the guaranteed quality and in a low price because the buyer and seller are both students easier to monitor. So people like to buy stuff from college students, giving them a high trust.

In China annually last-year students spontaneously organize a secondhand market to exchange of second hand school materials. They place stalls along the college street, as long as 100 meters, and becomes a kind of tradition. Even some residents nearby the campus join this team.

There is a great deal of graduate students in college every year and they have a lot of things hard to take away but still useful. For the sake of avoiding the waste and recycling, the secondhand market is a good way to solve this problem which can bring some economic benefits at the same time.

2.6 Pros and Cons of online secondhand markets

Pros

There many advantage to use online secondhand market. Selling and buying secondhand items both become easily. The website allows you to browse through different categories and see the ads posted by other sellers to buy or sell items easily.

Use internet we can access more secondhand item resources than traditional shopping method. We can use search function to search product as much as we want without travel here and there.

Online secondhand market also can help you save money since you can compare price easily and bargain with seller.

Cons

Use online secondhand market to search product, user may facing a problem that the quality cannot guarantee. User cannot see, touch and easily ask questions about a real product.

Use online shopping decrease the frequency of people get out of the house. This may cause health issue to people. There are some people get cabin fevers in the winter since this situation.

Another disadvantage of buy secondhand product online is that secondhand items do not have warranty, if got problem user cannot change a new one or fix for free.

2.7 Review existing system

2.7.1 “2nd hand” (http://www.2ndhand.com.my/index.php)

Introduction

“22nd hand” is an online second hand market in Malaysia, it allow customer to sell or find request goods online.

Key features

If user wants to post advertisements on this website, he/she need to register on this website. User need to fill up the personal information such as name, gender, contact information (which will display with advertisement together for others to contact with owner)

Home page

Home page displays the latest sales/request advertisement in sequence.

Post sell/request item

After user log in they can post a sell/request advertisement at this website. They can post goods photo, edit, update, delete goods information.

Search function has three classifies: by catalog, by location, by user. User can choose any one of them to process search function.

Goods catalog page

The website use a whole page to display the entire catalog, user can find all goods classifies here.

2.7.2 Gumtree (http://sydney.gumtree.com.au/)

Introduction

Gumtree Sydney is a free local classifieds site. Look for items for sale, services, cars, jobs, housing, and more. This site has a large community of individual sellers who put up items for sale. You often can find garage sales here. Its search engine allows you to filter by products and price range. If you’re looking for a specific item, you can also sign up to alerts via your email address.

Key Features:

Post sell/request item

Gumtree offer free post advertisement for customer, customer can post an advertisement to sale something or find something they want to buy. Customer first need to select an category that the item they want to post then need to choose they want to buy or sell product then edit product information here, such as price, product name, description and also can post an image of product. Customer need to edit their contact information convenient for others to contact.

Promote advertisement

Website also provides promote advertisement method which include: highlight advertisement, top advertisement and show advertisement on home page. These functions are charge items.

My Gumtree

Customer register in Gumtree, they can have an own page for manage their posted advertisement, they can post, promote, edit, delete and have an personal Watch List

Discuss area

A forum used for user post articles to share their experience of Gumtree and make judgments of service.

Help function

This web page use a search function to allow user to search questions that they want to ask, see if the question already answered by others. It likes a guideline to guide user use the Gumtree.

Other service:

Profile, FAQ, search

2.7.3 mySimplifieds (http://www.mysimplifieds.com/)

Introduction

mySimplifieds is Malaysia’s Most Comprehensive Classified Listings, All In One Hassle Free Classified Portal To Reach Out Your Largest Buyer & Seller Groups Effectively.

Key features:

List your items on mySimplifieds and all our affiliated portals at no extra cost.

Post personal classifies:

Select a category, edit item’s information such as: item name, description, price and key word used for search function. Customer even can add an video for posted item to promote it;

Fill the form about contact information for others to contact with you;

Use the map offered by Malaysia Classifies to show the location of the item;

Malaysia Classifies have an special function that report delivered daily or weekly to you email to find out key stats such as unique visitors, total view & enquiries so that you can monitor your classifieds performance.

Search by classifies, and type the key word to search needed items.

Tips

“Buy” and “sell” page got tips to guide customer use the webpage, customer can quickly learned how to use it.

