Current Consumer Behaviour toward the World Wide Web - Example

Management E-Commerce Table of Contents Introduction 3 Introduction of B2B E-commerce 3 Introduction of B2C E-commerce 5 Opportunities of E-commerce strategy 7 Challenges of E-commerce strategy 8 Current consumer behaviour toward World Wide Web 9 Conclusion 10 Reference List 11 Introduction The study is based on the understanding of different theory and strategies of ecommerce in the current business situation. In the current scenario of competitive market, a huge number of businesses are adopting e-commerce strategies to increase their visibility and customer database (Daniel and Grimshaw, 2002). This study is mainly focused towards the ecommerce model of Coventry City Books retailer who is following the traditional procedures to sale their products to the consumers. As an ecommerce consultant, I am authorized to create a report which will introduce the retailer to the opportunities and limitations of ecommerce strategy. The report has been created to enhance the knowledge of the management about existing business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) e-commerce model. It is also designed to assist retailers understand the behaviour and preference of customers toward the usage of social media and social networking. Therefore, it is obvious to say that retailers will be benefitted if they devise their own e-commerce strategy as it will certainly strengthen their market position. Introduction of B2B E-commerce E-commerce or electronic commerce is a type of business model which enables any organisation or individuals to conduct their business operations through electronic network. Almost all kind of goods can be offered to the customer through e-commerce technology such as books, apparel, music, plane tickets and financial service (Manzoor, 2010). Business to Business ecommerce is one of the well known e-commerce business taking place in different organisations across the globe. B2B e-commerce can be described as the electronic transaction procedure within businesses through internet, private network, intranet or extranets. In any B2B market segment the buyers as well as the sellers are some business entity. The B2B ecommerce procedure enable organisation to form strong relationship with their reseller, distributors and suppliers. Major items which use B2B e-commerce are electronics, motor vehicles, office products, petrochemicals, paper, food etc (Chandrasekar Subramaniam, 2002). There are generally four types of architectural model for B2B e-commerce such as- Supplier-oriented: In case of this architectural model, suppliers generally provide common marketplace to the buyers such as business entities and individual customers. This kind of suppliers mainly offers e-stores to promote their products (Fensel, et. al, 2001). Buyers Buyer oriented: In case of this type of B2B e-commerce model, buyers mainly possess their own e-market. These buyers prefer to open a biding site where they invite the suppliers to bid for their products (Kaplan and Sawhney, 2000). Suppliers Intermediary oriented: In case of intermediary oriented marketplace, generally, any intermediary company creates a market segment where different businesses can deal with each other (Lucking-Reiley and Spulber, 2001). Buyers Sellers The management of Coventry City Books need to utilize the supplier oriented B2B e-commerce model to attract different business entities to buy their products in bulk. The retailer must invest on creating a e-store to attract school, colleges, other educational institutes and NGOs to buy bulk amount of books of different courses. Introduction of B2C E-commerce B2C e-commerce environment has been used by companies to sell their products to the consumers through business websites. B2C e-commerce model provides the facility of direct product and services transaction between different business entities and consumers. These kind of e-commerce online shops provide open access to all their visitors. There is no need for a customer to log in or create an account for any product or service related enquiry (Singh, 2002). In B2C e-commerce model, customers visits the website of the organisation, selects their preferable products or services and places an order for their selected goods or services through online booking procedure. After the accepting the order, organisation dispatches the goods to the customers (Lin, 2007). Any B2C model requires heavy advertising to attract all the potential customers, high investment for different hardware and software to create their own ecommerce facility and support of efficient customer care services (Singh, 2002). Suppliers Order processing Orders General structure of B2C e-commerce The B2C e-commerce model involves different steps for consumer shopping procedure. These steps includes- Determination of the requirement of products. Searching all the available websites for the best suitable product. Comparing all the items in terms of price and time of delivery. Placing order. Receiving the delivered item. Consulting the after sale services for any service support. Return of the product if it is damaged or the