Verizon is recognized not only for its information technology, but also for effectively using electronic commerce to offer their products and services. The advantage of using E-commerce is the availability of services and partnerships at any time, to consumers and companies all over the world. Through E-commerce communication barriers come down, allowing faster access for business/customer operations. Verizon has an efficient path-to-profitability (P2P) which is applied to E-commerce in order to target specific customers (residential, business, corporate, and government segments), marketing (affiliates, ads, and search engines), operations (supply chain, finance, etc.) and projects (innovations).
Internet Business Models
Business to Business (B2B) E-Commerce Verizon has partnerships with suppliers, manufacturers, IT system and hardware companies, among other businesses. The connection with other businesses creates more choices to reduce inventory cost and supplier power; but also to increase customer service and products. This is so because of better and faster communication with the businesses that work with Verizon to satisfy customers.
Business to Consumer (B2B) E-Commerce Verizon provides communication services and products to individuals: FiOs TV and Internet, 3-G networks, wireless services, landlines, global communications, entertainment accessibility (movies and games on demand), internet security systems, among more. Verizon aims to stay on top of demand but also to introduce new services and products to gain competitive advantage.
Business to Government (B2G) E-Commerce Verizon provides risk management, backup systems, and internet security that help transform and improve government operations. Verizon also offers its communication services to help with national security by helping to secure networks from espionage and terrorism attempts.
Verizon's Marketing Mix
Verizon invests millions of dollars in advertisement not only through TV commercials and billboards, but a large part of its marketing strategy uses the Web to attract customers. Verizon’s website is filled with information on every aspect of the company. Customers, can easily access the website to see the services and products offered as well as future projects, social responsibility, infrastructure, and working innovations. The way Verizon exposes their website which ultimately markets their products and services is by being on search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc), paying for online ads (advertisement on the sides of websites), and having affiliate programs (www.pcworld.com) that draw in customers (B2C). It is more challenging to attract other businesses using the same marketing tools used for individuals. Therefore, Verizon approaches businesses and the government by presenting their advanced IT, that reflects in their products/services, through negotiation that ensures that they are the top communication providers.
Verizon's Payment Systems
Payment systems used by Verizon include (B2C payment systems), financial cybermediaries, electronic checks, electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP), and Electronic data interchange (B2B payment system). Verizon provides an exclusive link to its Billing Center that explains and guides customers to their convenient choice of payment. There is also customer service offered through chat and by telephone.An example of a financial cybermediary is BilltoMobile. Verizon’s wireless branch hit their competition with this new mobile payment service. Verizon formed a partnership with Danal to allow customers to charge online purchases directly to their monthly cellular bill.
The electronic check mechanism works by partnerships with banks. You can pay any of your Verizon bills through personal online banking accounts. Additionally, Verizon offers customized accounts for their customers with billing and user information (EBPP). E-mails and virtual notifications are sent to customers with balances and easy access to pay.
The payment systems mentioned work for business to customer services; however, for business to business payment transactions Verizon partnered with Global eXchange Service (GXS) to process operations such as supply-chain management. Such partnerships allow organizations to share and control transactions easily.