FAQ

mySimplifieds offer an FAQ to solve frequent question that customer may be ask, if user still get problem, they can send email to mySimplifieds until get satisfied answer

Comparison between 3 website

website

Advantage

Disadvantage

“2ndhand”

Simple, easy to use

Poor features, not so much functions can choose by people

Gumtree

Free for post advertisement;

Have promote function;

Discussion function;

Help function

User need to charge promote function

Web pages are very long need to roll down.

mySimplifieds

Advertisement function make the post items on its all affiliated portals at no extra cost

Products do not display in sequence cannot see latest advertise post by users.

Web pages are full of tips, difficult to find process function.

2.8 Overview development tools

2.8.1 HTML

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, HTML is not a programming language, but is a markup language. A markup language is a set of markup tags. HTML uses markup tags to describe web pages. It provide a means to creat structured documents by denoting structureral semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It can include or can load scripts in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of HTML processors like Web browsers; and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the appearance and layout of text and other material.

2.8.2 PHP

PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. As a general purpose programming language, PHP code is processes by an interpreter application in command-line mode performing desired operating system operations and producing program out put on its standard output channel. It may also function as a graphical application. PHP is available as a processor for most modern web servers and as standalone interpreter on most operating system and computing platform. It is free for use, PHP group provide the complete source code for users to build, customize and extend for their own use.

PHP originally designed to create dynamic web page, now mainly focus on server-side scripting. It is similar to ASP and JSP which provide dynamic content from a web server to a client.

PHP is a member of the popular LAMP architecture which in the web industry as a method of deploying web application. PHP is representing P in LAMP; other three alphabets represent Linux, Apache and MySQL.

Significant website are written in PHP include Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo, MyYearbook, Digg and so on. According Wikipedia, April 2007, over 20 million Internet domains had web services hosted on servers with PHP installed and mod-php was recorded as the most popular Apache HTTP Server module.

2.8.3 MySQL

MySQL is the most popular open source SQL database management system, is developed, distributed, and supported by Sun Microsystems, Inc. MySQL consistent fast performance, high reliability and ease of use. It’s used on every continent, even Antarctica. Individual web developers or world’s largest and fastest-growing organizations both use MySQL to save time and money powering their high-volume Web site, business-critical system and packaged software including industry leaders such as Yahoo!, Alcatel-Lucent, Google, Nokia, YouTube, and Zappos.com.

MySQL support most of the function you’ve come to expect in a commercial RDBMS. It ensures that transactions comply with the ACID Model, allows the building of indexes, supports standard data types, and allows for database replication, among other features.

MySQL also provide flexibility put you in control since it can runs on more than 20 platforms including Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX.

2.8.4 Apache

Apache is public-domain, open source Web server developed by a loosely-knit group of programmers. Apache is generally recognized as the world’s most popular Web server (HTTP server). The first vision of Apache, based on the NCSA http Web server, was developed in 1995. Originally designed for UNIX servers, the Apache Web server has been ported to Windows and other network operating system (NOS). The name “Apache” derives from the word “patchy” that the Apache developers used to describe early versions of their software.

The Apache Web server provides a full range of Web server features, including CGI, SSL, and virtual domains. Apache also supports plug-in modules for extensibility. Apache is reliable, free, and relatively easy to configure.

Apache is free software distributed by the Apache Software Foundation. The Apache Software Foundation promotes various free and open source advanced Web technologies.

2.8.5 Benefits of use open source

There are many reason for us to choose open source, here just list several important reasons to review.

First of all, the cost will be a very important reason. The open source software is free. You no need to charge anything for it. You just download and install then can do your stuff with the software.

Second is open source offer a high level security. Open source software packages are almost always secure than proprietary options. If you read reports from the Dti and Pwc you will found that all known viruses are targeting proprietary software system. It is hard to find any real data on the number of Linux viruses that are in circulation.

The last but not least reason I want to write is features, because most open source software is developed by people who use it, so it tends to have more advance features. If there’s something you want to do you can either modify the product yourself or pay someone to do it for you. If you wish to, you are free to contribute your modifications back to the community so that the software continues to improve. Most open source licenses only require you to do this if you re-distribute your modified product to others.

2.9 Conclusion

From the literature review it can be concluded that secondhand market is appears a bucking retail trends both in campus and society. The secondhand market has a bright future and more and more people turn to buy secondhand items online.

The review of exist secondhand system shows that the secondhand system has these common functions: search, browse, post advertisement, category and manage function. I learned advantages and disadvantages from these systems. I can design my system better with this knowledge.

I choose Open source software to develop my system since its economy and rich functionality. I can easily use and find help from internet if I get problem cannot solve. Open source software is a good system development tool for the person who wants to develop a system without much money and experience.

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