Article: Blogshops warned to stop contact lens sales

From: The Straits Times, available at:

Push Cart Forums, Singapore:

Blogshops Warned to Stop Contact Lens Sales

 Blogshops Warned to Stop Contact Lens Sales

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10 March 2009
The Straits Times





Ministry tells online sellers to remove all related posts at once
By Serene Luo




THE Ministry of Health (MOH) yesterday morning warned unlicensed blogshops to stop selling cosmetic contact lenses. 


The Optometrists and Opticians Board of the ministry sent e-mail letters, which The Straits Times obtained, to blogshop owners to remove all contact lens-related posts from their blogs immediately as well. 


If they did not, they could run foul of the Optometrists and Opticians Act, and face jail of up to six months or fines up to $25,000, or both, for prescribing and dispensing contact lenses without being qualified to do so. 


The cosmetic lenses are popular with teenage girls, but some users have developed complications, such as corneal ulcers or conjunctivitis, from wearing them. 


Last month, The Straits Times' forum published a letter from the board, warning buyers to buy lenses only from licensed and qualified sellers. 


The cosmetic lenses are being sold on personal blogs, which have become a platform for teens and youth as young as in primary school to sell clothing and accessories. Their customers are usually other youth. 


This is the second reported action taken by a government agency on casual, typically unregistered, online businesses. 


About two years ago, two blogshops selling food products were asked by the National Environment Agency to remove mention of their wares online. The law prohibits food prepared at home from being sold to the public because of food safety concerns. 


Checks by The Straits Times last week found there were at least 10 online 'stores', mostly run by young women in their teens or early 20s, selling cosmetic contact lenses. 


These lenses, which are usually imported from South Korea, may or may not be powered but reportedly make the users' eyes look 'bigger and more sparkling'. 


But a Sunday Times article last month reported that eye doctors and opticians had seen a spike in eye infections in users who had bought cosmetic lenses from online sellers. 


In Singapore, only qualified and licensed practitioners are allowed to prescribe and sell contact lenses. 


When contacted, a number of blogshop owners said they would sell the lenses only to overseas customers. 


A few also said they had certificates from suppliers to prove the lenses were 'authentic' and not faked goods.


One blogshop owner, a 21-year-old who wanted to be known only as Miss Tan, said she would stop all sales after completing her current order this week, as many customers had already paid. 


She added that even though she had announced on her blog that she was stopping sales because of legal restrictions, a number of youths, some aged just 12, had approached her to supply them with lenses to sell. 'They are completely unaware of current affairs and news,' she said. 


A board spokesman said that if sellers continued their trade in contact lenses, 'enforcement action may be taken against them'. 


It conceded that enforcement against the online sale of contact lenses would be 'highly challenging', since owners of websites are hard to trace, but it would issue stern warning letters to those it can trace. 


It has also informed contact lens suppliers and companies to supply contact lenses only to qualified sellers, its spokesman said.

Eastern Times article about Blogshops

This article on blogshops appeared in the WEAR TO GO column of the Eastern Times newspaper today:


By Antonia Chiam

Online shopping is nothing new in this electronic age. Many brick-and-mortar businesses have long extended their presence into Cyberspace, while some businesses started off solely as virtual stores, allowing IT-savvy customers to buy things at a click of a mouse.
A recent phenomenon in online shopping is the flourish of 'blogshops'. These are run by individuals with no company alliance using their own resources. Personal websites, blog-hosting services like blogger.com or livejournal.com  and even social networking sites like Facebook and Friendster are common platforms for these blogshops that sell various kinds of products, ranging from fashion to gadgets to crafts and others. Basically anything and everything, the only limitations being one's resources and creativity.
Fashion blogshops, or as some of them prefer calling themselves 'online boutiques', have been around in Singapore and West Malaysia for a while, gaining notable popularity in the past one year or so. Wear To Go! surfed into some recommended Malaysian blogshops to check out their fashion (mostly clothes) offerings.

IreneLim.com
http://www.irenelim.com/fashion

This is one of the established online boutiques in the country. The clothes are mostly sourced from within the country as well as Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. There have been a great number of positive feedback on Irene's service and product quality, as can be seen from some testimonials in the site itself. Price range is between RM30-RM90 depending on the products, which are mostly tops and dresses.

Clothes For Fun
http://clothesforfun.blogspot.com

This blogshop is back after being 'offline' for awhile. Living up to its name, it returns with a quirky layout with various outfits that are sure to add colours and fun to your day, whatever the occasion. From blouses to bags to bangles, there is much choice for everyone at fairly affordable prices. Also worth noting, this site was recently featured in female, Malaysia's leading fashion and beauty magazine. 

