E-tailing : An online shopping experience

Abstract

I just hate to park my vehicle in front of retail stores where I hardly find space. Cities are being overcrowded. People have less time to visit stores and buy needed things. Everything is packaged under certain quality standards. Probably in this situation "Just click" works.

Introduction

Electronic retailing, also known as e-Tailing, deals with selling products and services online via the World Wide Web. E tailing is synonymous with business-to-consumer (B2C) transaction.

Go to www.xxx.com and buy whatever you want. Condition is products are qualified under certain standards, you have an experience with shop or products, you know what exactly to buy and on line retailer’s store is secured enough.

Top ten e-retailers (Source: PC Data Online)

1. Amazon.com
2. Planetrx.com
3. Ticketmaster.com
4. Gateway.com
5. Barnesandnoble.com
6. Mothernature.com
7. Iprint.com
8. Hallmark.com
9. Buy.com
10. Bigstar.com

TO retail or to e-tail?

I will say " Both"

It is a great experience to walk into the market. Identify new products, taste them, watch them, touch them, feel them and buy them. How many times would you like to do same activity for products you are buying for last 2-3 years without any change?

I will be the happiest consumer if I can buy my vegetables, grains, flowers, milk, chocolates, books, pop corns, tickets (any traveling or movie), greeting cards, music CDs, magazines and so other commodities. I had an experience of a shop, as it is again brick and mortar located in city’s corner. Same time it’s online presence is available. I don’t have enough time to go center of town. I trust them. Quality is good. I did it earlier so many times. Then what’s problem to dig a grave?

E tailing is being an excellent satisfied service in e-business era. However there are pros and coins. Every God has an Evil to face off.

Dear E-tailer, Understand it.

E tailing is no more putting products on website getting shoppers to order product online.
Now days, Internet is getting crowd with all intense competitors. Your website must provide a satisfactory shopping experience. On web sites customers generally comes to research and see prices so that they can make decisions. Is there any thing special that attracts customer towards e tailing?

4 Ps and e-tailing

Product

I went to an electronics stores as a customer, I liked to listen sound and experience picture quality. In food world, I touch and smell vegetables and fruits. In garment store I tried new shirts on my body and analyzed colors and styles. Retailing in living place is multisensory and more social. You enjoy it.

Where as e tailing you are just tired from computers in office. Again one needs to seat for hours just to buy which is moreover easy in real stores.

Psychology of buyer and types of goods make difference in shopping at real places or shopping online.

So open retailing stores for goods that you can sell on line easily. E.g. Amazon did for Books & CDs

Place

Finding a shop in real life is sometimes takes long walking and again parking problems. Which is moreover easy on Internet. Search on any search engine for any service provider in your local zone. You get rows of shops in a minute.

To establish retail stores need a heavy expenditure. First of all retailer needs to find a place on road which is however be very costly. Instead of open e-tailing store on Internet with support of warehouse located at cheap inside place in your town.

Place in case of e-tailing means for better shopping experience with trust & security on line.

Price

Establishing online shops are very cheap in compare to establish on place stores. Other than technical and promotional expenditures there are hardly any expenditures left.

Consider the case of Amazon.Com, where e tailer manages chain between customers and wholesalers. Where the orders go straight to the wholesaler. That means the working capital costs are cut down drastically. Not just that, an e-tailer is paid before he pays his distributor.

Due to this difference of expenditures, on line stores can reduce prices in compare to living retail stores. That’s how one can attract many customers to buy on line with incentive schemes and home delivery.

Promotion

It is a strategy where online stores need to beat retail stores. E-tailer needs to promote heavily to get customers from real world. Use traditional mediums like newspapers, magazines, hoardings, television, word of mouth and virtual mediums like on line advertising, associations & linking, banner ads etc. to promote your brand. Make sure your services are excellent when you are online. Building trust and security are most necessary. Don’t forget that you are not only the e-tailer. Face competition in e-tailing industry itself.

Advantages over living retail stores

1. Much wider choice at fingertips
With web search capabilities (which need further development) it is easier to find the types of goods a customer is searching for, catalogs are received passively, at the behest of the retailer.

2. Price discrimination
E-tailers can use previous transactions to identify the likelihood of products being purchased a certain price points.

3. Customized product placements
It is easy for an e-tailer to make any change in product placement (user display) based on previous transactions, to increase the visibility of goods that the user is more likely to purchase based on their close relationship with previous purchases. Thus placement can be designed based on the context of the previous purchases.

Disadvantages over living retail stores

1. Limited only to on line users.
Not all customers have access to the web. E-tailer has no 100 % access to customers. Even out of web users few make on line money transactions.

2. Ease of use is a problem, as the web design is still complex, or at least somewhat chaotic. E-tail stores are not standardized in design in the way catalogs and retail stores have become.

3. Trust, security and privacy concerns prevail. Consumers are concerned with the use of the data they provide during transactions.

Conclusion

With improvement in technology, it is likely to change in customer psychology also. For current kings of retailers, added solutions of e tailing will grow their sale in market.