customer is not satisfied (Lin, 2007). Coventry City Books retailer needs to follow some simple rules to successfully execute a B2C e-commerce store, such as- The management of the retail business need to create an enjoyable and hassle free online purchasing procedure for their consumers so that they would like to spend their time on exploring the products. They also need to update their website on a regular basis. The management needs to provide some attractive offers to attract maximum customers towards their e-store. They should provide a safe and secure transaction procedure to their consumers. Now a day’s individual buyers prefer those websites which are offering a convenient smartphone or tablet application. It helps them to access the e-stores from any part of the world. The retailer must develop their mobile website for the ease of their potential customers. Opportunities of E-commerce strategy Adopting e-commerce strategies can assist an organisation to expand their business across the nation and increase their competitive advantage in the global market (Daniel and Grimshaw, 2002). Properly developed and implemented e-commerce strategy can provide a number of opportunities to the Coventry City Books retailer. These advantages includes- The physical store of the retailer restricts its global presence. With the help of e-commerce website the retailer can distribute their products and services to different parts of the world. Moreover their involvement in e-commerce through mobile devices will assist them to dissolve all the remaining geographical areas (National Board of Trade, 2012). The traditional physical retailing system involves rigorous branding and relationship building procedure. B2C e-commerce facility will not only improve their approaches towards the branding and customer relationship building, it will also help the retailer to drive the consumer traffic from different search engines (National Board of Trade, 2012). This will help the business to increase their visibility to new potential customers. E-commerce strategy will help the retailer to reduce their cost of distribution and advertising. The retailer can utilize pay-per-click, social media and social networking facilities to minimize the advertisement cost. The automated facility for checkout, payment, billing and inventory management will assist the organisation to reduce their manpower cost (National Board of Trade, 2012). They can utilise a part of this savings of their cost to provide lucrative deals and discounts to their consumers. The distance and travelling nuisances are one of the leading reasons to distract various customers. Ecommerce allows the consumers search the entire stock of the store through few mouse clicks (Niranjanamurthy and Kavyashree, 2013). This facility will reduce the travelling inconvenience of their potential customers. E-commerce facility will assist the retailer to provide round the clock services to their customers. This system will certainly boost the sales margin of the retail house. E-commerce strategies will assist the retailer to simplify their day to day operations. It will also influence the company to provide faster and efficient services to their B2B customers who are looking for bulk purchasing. E-commerce website will enable the retailer to impart all the required information to their customers. This facility strengthens the relation between the consumer and the business without incurring any additional cost. Challenges of E-commerce strategy The retailer needs to be aware of all the possible limitations of the e-commerce strategy. The study of the disadvantages will enable them to understand different obstacle and therefore, plan their strategy efficiently. The limitation of e-commerce strategies includes- In the current market scenario a number of companies are starting their own e-commerce facility. It is increasing the competition within different retailers (Niranjanamurthy and Kavyashree, 2013). E-commerce facility helps the consumers to easily compare the price and discounts provided by different retailers (National Board of Trade, 2012). Therefore, it increases the chances of customer switch towards other retailer. Some consumers are reluctant to use the e-commerce sites as it requires their personal and financial details. Physical retailing procedure helps the retailer to provide a personal touch to their customers. The efficient sales persons of book stores assist the consumers to find out their requirement by analysing their personality and demand (Niranjanamurthy and Kavyashree, 2013). The chances of damage are very high in case of book delivery processes. Return of the damaged goods can reduce the profit margin of the retailer. Cyber thefts and problems in transaction procedure can leads to the loss of potential customers to the organisation. It can also hamper the reputation of the brand (Niranjanamurthy and Kavyashree, 2013). Delay in the delivery process in case of bulk purchasing is very common in case of business to business product transaction. There is a chance of losing potential customers due to delay in the delivery process (Niranjanamurthy and Kavyashree, 