conclusion

Reflection

While attending this course has provided me with a great knowledge and introduced me with new concepts and approaches surely, I will be using in my future business.

While my posts are not complete in providing the overall knowledge of E-Business or E-Commerce but it will be giving a basic knowledge of the subject and also it reminds me to learn more and implement my new knowledge and skills in business.

Before attending this course I never knew there was some thing like second life which is a virtual world and reflection of yours in virtual life it’s amazing to see yourself in another world.

The course has provided me with good learning and shown me the new insights of predominantly growing side of E-Business and E-Commerce. I even had started doing small business on eBay and this would not have possible if I was not in this class.

10. E – Market Research

In our last session, we have seen web-advertising in order to start web-advertising we need to have knowledge about the market and that knowledge can be obtained by market research.

Market research includes, gathering information about: industry, products, pricing, competition, products and consumer purchasing behaviour. Initially, market research was used for Economics purpose but due to increase in competition and to enable wide area marketing different aspects of market research is being used.

The main focus of market research for E-Commerce is to focus on consumer purchasing behaviour and turn browsers into buyers. The market research includes understanding purchase patterns for individuals and groups, factors that encourage online purchasing, how individuals do navigate and the optimal web design which promotes sales or encourages consumers to purchase.

Web-based surveys, online focus groups, hearing directly from customers, customer’s scenarios and tracking customers movements are all different methods of online market research.

• Web-Based surveys: The survey is based on feedbacks from website users; the focus here is to find qualities and drawbacks of website in order to promote sales in an efficient way.
• Online focus groups: The organisations gets connected with different groups online mainly executives at regular intervals to find out there views and opinions for sales improvement.
• Hearing directly from customers: The researcher establishes e-bulletins for visitors to comment on products and services and also provides to see others comments. This is mainly done in the form of forums or in chartrooms.
• Customer scenarios: Getting information from customers by giving different options in order to find their preferences for future product developments.
• Tracking customer’s movements: This method uses the “tracking cookies” which observes the movements of customers (from which website the customer is coming and to which website is he going).

Internet market research methods are much faster, efficient, geographically diverse and most importantly much cheaper compared to other methods, but there are some limitations which hinder its effectiveness like too much data available which may lead to time consumption for organising, editing and summarising. Online market research lacks eye contact which may not recognise important data, difficult to judge the accuracy of data, equipment failure may lead to lost data and ethical issues relating to web tracking.

The analysis of click stream data is an important aspect of online market research as it helps to judge and understand the consumer purchasing patterns, products of interest and competitors. By analysing click steam data we will be able to know:

• What goods did the customers has either examined or purchased?
• What other items did customers looked at and purchased?
• Which ads and promotions were effective and which are not?
• Which ads generated lot of attention but few sales?
• Whether certain products are too hard to find or to expensive?

By analysing the click steam data and following different and suitable market research methods it is much easier to make market decision which improve sales and performance of the organisation.

Reflective report

In the past market research was not given much importance and it was used purely for economics purpose, but due to increase in competition and issue of market fragmentation/segmentation forced business researchers to know more about consumers and their purchasing patterns. The increase in disposable income since late 1980’s and changes in life styles has motivated researchers to gather more and more information about consumers and thus due to these reasons now a days market research is given more importance.

After attending this class it was clear to me that market research and its new techniques plays an important role indecision making and also it is clear that they help to provide a valuable information on which decision are based. Market research can be used in many stages of business developments like entering a new market, introducing a new products or even changing the product or business line. It is evident that market research has many benefits but using E-Market research alone is not adviseable because it loses the personal contact with consumers and may lose some valuable information or may lose consumers who do not use internet.

It is clear that with the profound increase in internet users E-Market research has a valuable part in future business.

9. E-Marketing/Web Advertising

Hay, friends do you know that a normal person views at around 3000 advertisements a day. It’s amazing to know how companies try to influence consumers purchasing decisions.

Due to exposure to this high number of ads consumers have become passive to respond to these ads as a result now more and more companies are trying to invest in web advertising.

If we look at traditional advertising like newspapers, televisions are very impersonal, one-way and leaves consumers in a passive position, where as Telemarketing and direct mail ads are more personalised but slow, expensive and hardly any one-one interaction on the other hand internet has introduced the concept of interactive marketing- besides the two way communication and email capabilities vendors can also target specific groups or individuals to promote their sales.

It is fascinating to know that through web advertising vendors can track how many consumers are viewing the ad and how much time is being spent on each ad which helps them to target specific consumers and the other benefit of web advertising is that its not regulated like TV’s or newspaper’s. Recent trend of internet enabled mobile phones helps vendors to advertise even when consumers are on a go or at their office desks.