Elegant Extravaganza
http://elegant-extravaganza.blogspot.com

Do not be put off by the minimalist design of this blogshop because it has very attractive offerings with equally attention-grabbing pricing. There are not many fashion blogshops where you can shop for below RM30 but here you can find bargains as low as RM10! From personal experience, this is THE blogshop for budget shopping, and best of all, you get good quality clothes.
Jessabella's Plus Size Stealz
http://jessabellapluzsizestealz.blogspot.com/

Plus-size friends often voice their difficulty in finding trendy clothes in this country of mostly petite people and physical stores tend to neglect the segment of full-figured customers. Blogshops like this one provide the solution to affordable and stylish plus-size fashion. Nothing more than RM40, claimed the blogshop owner Jessica. Please note the 'pluz' in the URL is deliberate and correct.

I'Adore Facebook Boutique
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kuching-Malaysia/IAdore-Fashion-Boutique/116356079543

This is a fairly new online boutique, operating from the popular networking site Facebook by two Kuching-based ladies. The Japanese and Korean import fashion are pretty popular, if the speed of items sold out or out of stock is any indication. They are slowly expanding their items so it is worth to join the Facebook Page to keep abreast of the latest updates. Most items are priced between RM30-RM45. 
These are just a handful out of the possible hundreds of blogshops in Malaysia alone. Should you know of any noteworthy sites, do share the URLs or your blog-shopping experience with us atnews@easterntimes.com.my [Subject: Wear To Go!] as we love to hear from our readers. Happy shopping!

Article on eBoutiques and Online Blogshops

Article from Shoppingnsales.com about eBoutiques and Online Blogshops in Malaysia:

We have seen our share of eBoutiques,  Online Blog Shops and even Online Blog Resellers on shoppingNsales.com; often we have many trying to put up their “offers & sales” as a pseudo comment on our website, for most-parts, its often filtered as a spam, and most of you don’t see it, but on ocassions they slip through.

Nevertheless, we have seen an increase in online blog shops .. they are popping up all over the online blogsphere. We figured this article (below) featured on 

Star is timely and would be useful to some of you; and may even encourage some others to start a similiiar thing; especially with the economic situation around us getting dimmer and dimmer.

Check out these key directory listings, so that you can be assured you’re not alone, if you wanna start up your own Blog Shop :  Emmagem Fashion Directory , MOFSD Listing and Malaysian Babes’ Blogshop

One of our friends also started her own online thingy called Choobs, where they specialized in Trinkets & Baubles and she’s saying that business is overwhelming!

So we guess, if you have an online BlogShop and you would like to share with us your experiences and also what you have to offer, we will “switch off” the spam filters for today!  Tell us what u have available on this Post!!

And for the rest of u, do you want to start an eBoutique or an Online BlogShop on your own?  Read on . . .

The next best thing to having a successful online boutique is taking it offline.

ALL is going well at the Youth ‘09 bazaar in Kuala Lumpur for Goh Rui Yee, or “Venetia”, as she is known on her online boutique. So many people have stopped by at her stall; some have bought from her, while others received her name cards directing them to her blog (sassychic32.blogspot.com).

Venetia, 22, has had an online boutique for almost a year now. Late last year, she discovered “offline” bazaars, and decided to try setting up stall at one in December.

One-on-one time: By going offline, online boutique bloggers get to make a personal connection with their customers.

“I liked the idea of meeting my customers face-to-face, and since I was on holiday, I decided to do it,” says the college student.

There are many others like Venetia; these days, it’s sometimes not enough to just run an e-boutique from behind a computer screen.

Online boutiques are nothing new. Run by young fashion enthusiasts who buy their products in bulk, locally and overseas, there are hundreds of e-boutiques craving publicity and attention to boost their businesses.

Showing proof: Venetia Goh Rui Yee believes that offline bazaars are a good way to show customers that products sold online are of good quality.

Enter the offline bazaars – a space for e-boutique owners to meet their customers face-to-face, interact with other vendors, and step away from their computer screens once in a while.

How these vendors run their stalls is entirely up to them. Some bring all their stock to the bazaar, while others showcase their old stock and new arrivals, and direct their customers to the website for other sizes and colours of goods on display.

