E-Commerce Technology e-Commerce Technology Overview

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E-Commerce Technologye-Commerce Technology
Overview

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Commerce (8000 B.C.)
BUYER LOCATES SELLER
SELECTION OF GOODS
NEGOTIATION
SALE
PAYMENT
DELIVERY
POST-SALE ACTIVITY
INFORMATION
PHYSICAL
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Electronic Commerce (2002)
SOME TECHNOLOGIES USED
SOME INFORMATION GATHERED
SEARCH ENGINE
SEARCH BEHAVIOR
BUYER LOCATES SELLER
ON-LINE CATALOG
BROWSING BEHAVIOR
RECOMMENDER AGENT
CUSTOMER PREFERENCES
CONFIGURATOR
SELECTION OF GOODS
EFFECTIVENESS OF PROMOTIONS
SHOPPING BOT
BARGAINING STRATEGIES
AGGREGATOR
PRICE SENSITIVITIES
INTERNET
NEGOTIATION
AUTOMATED AGENTS
PERSONAL DATA
TRANSACTION PROCESSOR
SALE
MARKET BASKET
DATA INTERCHANGE
CREDIT/PAYMENT INFORMATION
PAYMENT
CRYPTOGRAPHY
DELIVERY REQUIREMENTS
E-PAYMENT SYSTEMS
DELIVERY
TRACKING AGENT
ON-LINE PROBLEM REPORTS
ON-LINE HELP
POST-SALE ACTIVITY
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
INFORMATION
BROWSER SHARING
FOLLOW-ON SALES OPPORTUNITIES
PHYSICAL
INTERNET TELEPHONY
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The Electronic Marketplace
BUYER LOCATES SELLER
DIRECT SELL
SELECTION AGENT
SELECTION OF GOODS
CREDIT FILE
BID PREP
NEGOTIATION
SALE
ORDER TRACKING
SECURE PAYMENT
PAYMENT
DELIVERY
DELIVERY
DATA ANALYSIS
POST-SALE ACTIVITY
CRM
INSTALL
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The eCommerce Process

• Buyers and sellers find each other
• Communication (via Networking, the Internet, and
  Web-Based Information Architectures)
• Human-Computer Interaction, Multimedia
• Intermediaries
• Negotiation

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The eCommerce Process

• Transaction
• Transaction processing, Databases
• Electronic Payment Systems,
• Computer Security,
• eCommerce Architecture
• Order fulfillment
• Manufacture (manufacturing systems)
• Delivery (tracking systems)
• Supply Chain Management

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The eCommerce Process

• Post-sale events
• Customer Service and Help Facilities
• Reorder, restock
• Accounting
• Transaction processing
• Interoperability between online and legacy
  systems
• Data analysis
• Data Mining

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eCommerce Technology

• Infrastructure Electronic payments
• Wireless technologies Content delivery
• Search engines Intelligent agents
• Access security Data mining
• Data interchange Mass personalization
• Cryptographic security

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E-Commerce Infrastructure

• What worldwide structure is required to support
  e-Commerce?
• Network
• Machines
• Protocols
• Security
• Payment

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How Does an Optical Fiber Transmit Light?

• Suppose you want to shine a flashlight beam down
  a long, straight hallway.
• Just point the beam straight down the hallway --
  light travels in straight lines, so it is no
  problem.
• What if the hallway has a bend in it? You could
  place a mirror at the bend to reflect the light
  beam around the corner. What if the hallway was
  very winding with multiple bends? You might line
  the walls with mirrors and angle the beam so that
  it bounces from side-to-side all along the
  hallway. This is exactly what happens in an
  optical fiber.

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Client/Server Architecture

• Fundamental Internet structure
• Client requests service server provides it
• Data exchanged only through real-time messages
• Server may become a client to a different server

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Routers
NORTEL
3COM
CISCO
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Router Tables
Designed by GoldWire Technology
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Internet Server

• The server is the heart of the technical
  architecture, receiving requests from Internet
  users, retrieving the information locally or from
  networked devices and replying.
• Selection and sizing of this machine is critical
  task, typically presenting a tradeoff between
  performance and cost.