While more and more companies are placing there ads in internet in form of banner ads, users have become immune to banners and now they simply don not notice them. It is also found through research that click ratio of banner ads has been decreased from 3% in 1990’s to 0.08% in 2004, this drastic fall in viewers has lead vendors to come up with alternative methods of web advertising.

Recent trends show that vendors are using alternative methods of advertising like

• Banner swapping/Exchange: Firms exchange banners with other firms and display on internet.
• Advertising in chat Rooms: vendors frequently sponsor chat rooms and a chat vendor does advertising (ex. Talkcity.com)
• Advertising in newsletters: Ecommerce time (ecommercetimes.com) solicits ads from companies.
• Posting press releases online done by Southwest Airlines.
• Associated ad Display: Displaying the related products or consumers related tastes associated with that product (ex. Amazon.com “customers who brought this book also brought these books”).
• Affiliate Marketing: the revenue model by which an organisation refers consumers to the selling company’s website (ex. Easyjet for hotels).
• Viral Marketing: A word of mouth marketing in which consumers promote services by telling others (ex. Google “recommend a friend”).
• Webcasting: A free internet news service that broadcasts personalised news and information as well as e-seminars.

Apart from the new approaches followed by vendors it is also noticed that most consumers visit websites either to collect information or an intention to buy the product or services due to this reason E- Marketing/Web Advertising works very well.

Reflective report

Earlier I knew that ads are something which is difficult to get away with watching TV, listening to radio or browsing the internet. It is fact that as per the research that a normal individual is exposed to more or less 3000 ads a day, but I never knew that what all different types of strategies goes into preparing those ads for customers on internet.

The explosive growth of Internet technologies has had a major impact on the marketing function for example; interactive marketing is based on using the Internet, intranets, and extranets to establish two-way interaction between a business and its customers or potential customers. The goal of interactive marketing is to enable a company to profitably use those networks to attract and keep customers who will become partners with the business in creating, purchasing, and improving products and services.

I realised that internet made possible to target customers segments more accurately and wider population with low cost. While strategies like interactive advertising gives consumer a chance to be participative and communicate its ideas and beliefs because of which this web advertising helps organisations to promote its sales. It is clear that web Advertising is going to be the futures very important source of advertising because of its strengths and wider scope to reach larger populations.

8. Easyjet case study

Hay friends, let try something new this time instead of theory let look at practical issues related to internet. Today we will have a look at easyjet case study.

The evolution of easyjet’s online revenue contribution

As per the case study followed in class the success of easy jet was not only because of the cheaper flight cost but also the adaptation and flexible thinking of its founder Haji-Ioannou.

In early 1990’s the easy jet founder Haji-Ioannu use to think that “internet is of no use and does not serve any thing to any one”. But that was not the case in 1999 when easy jet made record sales of 135,000 seats online which accounted to 30% of total sales. By applying strategic decision in March 2000 easyjet increased its online discount to £2.50 for a single trip and as a result by September 2000 internet sale reached 85% of total sales, by 2003 internet sales was over 90% of total sales.

When a basic trail site was launched, the founder kept a close eye on how popular the site and booking phone line was (he kept a separate phone number on site to trace the number of users). A steady rise in the number of calls occurred as a result easyjet call centre eventually ran out of space to handle its growth. The founder had two options either establish a new call centre wroth of £10 million or start sales online, then easyjet founder decided to start its sales online. The transformation was easy because the traditional channel used was 100% phone booking and there was no potential channel conflict as any intermediates or travel agents were involved. Thus easy jet successfully started its online sales in 1998 and was quite successful.

• For promoting its brand easyjet frequently advertised its internet only promotions in news paper. The easyjet website acted as a PR tools for its founder to promote sales.
• Easyjet even introduced easyEverything a chin of 400 seat capacity internet café originally offering access at £1 an hour and people can access easyjet website for free while using this internet café.
• EasyRentacar a low cost car rental business offering car at £9 a day this was possible because of offering a single type car and being internet only business.

At present easyjet website has proved that with proper communication channel it easy to promote sales and increase the profits. As per the exercise undertaken in class it is noted that easyjet website has 18 languages options. It is also noted that easyjet provides a wide variety of offers following the present trends. Apart from air service easyjet also provides other related services like car rental and also does cross promotion for travel insurance and for hotels and apartments.As per easyjet website it is observed that it seriously follows its environment policy and it provides a detailed section on investor’s relation information.