The Range Of Products And Services

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

1.1 E-commerce can be said as buying and selling of goods through the use of internet. According to the Chaffey(2009), ecommerce should be" considered as all electronically mediated transaction between an organization and any third party it deals with". Ecommerce is the use of electronic communications and digital information processing technology in business transactions to create, transform, and redefine relations for creations between or among organizations and between organizations and individuals (Lallana, Quimbo, and Andam,2000).

E-commerce covers vast areas. Nowadays we can see e-commerce used in different sectors. Some of the common areas that ecommerce covers are:

Ecommerce in Financial service

Ecommerce in education

Ecommerce in Travels and Tourism

Ecommerce in Health Sector

Ecommerce in Entertainment

Ecommerce in Government

Types of Ecommerce

In today’s world there are many types of ecommerce. Some of the common and most popular types are given below:

B2B(Business-to-Business)

This is one of the area that ecommerce have covered most. According to Digitsmith (n.d), B2B is the business done by companies with each other such as manufacturers selling to distributors and wholesalers selling to retailers. Kalakota and Whinston(1996) described areas covered by B2B applications such as Supplier management(especially purchase order processing), inventory management(ie managing order-ship-bill cycles), distribution management(especially in the transmission of shopping documents), payment management( eg electronic payment systems) etc. It has positively enhanced business activities between companies. Some of the examples are: Intel selling microprocessor to dell, Heinz selling ketchup to Ma Donlds etc.

B2C(Business-to-Customer)

B2C is another area covered by ecommerce. It is a commercial transaction between an organization and consumer. Chiang(2001) described B2C as ‘interaction relating to the purchase and sale of goods and services between a business and consumer-retail transactions’. It is the second largest form of ecommerce. Some of the examples of B2c are Amazon.com, Toysrun, Drugstore.com etc. these types of application covers the areas such as purchasing products and information, and personal finance management (Kalakota and Whinston,1996).

C2B (Consumer-to-business)

C2b is a commonly known as new model for business. According to Digitsmith (n.d), C2B is a transaction in which a consumer posts his project with a set budget online and within hours the companies review the consumer’s requirements and bid on online. Then according to the requirement, consumer selects the company to complete his project. It has provided the common ground for such transaction. Some of the examples of C2B are Priceline, Accompany etc.

C2C(Consumer-to-Consumer)

This is one of the most popular areas covered by ecommerce. These sites include free classifications, actions and forums where individual can buy and sell good. The transactions of money are done through the use of paypal. Some of the most popular auction sites are ebay,QXL, paypal etc.

Now a day’s ecommerce are being increasingly used in the governmental task such as filling taxes to business registration registration to renewing licenses. Terms like G2G (Government-to-Government), G2E (Government-to-Employee), G2B (government-to-Business), B2G(Business-to-Government), G2C(Government-to-Citizen), C2G(Citizen-to-Government) are increasingly used in Government. This has improved the transaction between governments with various components.

1.2 Suitability of ecommerce depends from products to products. According to maravilla(nd) , web is a huge marketplace where verity of business are done but all the products are not suitable for ecommerce. Various factors impacts the suitability of products to be suitable online(Phau and Poon 2000; girard et al.2002; Kiang et al, 2000; Bhatnagar et al, 200; Peterson et al, 1997). Some products may be suitable for online sales and some product may be suitable for offline sales. In the recent years digital products such as information storage, music, movies, communication, pornography, software, educational materials have been successful in the ecommerce market. Some of the companies like Schwab,ebay,paypal etc are successful in these market. Along with the digital products, non-digital products are also being sold successfully. Mostly spare parts along with electronic good like washing machine, refrigerator etc can be sold through internet. A research conducted by Emist and Young (n. d.) shows that computer related good are sold widely accounting 40% followed by books(20%), travels(16%), cloths(10%), recorded music(6%), subscription(6%), gifts(5%), and investiment(4%).

Some of the product may not be suitable for the ecommerce. Products like food, furniture’s, expensive minerals like gold and jewalleries may not be suitable for ecommerce. Mainly customers are reluctant to buy items like food products online as they get easily degraded.

Hence, all the products are not suitable for ecommerce. Organization should sell those products that are suitable for ecommerce and customer can get better value for their money.

2. Find out the ways in which your departmental store would be able to use e- commerce to increase profitability and enhance the range of products and services to its customer.(3.2)(D3)

E-commerce can play a vital role in the profitability of a departmental store. It would be beneficial if the businesses are done systematically in the web. Nowadays, Customers are increasingly adapting internet. It has linked businesses and customers from around the world. By going to the web, departmental can increase its profitability and enhance the range of product and service to the customer.

Internet has become boon for customer and business around the world. it has touched each and every sectors of our life. Amongst the various gift of internet, ecommerce is one of them. E-commerce can be said as buying and selling of goods through the use of internet. According to the Chaffey(2009), ecommerce should be" considered as all electronically mediated transaction between an organization and any third party it deals with". Ecommerce is the use of electronic communications and digital information processing technology in business transactions to create, transform, and redefine relations for creations between or among organizations and between organizations and individuals (Lallana, Quimbo, and Andam,2000).