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Web Server
Web server - A Web server is a piece of computer
software that can respond to a browser's request
for a page, and deliver the page to the Web
browser through the Internet. You can think of
a Web server as an apartment complex, with each
apartment housing someone's Web page. In order
to store your page in the complex, you need to
pay rent on the space. Pages that live in this
complex can be displayed to and viewed by anyone
all over the world. Your landlord is called
your host, and your rent is usually called your
hosting charge. Every day, there are millions
of Web servers delivering pages to the browsers
of tens of millions of people through the network
we call the Internet.
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UNIX v.s. NT

• The two basic options are
• UNIX based platforms(IBM, Sun, HP)
• Microsoft NT based, Intel platforms
• MS products generally cost less than UNIX
  platforms.
• UNIX is a more mature OS than NT. As a result it
  delivers a better performance for the same
  hardware configuration.
• UNIX administration, requires more complex
  skills.
• If you dont have in-house UNIX expertise,
  investing in an UNIX based server may require a
  large maintenance cost.

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Server Workflow
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Client / Server

• In general, all of the machines on the Internet
  can be categorized
• as two types
• Server
• Clients
• Those machines that provide services (like Web
  servers or FTP servers) to other machines are
  servers.
• And the machines that are used to connect to
  those services are clients.
• When you connect to Yahoo at www.yahoo.com to
  read a page, Yahoo is providing a machine
  (probably a cluster of very large machines), for
  use on the Internet, to service your request.
  Yahoo is providing a server.
• Your machine, on the other hand, is probably
  providing no services to anyone else on the
  Internet. Therefore it is a user machine, also
  known as a client.
• It is possible and common for a machine to be
  both a server and a client, but for our purposes
  here you can think of most machines as one or the
  other

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Client / Server

• A server machine may provide one or more services
  on the Internet.
• For example, a server machine might have software
  running on it that allows it to act as a Web
  server, an e-mail server and an FTP server.
• Clients that come to a server machine do so with
  a specific intent, so clients direct their
  requests to a specific software server running on
  the overall server machine.
• For example, if you are running a Web browser on
  your machine, it will most likely want to talk to
  the Web server on the server machine.
• Your e-mail application will talk to the e-mail
  server, and so on...

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Understanding a simple EmailServer

• The simplest possible e-mail server might look
  like this
• It would have a list of e-mail accounts,
• with one account for each person who can receive
  e-mail on the server.
• My account name bozdogan, John Smith's might be
  jsmith, and so on.
• It would have a text file for each account in the
  list.
• So the server would have a text file in its
  directory named bozdogan.TXT, another named
  JSMITH.TXT, and so on.
• When someone wants to send me a message, the
  person composes a text message (Barbaros, Can we
  have lunch Monday? John") in an e-mail client,
  and indicates that the message should go to
  bozdogan.
• When the person presses the Send button, the
  e-mail client would attach to the e-mail server
  and pass to the server the name of the recipient
  (bozdogan), the name of the sender (jsmith) and
  the body of the message.
• The server would format those pieces of
  information and append them to the bottom of the
  MBRAIN.TXT file. The entry in the file might look
  like this
• From jsmith
• To mbrain Marshall,
• Can we have lunch Monday? John

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Email

• There are several other pieces of information
  that the server might save into the file,
• The time and date of receipt and a subject line,
  but overall you can see that this is an extremely
  simple process!
• As other people send mail to bozdogan, the server
  would simply append those messages to the bottom
  of the file in the order that they arrive. The
  text file would accumulate a series of five or 10
  messages, and eventually I would log in to read
  them.
• When I want to look at my e-mail, my e-mail
  client would connect to the server machine. In
  the simplest possible system it would
• Ask the server to send a copy of the bozdogan.TXT
  file.
• Ask the server to erase and reset the
  bozdogan.TXT file.
• Save the bozdogan.TXT file on my local machine.
• Parse the file into the separate messages (using
  the word "From" as the separator).
• Show me all of the message headers in a list.
• When I double-click on a message header, it would
  find that message in the text file and show me
  its body.
• You have to admit that this is a VERY simple
  system. Surprisingly, the real e-mail system that
  you use every day is not much more complicated
  than this!

