The fight for the survival of electronic commerceAbstract: How can electronic businesses succeed in the new millennia? This document examines the trends that are developing at both an industry and individual company level, from what is needed to remain competitive, to public assurance on safety. It hasn't been an easy year for e-commerce. With so many e-businesses failing, and just as many emerging, the key to survival has been attracting and retaining customers. However, different businesses need different approaches, one of which is the use of online coupons. At the same time, the industry is getting a better picture as security - more specifically, the safety of buying online with credit cards - is addressed. Creating and maintaining a customer base on the Internet is no easy task. Different companies need to have different approaches, depending on what their product is and who their competitors are. To analyze these companies, we divided them into types: niche competitor and direct competitor. The Niche Competitor is exactly what the name suggests. These are companies with a specific niche: their customer base comes from the fact that they offer a one-of-a-kind service. An example of this is the online auction site Ebay. Ebay provides a service that did not exist on the Internet when it was first introduced. Today, there is no other online auction site that can rival Ebay in terms of both number of users and daily visits. With over 10 million registered users in December 1999, Ebay had over 3 million items for sale in over 3,000 categories in the same month [3]. PC Data Online, a service that rates websites based on the amount of traffic they receive, placed eBay eighth in its monthly Top 100. No other auction-oriented sites appeared on the list [6]. For a niche competitor to succeed against similar niche competitors, however, it must offer both a good product and good advertising. Ebay has managed to saturate the market with advertisements early and quickly and by providing an attractive and easy-to-use interface. Ebay's early competitors didn't fare so well: while Ebay advertised on television, most didn't, and most auction sites simply didn't look as good as Ebay's. Even today Yahoo! The auctions pale in comparison to Ebay, aesthetically. Indeed, Ebay is both a well-tuned site and a household name and thus has been able to fend off and retain customers from potential competitors like Yahoo! Auctions and AuctioNet.