“There is still a large group of people who are sceptical about online shopping. To instill more trust, we have to come offline to show them that our products are not merely nice pictures. This is a way of proving that our items are up to standard, and also a good opportunity to promote our website to a larger crowd,” explains Venetia.

Promoting it: Patricia Sharon Ponisa gets owners of e-boutiques to take part in bazaars by announcing them on her blog (www.pinkypiggyscloset.blogspot.com).

At the recent Youth ‘09 event, more than 30,000 youths thronged the halls of the Putra World Trade Centre, browsing through the 80 stalls at the bazaar.

The trend is catching on fast. Two weeks ago, at least five bazaars were held in the Klang Valley at various venues. On most weekends, there is at least one medium-scale bazaar happening in the city.

Offline bazaars are even happening in campuses. At the recent Universiti College Sedaya International (UCSI) Unifest event in KL, e-boutique owner and aspiring businesswoman Patricia Sharon Ponisa, 19, stood proudly among the vendors of a bazaar she curated.

Customer service: Grace Chew May Jern enjoys offline bazaars because she gets to meet her customers face-to-face.

“I have an e-boutique which sells items bought in bulk, and also designs by a friend of mine. Organising bazaars is a good idea because it brings website owners out into the public, especially in universities. This is because our stuff is quite affordable to students,” explains Patricia, who operatespinkypiggyscloset.blogspot.com.

Grace Chew May Jern, 20, a vendor at the same bazaar, is a shopaholic who just loves to share her fashion sense with the public.

“The point is to establish trust,” she says. “It’s a way of meeting current, and potential customers, which make transactions more interesting as I can personally give fashion advice and negotiate prices.”

Grace estimates revenue to be about the same offline and online.

Your choice: If you’re wary about buying stuff online, you may want to go to an offline bazaar to check out the products first.

“Of course, sales generated in two or three days in offline bazaars exceed a two-to-three-day online sale, but after deducting the cost of operating during the bazaar, it comes up to about the same,” says Grace, who operates the blog lushserendipity.blogspot.com.

Not everything is rosy all the time at bazaars, howevr. Vendors and organisers have their fair share of problems when it comes to working together.

“Space is definitely one problem, as there’s no way of knowing what the space will be like when you arrive, and sometimes a few vendors can be inconsiderate by eating up more space than they’re entitled to,” explains Venetia.

“Plus, there are some vendors who smoke at the trading area, which is bad because then it will stink up our clothes on sale. Thus, it is very important that you get good neighbour vendors,” she adds.

On the part of the organisers, Patricia agrees that there are some common problems, for example meeting vendor’s expectations.

“There are often disputes about space, racks and tables, and it’s difficult to please everyone. There’s also the issue of electricity, fans and so on. It’s all about being able to communicate properly and understanding one another’s needs,”says Patricia.

“As an organiser, I have to keep searching for events to hold the bazaars. This takes up time and it’s a balancing act between focusing on my studies, and running my e-boutique.”

For Venetia, Patricia and Grace, apart from having their businesses blossom in “real” life, as opposed to in cyberspace, the best part about being in a bazaar is meeting people.

“To see the happy smiles on our customer’s faces when they find something they like at our stalls is priceless. It’s also good to be able to exchange ideas and insight with neighbouring vendors, to improve our businesses,” says Venetia.

“Bazaars are a place where we can share fashion, earn pocket money, and gain experience in running a business,” says Patricia.

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Business with soul

Almost every weekend, one-off bazaars are hosted in and around the Klang Valley, featuring e-boutique owners, creative entrepreneurs, and second-hand items stall owners.

Young women, many of whom are students, throng these bazaars, either as vendors or customers. They are eager to interact, network, and shop.

One of the first bazaars of this kind to attract public attention was Bijou Bazaar, pioneered by Maryam Samirah Shamsuddin, 29, who runs the project with her friend, Nirwana Tuan Sariff.

The women behind Bijou Bazaar: Maryam Samirah Shamsuddin (left) and Nirwana Tuan Sariff. — Pictures by MOHD FADZA ISHAK

Bijou Bazaar has grown from a hobby of creating handmade accessories and re-fashioning old clothes to a massive lifestyle event with up to 180 vendors, food, fashion shows, and acoustic music performances.

“I grew up watching my mum run a duty free retail set up. When I was doing my A-Levels, I followed her on buying trips and sat in negotiations with designers or brand houses because that was the only time I got to see her,” explains Maryam.

“I learned a lot from watching her, and this was the trigger to my interest and passion in retail,” adds Maryam, who left her job as a business development manager to pursue her passion.