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Understanding the Real Email System

• For the vast majority of people right now, the
  real e-mail system consists of two different
  servers running on a server machine.
• One is called the SMTP Server, where SMTP stands
  for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The SMTP
  server handles outgoing mail.
• The other is a POP3 Server, where POP stands for
  Post Office Protocol.
• The POP3 server handles incoming mail.
• The SMTP server listens on well-known port number
  25, while POP3 listens on port 110

A typical Email Server looks like this
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Understanding SMTP

• Whenever you send a piece of e-mail, your e-mail
  client interacts with the SMTP server to do the
  sending.
• The SMTP server on your host may have
  conversations with other SMTP servers to actually
  deliver the e-mail.

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Understanding SMTP

• I sent an email using outlook express to Johnny
• Outlook Express connects to the SMTP server at
  mail.mercynet.edu using port 25.
• Outlook Express has a conversation with the SMTP
  server. Outlook express tells the SMTP server the
  address of the sender and the address of the
  recipient, as well as the body of the message.
• The SMTP server takes the "TO" address (for
  example, jsmith_at_mindspring.com) and breaks it
  into two parts 1) the recipient name (jsmith)
  and 2) the domain name (mindspring.com). Since
  the recipient is at another domain, SMTP needs to
  communicate with that domain.
• The SMTP server has a conversation with a Domain
  Name Server and says, "Can you give me the IP
  address of the SMTP server for mindspring.com?"
  The DNS replies with the one or more IP addresses
  for the SMTP server(s) that Mindspring operates.
• The SMTP server at mercynet.edu connects with the
  SMTP server at Mindspring using port 25. It has
  the same simple text conversation that my e-mail
  client had with the SMTP server for Mercynet.edu,
  and gives the message to the Mindspring server.
  The Mindspring server recognizes that the domain
  name for jsmith is at Mindspring, so it hands the
  message to Mindspring's POP3 server, which puts
  the message in jsmith's mailbox.

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SMTP

• The actual conversation that an e-mail client has
  with an SMTP server is incredibly simple and
  human readable. It is specified in public
  documents called Requests For Comments (RFC) (see
  the links section) and a typical conversation
  might look something like this
• helo test
• 250 mx1.mindspring.com Hello abc.sample.com
• 220.57.69.37, pleased to meet you
• mail from test_at_sample.com
• 250 2.1.0 test_at_sample.com... Sender ok
• rcpt to jsmith_at_mindspring.com
• 250 2.1.5 jsmith... Recipient ok data
• 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
• from test_at_sample.com tojsmith_at_mindspring.com
  subject testing John, I am testing... .
• 250 2.0.0 e1NMajH24604 Message accepted for
  delivery
• quit
• 221 2.0.0 mx1.mindspring.com closing connection
• Connection closed by foreign host.
• What the e-mail client says is in red, and what
  the SMTP server replies with is in green. The
  e-mail client introduces itself, indicates the
  from and to addresses, delivers the body of the
  message and then quits.

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Domain Name Servers

• If you spend any time on the Internet sending
  email or browsing the web, then you use Domain
  Name Servers without even realizing it.
• Domain Name Servers, or DNS, are an incredibly
  important but completely hidden part of the
  Internet, and they are fascinating!
• The DNS system forms one of the largest and most
  active distributed databases on the planet, and
  without DNS the Internet would shut down very
  quickly.

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DNS Resolution
http//www.stamey.nu/DNS/DNSHowItWorks.asp
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The Basic Idea

• For example, the machine that humans refer to as
  www.mercynet.edu has an IP address of
  216.27.61.137. Every time you use a domain name,
  you use the Internet's domain name servers (DNS)
  to translate the human-readable domain name into
  the machine-readable IP address.
• During a day of browsing and emailing, you might
  access the domain name servers hundreds of times!

