Between 1995 and 2001m e-commerce became the fastest growing form of commerce in the world.
E-commerce beginnings lie in the early twentieth century, when IBM pioneered the use of mechanical calculators in business accounting. The electronic equipment that replaced these machine from the 1950s onward made possible ‘on-line’ transaction processing (OLTP) by airline, banks and stores during the 1960s.
American Airlines was one of the first corporations to exploit OLTP using large mainframe computers to process its ticket handling transactions.
E-commerce was a high tech, highly decentralized, reinvention of OLTP instead of a large central mainframe, transaction were typically processed by a such smaller server; instead of a proprietary computer network, the internet as publicly available, and instead of ATM or travel agency terminals, proprietary OLTP software, home computer were using off- the shelf, freely available Web browsers.
American Airlines offers a popular website (www.aa.com) that propelled them into electronic commerce on the internet. First, American analyzed the compelling business reasons for a business website.
Would it save money, improve customer service, build customer loyalty, shorten time to market, or transform distribution channels? Then they decided to build a website that their customer would find useful, move them into E-commerce and reduce the company’s customer service cost.
Once logged into the site, customers are welcomed by name, and they are shown the number of frequent flyer miles they have on their account. As well as customize information and special offers based on the profile and previous choice of references including, home airport, preferred destination, hotel and car rental companies and preferred seating choices.
American Airlines spend a million of dollars each year to staff their toll-free customer service telephone systems. A large percentage of calls are not from customers wanting to book a flight. Instead, many calls are from people wanting information such as how to get to airport, how to travel with a pet, or they can take their skis along on the flight.
American realized that many of their regular customer had computer at work or at home that their connected to the internet. They assumed correctly that most of those customers would rather get the information they needed directly from web that call in and probably wait in line for news.
So American’s top rated website posts travel-related information such as airport layout and logistics, aircraft seating charts, listing of in-flight movies, city ticket office, and flight arrival and departure times.
In 2001, American Airlines reported more than three-quarters of a million daily visits - 165% increases compared with the same time in 2000.
American Airline using E-Commerce