2013). E-commerce procedures are evolving as per the changes in technologies. A number of retailers have already adopted this facility to attract wide range of customers (National Board of Trade, 2012). As a new comer in the e-commerce market, the management needs to develop a lot of facilities. It may incur the retailer some additional cost to set up an e-commerce website and to update it as per the demand of the market. Current consumer behaviour toward World Wide Web To develop an e-commerce strategy the retailers need to understand the behaviour of the consumers towards their present business strategy. They also need to analyze the behaviour of potential consumers towards the facilities of online marketing. Consumers now days prefer the online purchasing procedure due to convenience, time and money saving, openness to experiment and availability of large number of options (Overby and Lee, 2006). Due to the busy life style, most of the consumers are unable to find out time to explore brick and mortar stores. Therefore, they prefer to use different online stores and e-commerce facilities to easily search their required products. Online book stores provide a small synopsis of the books along with all the descriptions such as publishers, date, writers and availability (Singh, 2002). Consumers prefer to get to know the product better before purchasing. These details further help them to gather all the information required. To satisfy the need of the consumers the retailer need to utilize different social media and social commerce procedure. Besides, it also needs to update their in-store experience with some digital book reading facilities. Their collaboration with different social media sites will provide help to increase their visibility within the population. The increased popularity of social media within a wide range of age group will help them to attract customers from different age categories. Their promotional activities over the social media will enable them to reach to the consumers from the different geographical locations. It will assist them to provide the all their consumers with the books of their own choices. The properly developed and well-designed website can simplify the searching procedure of the consumers. Therefore, it can save their time to search for their requirement. It can also satisfy the overseas consumers by providing them books of different languages. It will minimize the requirement of travel for the consumers. The e-commerce model will assist the retailer to provide deals and discounts to their consumers. It can attract the local schools, colleges and institutes by providing huge discount on bulk purchases. Their mobile websites will assist them to influence the sales within travellers and those customers who prefer to use e-books. Conclusion The study has evaluated the requirement of the e-commerce procedure to the Coventry City Books retailers. The report has described all the important theories and models of B2B and B2C e-commerce procedure to clear the understanding of the management of the retailer. It has also detailed all the opportunities and limitation of e-commerce and social media usage for the ease of the strategic decision. Therefore, the report has discussed consumer behaviour and the ways to satisfy their requirement through social media and social commerce. Reference List Chandrasekar Subramaniam, M. J. S. 2002. A study of the value and impact of B2B e-commerce: the case of web-based procurement. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 6(4), pp. 19-40. Daniel, E. M. and Grimshaw, D. J., 2002. An exploratory comparison of electronic commerce adoption in large and small enterprises. Journal of Information Technology, 17(3), pp. 133-147. Fensel, D., Ding, Y., Omelayenko, B., Schulten, E., Botquin, G., Brown, M. and Flett, A., 2001. Product data integration in B2B e-commerce. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 16(4), pp. 54-59. Kaplan, S. and Sawhney, M., 2000. B2B E-Commerce hubs: towards a taxonomy of business models. Harvard Business Review, 79(3), pp. 97-100. Lin, H. F., 2007. The impact of website quality dimensions on customer satisfaction in the B2C e-commerce context. Total Quality Management and Business Excellence, 18(4), pp. 363-378. Lucking-Reiley, D. and Spulber, D. F., 2001. Business-to-business electronic commerce. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15(1), pp. 55-68. Manzoor, A., 2010. E-Commerce: An introduction. Germany: Lambert academic publishing. National Board of Trade, 2012. E-commerce – New Opportunities, New Barriers. [pdf] Kommerskollegium. Available at [Accessed 2 February 2015]. Niranjanamurthy, M. and Kavyashree, N., 2013. Analysis of E-Commerce and M-Commerce: Advantages, Limitations and Security issues. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(6), pp. 2360-2370. Overby and Lee, 2006. The effects of utilitarian and hedonic online shopping value on consumer preference and intentions. Journal of Business Research, 59(10), pp. 1160-1166. Singh, M., 2002. E-services and their role in B2C e-commerce. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, 12(6), pp. 434-446. Read More