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Web Architecture
How are web sites constructed?
TIER 1
TIER 2 Server
TIER 3 Applications
TIER 4 Database
SOURCE INTERSHOP
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Firewall

• The firewall is typically a hardware/software
  combination that controls the traffic between
  your internal network and the public internet.
• Although a firewall can be directly incorporated
  into an Internet server, it is most commonly a
  specialized computer.
• The configuration is a challenging task and
  should be performed by experts.

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Firewall
As you can see all inbound and outbound Internet
traffic must pass through the firewall
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eCommerce Data Exchange Needs
Catalogs
Quotations
RFQs
Ship Notices
Purchase Orders
Letters of Credit
Electronic Payments
Bills of Lading
Invoices
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Data Interchange

• How can sites exchange information without prior
  agreement?
• What do the data fields mean? price, extended
  price, unit price, prix, ????, t?µ?, ?, XAC12
• XML Extensible Markup Language
• How can the content be separated from form
  (visual appearance)?
• How can data formats and structures be
  communicated?
• What does the hex string 65436F6D6D65726365
  mean?
• ASN.1, Basic Encoding Rules (BER)

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Invoice Example
ltUnitPricegt6.05lt/UnitPricegt
SOURCE PROF. JEROME YEN
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How to Make Data Portable

• Tell what the data means
• Tell how the data is structured
• Tell how it should look
• BUT DO THESE SEPARATELY. MIXING IS BAD
• The meaning -- XML
• The structure -- DTD (document type definition)
• The formatting -- XSL (Extensible style sheet)
• Example XML catalog structure

SO COMPUTERS CAN UNDERSTAND IT
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XML at a glance
Well Formed Document ltBookgt ltAuthorgtGeorge
Soroslt/Authorgt ltTitlegtThe Crisis of Global
Capitalismlt/Titlegt ltYeargt1998lt/Yeargt
ltPublgtPublic Affairslt/Publgt
ltPricegt26.00lt/Pricegt ltISBNgt1-891620-27-4lt/ISB
Ngt lt/Bookgt
DTD Document Type Definition lt?xml
version"1.0"gt lt!DOCTYPE Book lt!ELEMENT Book
(Author, Title, Year, Publ, Price, ISBN)gt gt
SOURCE PROF. JEROME YEN
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XML Recipe Example

• lt?xml version"1.0"?gtltRecipegt ltNamegtApple
  Pielt/Namegt ltIngredientsgt ltIngredientgt ltQty
  unitpintgt1lt/Qtygt ltItemgtmilklt/Itemgt lt/Ingredi
  entgt ltIngredientgt ltQty uniteachgt10lt/Qtygt
  ltItemgtappleslt/Itemgt lt/Ingredientgt lt/Ingredients
  gt ltInstructionsgt ltStepgtPeel the
  appleslt/Stepgt ltStepgtPour the milk into a
  10-inch saucepanlt/Stepgt lt!-- And so on...
  --gt lt/Instructionsgtlt/Recipegt

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Electronic Payment Systems

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Electronic Payments

• Forms of money
• token (cash), notational (bank account), hybrid
  (check)
• Money does not move on the Internet
• Credit-card transactions
• Secure protocols SSL, SET
• Automated clearing and settlement systems
• Smart cards
• Electronic cash, digital wallets
• Micropayments
• Electronic delivery of goods
• Electronic bill presentment and payment
• BlueGill

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Intelligent Agents

• Programs to perform tasks on your behalf
• Metasearchers, shopping bots, news agents, stock
  agents, auction bots, bank bots
• How to make agents intelligent
• Rule-based systems
• Knowledge representation
• Agents that learn
• Inductive inference
• Negotiation agents
• Avatars (characters in human form)

SYLVIE from VPERSON
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Shopping Agents
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Data Mining

• Extracting previously unknown relationships from
  large datasets
• Discovery of patterns
• Predicting the future
• past behavior best predictor of future purchasing
• Market basket analysis
• diapers/beer

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Data Mining Tools

• Visualization (seeing the data) Table Lens
• Predictive Modeling
• Database Segmentation
• Classify the users
• Link Analysis
• Associations discovery
• Neural networks
• Systems that learn from data
• Deviation Detection
• Are any of the data unusual? Fraud detection