Maryam started out by selling her handmade accessories. But when the orders exceeded her capacity to produce them, she chose to build up Bijou Bazaar.

The first bazaar, which was held a little over a year ago, had only around 30 vendors. Their vendors now have grown to 180, depending on the scale of the event.

“To be honest, I would have loved to keep it small,” says Maryam. “When building managements and big event organisers invited us to hold Bijou Bazaar with them, I agreed so that more vendors and retails enthusiasts could benefit.”

According to Maryam, the sprawling shopping malls and cookie-cutter boutiques in the local retail landscape are impressive, but unfulfilling.

Growing business: Bijou Bazaar started out as a handmade accessories project by Maryam. It is now a major event involving at least 30 vendors at a time.

“It’s no more just products the shoppers crave, but an exchange of ideas, knowledge, and experience. Today’s soulless shopping landscape needs a corrective, we seek to do so by yoking commerce to culture,” she says.

At Bijou Bazaar, fashion is mixed with creative entrepreneurship. E-boutique owners, vintage fashion retailers, fashion designers and fashion enthusiasts selling their selections converge with creative entrepreneurs selling their own work.

All this makes for a good mixture of products and personalities at the bazaar, made more exciting by live acoustic performances by Indie musicians, an addition that Maryam believes makes the event more than just a “regular flea market”.

She likes to think of Bijou Bazaar as a “business with soul”, an environment that encourages vendors to make friends and help one another out.

“We see a lot of collaborations, sharing, support groups and win-win partnerships within the independent scene. We are not purely profit motivated, we are about our community; we are looking at nurturing young micro retailers and creative entrepreneurs within Bijou Bazaar.”

On the booming phenomenon of e-shopping, Maryam believes it is attributed to convenience.

“People today are more receptive to online retail for the convenience it offers. Life is complicated enough as it is, anything that whispers convenience will be well received.”

The next Bijou Bazaar will be happening on Feb 14 and 15, at Soho KL, Solaris Mont Kiara in KL.

To keep abreast with what’s happening with Bijou Bazaar, visit their website atbijoubazaar.blogspot.com.

Article on Malaysian Internet Landscape

Here are some basic statistics from the DIGITAL MEDIA ACROSS ASIA website, about Malaysia's Internet usage and related e-commerce activities.

Malaysia: Internet Landscape

In this section: 1. Malaysia Among Asian Countries 2. Internet Usage 3. Online Purchases 4. Malaysia's Latest Project

Internet only exists in Malaysia for less than 20 years. Malaysians started their internet experience with dial-up internet during the early nineties with Broadband (or narrowband) only available since year 2001. This section provides you the most up-to-date statistics of the internet landscape in Malaysia and the future prospects that would excite everyone looking to enter into the Social Media market in Malaysia. Do stop by to check out the Top 5 Websites in Malaysia, specifically classified into different categories - Search engines, Blogs, Social networking sites and Video sharing sites.

Malaysia Among Asian Countries

A study by Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) shows that Malaysia is one of the top 5 most connected countries in Asia-Pacific, alongside with New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. These countries all have between 55 to 80% of their populations using the internet by 2007, while the average in this region is at 20%. A quick check at Internet World Stats does confirm that 59% (14.9 million) of Malaysia's population are internet users. By this ratio, they are no.5 in Asia behind Japan (73.8%), South Korea (70.7%), Hong Kong (69.5%), Taiwan (67.2%) in 2008. In terms of total internet users, Malaysia is no.9 in Asia as illustrated below. This, of course is weighted by the total population and does not represent how connected the country is.

Internet Usage
Internet Users as of Population (2008)
	There is an increasing awareness of technology in Malaysia. With the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Project and the government’s commitment to a technological society, a large number of high tech companies from around the world have started to set up in Malaysia. Malaysia's internet users as of population has been steadily growing as depicted in the graph. At the end of 2008, it has reached its all time high of 62.6%. The growth will continue to escalate as the Malaysian government seeks to encourage the use of the internet. For more information: World Bank Development Indicators
Broadband Usage
	Broadband made a later entry into Malaysia in 2001. It has met with a steady growth since, with an total increase of 127.5% between 2006 - mid 2009. With the government plunging in funds to support the IT sector, Malaysia could see further improvement in their internet services. Despite Malaysia being one of the most connected in the region, their poor infrastructure has always always been the limiting factor for its expansion. It still remains as a catch-up market. Malaysians typically need to fork out about RM100 for a 1.0Mbps broadband service, out of our RM3,686 average monthly household income. The high costs becomes a barrier to use broadband internet, especially for the middle and lower income groups. That is why not all 14.9 million internet users are using broadband service, and how we can further improve our internet penetration. Majority of the internet users here are still only connected in offices, schools, cybercafes, hotspots or even dial-up internet access. According to MCMC, we only have around 6.38 million (24.8%) broadband subscribers from total population of 25.7 million, in the 1st half of 2009. For more information: Internet Penetration

