2. The main advantages of E-commerce process are named here. Can you name some disadvantages it also has?
Electronic Commerce or e-commerce is the exchange of goods or services by means of Internet or other computer networks. E-commerce follows the same basic principles as traditional commerce that is buyers and sellers come together to exchange goods for money. But rather than conducting business in the traditional way-in stores and other brick and mortar buildings or through mail order catalogs and telephone operators in e-commerce buyers and sellers transact business over network computers.
E-commerce offers buyers convenience. They can visit the World Wide Web sites of multiple vendors 24 hours a day and seven days a week to compare prices and make purchases without having to leave their homes or offices. In some cases, consumers can immediately obtain a product or service, such as electronic book, a music file, or a computer software, by downloading it over the Internet.
For sellers, e-commerce offers a way to cut costs and expend their markets. They do not need to build, staff or maintain a store or print and distribute mail order catalogs. Automated order tracking and billing system cut additional labour costs, and if the product or service can be downloaded, e-commerce firms have no distributional costs.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The major currencies facilitate international trade, capital flows, and tourism and are the primary reserves for the worlds central banks. Please express your point of view about that. Do you agree or disagree with it? Why?
2. Is it always very simple and beneficial to exchange currency?
UNIT 17
Naming the Currency and Creating the Symbol
LEAD-IN
Exercise 1. Before reading the text Naming the currency and creating the symbol answer these questions.
1. What is the European Union?
2. How many member states (countries) are there in the European Union nowadays?
3. What do you know about the currency of the European Union (EU)?
Exercise 2. Remember the meaning of the words that you will find in the text Naming the currency and creating the symbol.
- Council an advisory, deliberative, or legislative body of people formallyconstituted and meeting regularly;
- Connotation an idea or feeling that a word invokes person in addition to its literal or primary meaning;
- To reject to dismiss as inadequate, inappropriate, or not to ones taste;
- Survey an investigation of the opinions or experience of a group of people, based on a series of questions;
- To inspire to affect;
- To intend to have (a course of action) as ones purpose or objective; to plan;
- To reduce to make smaller or less in amount.
Exercise 3. Give Russian equivalents of the following names of the organizations.
- The European Council;
- The European Union (EU);
- The Commissioner in Charge of Economic and Financial Affairs;
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- The International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
COMPREHENSIVE READING
Naming the Currency and Creating the Symbol
1. At the meeting of the European Council in Madrid in December 1995, Europes leaders decided on the currencys new name: the euro. Other suggestions were rejected because of their national connotations. These included the ducat, ecu, florin, franken, or using the euro as a prefix to existing currency names euromark, for example. They agreed that the name should be the same in all official languages of the European Union (EU), taking account of different alphabets, and easy to pronounce. Above all, it had to be simple and representative of Europe.
2. The currency also needed to have a symbol. Like the name, the symbol had to be clearly associated with Europe, easy to write and attractive. A list of thirty possibilities drawn up by European Commission staff was reduced to ten and these became the subject of a public survey. From this shortlist, two possible symbols emerged and the final choice was made by the then President of the Commission, Jacques Santer, and Yves-Thibault de Silguy, the Commissioner in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs at that time.
3. The euro symbol was inspired by the Greek letter epsilon, reflecting the cradle of European civilisation. E is of course the first letter of the word Europe. The two strong parallel horizontal lines are intended to symbolize the stability of the currency. The official abbreviation of the euro, EUR, has been registered with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
COMPREHENSIVE CHECK