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Data Mining

• Extracting previously unknown relationships from
  large datasets
• discover trends, relationships, dependencies
• make predictions
• target customers
• In eCommerce, data comes from
• customers themselves
• cookies
• external databases
• data matching
• DoubleClick, etc.
• Digital rights management tools (what we read and
  how much)
• library records

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Taxonomy of Data Mining Methods
Data Mining Methods
Predictive Modeling
Database Segmentation
Link Analysis
Text Mining
Deviation Detection
Semantic Maps

• Decision Trees
• Neural Networks
• Naive Bayesian
• Branching criteria

• Clustering
• K-Means

Rule Associa tion
Visualization
SOURCE WELGE REINCKE, NCSA
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Predictive Modeling

• Objective use data about the past to predict
  future behavior
• Sample problems
• Will this (new) customer pay his bill on time?
  (classification)
• What will the Dow-Jones Industrial Average be on
  October 15? (prediction)
• Technique supervised learning
• decision trees
• neural networks
• naive Bayesian

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Mass Personalization

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Mass Personalization

• Treating each user as an individual
• key is INFORMATION
• How to acquire and store information about
  customers
• Cookies
• Question and response
• Clickstream analysis
• External databases.
• How to use information effectively and instantly
• Personalization technology

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Outline

• What is personalization?
• Personalization is based on data
• How can data about people be acquired?
• From people themselves
• From their clickstream
• From outside data sources
• How can data be used
• To improve the customers experience?
• To help the company?

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What is Personalization?

• Addressing customers by name and remembering
  their preferences
• Showing customers specific content based on who
  they are and their past behavior
• Empowering the customer. Examples Lands End,
  llbean
• Product tailoring. Example dell.com
• Connecting to a human being when necessary.
  CallMe
• Adeptra TeleBanner
• Allowing visitors to customize a site for their
  specific purposes
• Users are 20-25 more likely to return to a site
  that they tailored (Jupiter Communications, Inc.)

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Need For Personalization

• In the real-world
• Customer relationship is mediated by people
• Personalization is critical PEOPLE are PEOPLE
• On the Web
• Too many customers too few employees
• Orders are entered by machine follow-up is by
  machine
• Customer relationship is mediated by machines
• Personalization is critical
• Uniqueness (everyone is different)
• Efficiency (everyone has limited time)

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Store Visitors in the Real World

• Casual store visitor
• no intention of buying
• Prospecting store visitor
• wants to buy, maybe not here
• Add, marketing target
• in store because of ad or promotion
• Customer
• buys something
• pays cash
• uses a credit card
• uses a store charge card

DATA COLLECTED ONLY IF VISITOR BUYS SOMETHING
IDENTITY UNKNOWN PRODUCT/TIME KNOWN
IDENTITY KNOWN
IDENTITY, JOB, INCOME KNOWN
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Store Visitors in Cyberspace

• Casual site visitor
• no intention of buying
• Prospecting site visitor
• wants to buy, maybe not here
• Add, marketing target
• in store because of ad or promotion
• Customer
• buys something
• pays cash
• uses a credit card
• uses a store charge card

CAN EASILY DETECT THE DIFFERENCE
WE KNOW HOW HE GOT HERE AND WHAT HE WANTS TO BUY
WE HAVE HIS WHOLE FILE WE KNOW WHAT OTHER
PEOPLE LIKE HIM ARE BUYING
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Click Behavior
CASUAL VISITOR
STORE HOME PAGE
OFFICEPRODUCTS
SPORTING GOODS
HOUSEWARES
PRESENTATION ITEMS
HUNTING
GOLF
KITCHEN
LASER POINTERS
CLUBS
RIFLES
TOASTERS
LASER 1
LASER 2
LASER 3
CALLAWAY
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Click Behavior
PROSPECTING VISITOR
STORE HOME PAGE
OFFICEPRODUCTS
SPORTING GOODS
HOUSEWARES
PRESENTATION ITEMS
HUNTING
GOLF
KITCHEN
LASER POINTERS
CLUBS
RIFLES
TOASTERS
LASER 1
LASER 2
LASER 3
CALLAWAY