E-COMMERCE

E-commerce

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION3

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM3

SIGN POSTING4

RESEARCH5

THEORETICAL UNDER-PINNING6

ANALYSES7

FINDINGS9

CONCLUSION11

STATE THE STAND11

RECOMMENDATIONS13

REFERENCES14

E-commerce

Introduction

Offline businesses which offer value-added-services (e. g. handling of complaints, delivery time) are necessary, as online ones are rather too easy to imitate by competitors to be a critical issue. Offline businesses do consist at least partially on items or processes which are not available online. For example, graphical features on websites or small games are very easy to imitate: only a small one-time investment is required and no new idea need be found. (Chaudhury 2002:45-50)

E-Commerce (EC) is often reduced to webshops, but this is only a small part of the whole picture of E-Economy . This singular focus leads to ignoring other, also important, aspects like e. g. the partners of communication. (Miller 2002: 15-50)

Brief description of problem

Usually only a rather small effort in programming (without need for special knowledge) is needed, the implementation cannot be kept secret (often even the source-code is available, e. g. for scripts) and observation is possible indefinitely at no cost. If, on the other hand, more elaborate and new technology is used (which is harder to imitate), users will first of all not be familiar with it. (Miller 2002: 15-50) Moreover this usually requires installing additional software and most people are reluctant to do this. Therefore online services can hardly be used as a competitive advantage, as they can be fast and easily copied by competitors. Therefore a race for more and better services/ elements would start. But an increase in updates required can hardly be in the interest of all parties: the cyberspace is dynamic enough, we need not make changes even more rapid. Another important aspect to take note of is, that online services are by definition only useful for online customers: conventional customers do not gain anything from it. (Chaudhury 2002:45-50)

Sign posting

From a business perspective it is therefore better to provide services, from which both online and offline customers can profit, as the investment is distributed amongst more persons. However, especially for acquiring new customers, a certain amount of online services might be needed. But even then the focus should be on services which aid customers more than prospective buyers. An example for this is offering the possibility of re-ordering: business customers often need “the same I ordered last month, with some modifications”. (Graham 2008: 771-780) This service cannot be imitated by competitors and is therefore highly valuable, although an online service. In this type of communication currently an important point is missing: psychological factors for buying are mostly ignored. This limits the products and services to be sold to those, which are bought rationally. While this might still be an important part, many offers are missing. It is therefore necessary to improve this type of communication to include more than just the statistics of the products. This requires an understanding for the feelings of the customers, in contrast to their thoughts. Therefore an emotional model of customers is required for selling these ...