Online Purchases

Internet Users vs Buying Online

More than 8 million Malaysians (half of our internet population) have actually bought something online. In Malaysia, more than 50% of the customers who shop online tend to rely on personal recommendations to make their purchasing decisions. Other main deciding factors are search engine results (37%) and special offers (34%). Creating that first positive shopping experience is key in order to capture loyalty and money – Malaysia online shoppers tend to stick to the shopping sites they are familiar with, with 60% saying they buy mostly from the same site. Let's dive deeper into the specific product categories and services Malaysians' look out for.

Products or Services Bought Online

By comparing to the 2007's statistics, the gap between travel and the rest of the gang is narrowed, which is a good thing to prove that e-commerce in Malaysia is not all about airline / hotel / tour reservations. By the latest statistics, Malaysian online shoppers mainly buy airline tickets or book travel reservations over the internet (82% of users), purchase books (69%) or buy general consumer goods (59%).

Online Consumer by Age Group

Most of the consumers are adults. Almost 60% of online consumers' profession are managers or executives and 13% of them are students. 

Malaysia's Latest Project

To improve the internet service, the government declared on 11 November 2009 that they have decided to support building the internet infrastructure in Malaysia. More than 1.2 million households and business premises in the country will be wired up with optical fibre to enable them access to mega-speed Internet connection. Telekom Malaysia has been tasked with laying the optical fibre and is expected to complete half the job by next year. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said the high-speed broadband network of between 10Mbps and 1Gbps would give the public, businesses and government agencies a competitive boost via cutting edge communications. (At these speeds, it will be possible to offer, among others, high definition TV online, live video chat and e-health services. Downloading a full-length feature film to your PC, for example, can take less than two minutes compared with at least two hours under the current speeds of 2 to 4Mbps). It will also give the country the platform to develop the information and communication technology of tomorrow, Najib said at the opening of the 12th Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) International Advisory Panel meeting. Najib, who is also IAP chairman, said the move would also help Malaysia catch up with global leaders in industrial developments. He said Malaysia needed a new paradigm to not only help the country catch up from where it was left behind but also take on a quantum leap to the ranks of developed nations. “Our industrial advancement has not kept pace with global leaders and we remain somewhat under- developed in this respect.” A new economic model would be introduced by the year-end with emphasis on innovation, creativity and high-value activities. So far, Malaysia had already put in place a comprehensive reform of its capital market and introduced sweeping measures to liberalise its service sector. It is also in the midst of putting in place a system to drive high performance at all levels of society. Najib said the push for MSC Malaysia as a platform for developingworld- class ICT applications and a seeding ground for Silicon Valley-type entrepreneurs was vital, saying no economy could claim to be developed without having a significant technological component. "Countries which are technologically advanced have and will continue to triumph while those that fail to make innovation a centrepiece of the economy will fall behind. It is no accident that technologically- advanced countries, like the US, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada and Australia, also dominate the list of the world’s wealthiest nations.” He said MSC Malaysia is on its way to become a bustling creative multimedia hotspot with more than 200 digital content companies generating US$200 million (RM676 million) in revenue. He said MSC Malaysia was entering its third phase of its development and would expand its ICT vision for industries and society. “The next phase of MSC Malaysia will build upon our success and accelerate the use of ICT to boost the nation's economic growth and societal well-being.”

Source: New Straits Times

Adjustment on Literature Review approach

I started to get down to doing the Literature Review by writing up a general plan and searching the online databases, using relevant keywords and phrases. 

About a week or so later, I have come to the conclusion that the literature on e-commerce and online retailing covers a lot of ground and is very diverse.  It appears in many different scholarly journals and spanning disciplines like Marketing, Business, and Information Technology.  The breadth and depth of literature in this area is indeed taxing and is making it a challenge for me to maintain order with my original  literature review plan as I have to continuously refine my search approach.

Therefore, I find that I need to make some adjustments to deal with the volume of information and to maintain order and direction.

I think that a more efficient way to tackle this problem is to identify summaries and commentaries of the literature thus far, and to work from there.  This will not only enable a more systematic search but it should also ensure that I will not miss the major works in this area.