History of Department store goes back to 18th century. The first departmental store was established in 1852 in Paris consisting of very few items. With the development of time, the size of departmental has increased from medium to larger department. During 1920’s the departmental store mostly of American society has become the most successful in terms of attracting customers (Pearce,nd). Macys was the most popular departmental store during those periods. After 1940’s, there were rapid growth of departmental stores around the world. More features to the department is being integrated like Tea room, departmental theaters etc. Finally with the advancement of technology, departmental store are able to adapt the internet. These e-departments are easy to use and they are cost effective methods for shoppers as well sellers. Some of the most popular online departmental store are Beales, Peter jones, Wal-Mart etc. Customer can get wide range and category of products from electronic gadgets to dresses through theses online departments. In traditional physical departmental store, customer has to search the required product by visiting various stores. It was time consuming method. But in e-department problem of manually search the required products was solved, as it is able to list its products and items effectively in systematic order. Usually customer can access and update the cart as they wish. They can buy the required product any place at any time. Usually modern form of payment like credit card can be use for the payment. In most of the modern department, customer doesn’t have to visit the departmental store physically. Instead, effective delivery ( in home, office) have made the transaction effective.

Ecommerce have provided various facilities for e-Department store. Since the departmental store is physically limited to the certain area, ecommerce have opened the doors of opportunities. As the department adapts the ecommerce it can use its features in verity of way. One of the driving forces to enhance and acquire new customer is search engine optimization. Usually customers follow the link that appears at the top of the link. According to Khurana(2012), ‘ additional source of traffic can be the tipping point for ecommerce. So, search engine can play a vital role in profitability of a business. Another driving force for the ecommerce, is product suitability. According to Derbicant (2004), "The perennial items in online commerce are books, CDs, clothing and electronics and computer goods. Even in these product areas you can sell successfully online by specializing, informing your target group about your product offerings through efficient marketing, and by using a clever online marketing strategy to place your products in exactly those locations where either your customers go shopping or want to go for information." Basically the departmental should target high branded gurantee products, relatively inexpensive goods, frequently purchased commodity items, products with suitable shipping profiles and so on are most suitable product. These things as by the Manzoor(2010) make the customer rely on the business and make place order for anything they want without any kind of insecurity (Manzoor, 2010).

A departmental store can save a lot of money while going online. According to the Dynamicweb(2000), there will be a reduce in labor, reduce in paper work, reduce faults of storage data and reduced post cost. Basically the transaction and deals are done in online market, without any difficulties. To do these transaction very less amount of workers are needed s there are not much physical task that needs to be accomplished. Usually these data’s are automatically saved on the database. So, it has reduced the manpower and paperwork in the departmental store. Since, the data’s are in the digital format it will be saved for long period of time without any damage. Traditional departmental store uses traditional marketing campaigns such as print, yellow page advertising etc. most of the departmental store are unaware of ecommerce marketing strategies that are far more cheaper than the offline marketing. With the help of e-commerce, marketing cost is drastically reduced. The marketing is the achievement of corporate goals through meeting and exceeding customer needs better than the competition (jobber, 2006). It is essential for companies like departmental store, to be competitive in global market. So, departmental can adapt web marketing for advertisement. Comparing to other Medias, advertising in web is cheaper and effective(Goel,2007) . It will be helpful to reach large customer and attract them and get appropriate feedback.

E-commerce can be helpful for departmental store to build trust amongst the customer. According to the customer loyalty institute(nd), customer loyalty is ‘ all about attracting right customer, getting them to buy, buy often, buy in higher quantities and bring you more customer’. It is also popularly known as customer relationship management. As a departmental store it should be able to gain and retain customer. It should able to engage its customer in social and professional activity of the organization. After sales service would also be helpful to retain customer. During the initial phase it is very difficult to retain customer. But it is well known fact that once the customer trust the organization, it becomes cheaper to do marketing to old customer then new ones (Keegan,2012).

Since, the departmental store is technically adapting the web. It should also have the effective home delivery system. Nowadays, people are too busy to go to departmental store. So, departmental store should deliver the goods at the time. This make the customer satisfied by the services of e-departmental store and can be a regular customer. Payment system is vital for a departmental store. Technically it is one of the most sensitive are of ecommerce. By following international rules and regulation payment should be done. The most reliable like paypal can be used. Most of the internal businesses do the transaction through PayPal as it is simple, inexpensive and reliable to use.

Nowadays people are very busy at their work. They don’t have time to do activities like shopping for their consumptions. So, ecommerce can be possible solutions for those customers. E-commerce can enhance the business activity of an organization. With the help of features and functions of ecommerce, Departmental store can increase its profitability and enhance the range of products and service to its customer.