Literature Review- Classifications and Typologies

There has been some work on classifying Internet retail websites.

1.  The earliest attempt to categorize online retailers was done by Hoffman, Novak and Chatterjee (1996) who proposed six categories of Internet sites for e-commerce:

- Online Storefront
- Internet Presence ( Flat Ad, Image and Information)
- Content (Fee-Based, Sponsored, Searchable Database)
- Mall
- Incentive Site
- Search Agent

2. Hoger, Cappel and Myerscough (1998) suggested a typology of business uses of the Internet for electronic commerce that consists of five categories:

- marketplace awareness
- customer support
- sales
- advertising
- electronic information services

Generally, researchers (Spiller and Lohse, 1997/99; Mottner, Thelen and Karande, 2003) drew upon parallels with traditional/offline marketing to derive schemes to classify online retailers.  They developed  attributes used to evaluate the Internet retailing sites based on reviews of literature on traditional retail typography.  Thus there were some assumptions that e-retailing had similar structures to traditional retailing which qualified the use of the attributes in this study.

3. Spiller and Lohse (1997, 1999) presented some analogies between retail stores, paper catalogs and online catalogs.

They adopted Lindquist's (1975) list of retail store attributes- which he derived from 26 other researchers- and offered five categories of online retail attributes:

- merchandise
- service
- promotion
- navigation

- user interface

In their 1997 study, they used an empirical method to classify 137 Internet retail stores by observing 35 Internet retail site attributes/variables derived from these five categories.

Using cluster analysis of these store attributes, they identified five distinct types of online retail stores as follows:

- super stores
- promotional stores
- plain sales catalogues
- one page catalogues
- product listings

They also found that online stores can be differentiated along three dimensions- store size, service offerings and interface quality.

4. Pota and Dushyant (2000) classified online retailers by considering their corporate origin to obtain insights to the strategic and operational advantages that these retail types enjoy. These classifications are:

- pure Internet startups
- traditional store-based retailers
- catalog retailers
- combination store-and-catalog retailers
- wholesale suppliers

5. Like Spiller and Lohse, Mottner, Thelen and Karande (2003) built a typology of Internet retailers by analyzing 152 Internet retailing websites.

They combined these traditional physical retail store attributes with unique e-retail store attributes to identify factors that differentiate online retailers and to classify online retail sites.

Using factor analysis, seven attributes were identified:

- assortment (breadth and depth)
- service
- security
- site features
- price
- ease of use
- product customization

These seven variables were used to cluster the 152 e-retailers, where clusters emerged to form three primary types of e-tailers:

- product focused
- micro-segment focused
- developed intermediaries

References:

1.  Mottner, S., Thelen, S., and Karande, K. (2003).  A Typology of Internet Retailing- An Exploratory Study. Journal of Marketing Channels, 1540-7039, Volume 10, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 3 – 23. 

2. Spiller, P. and Lohse, G. (1997). "A classification of Internet retail stores". International journal of electronic commerce (1086-4415), 2 (2), page 56. Available at: http://www.exs.hu/~bence/ecomm/wharton/classifinternretailstores.pdf

3. Lohse G., and Spiller, P. (1999). Internet Retail Store Design: How the User Interface Influences Traffic and Sales. Journal of Computer Mediated Communications. 5 (2).  Available at: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol5/issue2/lohse.htm 

4. Hoffman, DL, Novak, TP, and Chatterjee, P. (1996). Commercial Scenarios for the Web: Opportunities and Challenges. Journal of Computer Mediated Communications. 1 (3). Available at: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol1/issue3/hoffman.htm 

5. Hoger, EA, Cappel JJ, and Myerscough MA, (1998).Navigating the Web with a Typology of Corporate Uses. Business Communication Quarterly, Jun98, Vol. 61 Issue 2, p39-47


6. Pota and Dushyant (2000). Understanding Online Retail: A Classification of Online Retailers. The Journal of Computer Information Systems.

Research Questions

The initial research questions are as follows:

1. Are blogshops a type of emerging eBusiness model?
2. Are blogshops a viable and sustainable e-commerce platform?
3. Why do people use blogs to buy and sell?
4. How do these blogshops overcome major issues and challenges in running online businesses like logistics and trust issues?
5. How is social media used to support blogshop businesses?

These are broad questions to be answered.  There will inevitably be other questions that will emerge later, probably at the conclusion of the literature review stage, and these will be added.