What experiences have you had with shopping online?
The majority of the time the experiences have
been positive and provided an easy accessible and enjoyable way to shop. Sites
such as Ebay online book stores, and clothing stores have been fast, reliable
and cost saving. This method of shopping is convenient and therefore you don’t
need to leave your home to do it.
Describe a good experience.
There have been numerous experiences with online
shopping. Most of the good experiences are when there are no problems .Also
when a particular online store is user friendly and has easy options for
payments. An online store that answers any enquires quickly, and gives good
product descriptions in what I personally would consider as a good experience.
What did you like about the online store you
used?
The site was easy to use and contacting the
online shop could be done at any time. It was convenient and you appear to have
more product choice. Making product selections such as colour, size, new or old
are easy to select. Therefore this is far better that in a face to face shop.
Describe a bad experience
Store has not replied to emails that have been
sent, due to not receiving an item. Then they continue to send emails to ask if
you are happy with the service and the product. This was quite annoying as when
you replied to the email and complained about not receiving your product, there
was still no response.
What
problems did you have with the online store?
Not being able to contact the store to be able
to return an item. There has also been times when the item has not been the
same as the one described and the quality of the item has been poor compared.
What features make an online store more
appealing?
Online stores are convenient, you do not need to
leave your home to shop. Therefore this can save you money on transportation.
It is much easier to compare prices between products. There is a larger variety
of products in one place, to choose from, in comparison to going to a face to
face shop.
What features make an online store less
appealing?
There is no direct customer service and if you
are purchasing items that require to be tried on, you cannot try them on. You
are taking the risk of them not fitting when you receive them. Making payment
with a credit card might be off putting, as some stores may not have proper
security systems in place.
Should we expect to see the prices of goods
and services rise or fall due to the migration of consumers online?
Expectations for product and services prices
should be expected to be lower, this being due to the online store having less
overheads than a face to face store.
Online stores are making the competition harder for face to face stores,
therefore face to face stores have to try and compete with the online stores.
However many lager store have already pursued to take on online methods.
However this has not benefited many customers, as many face to face stores and
costs are still the same as shopping in store. Therefore this might indicate
that larger stores will retain the same prices even with the migration of many
new online shoppers.
Question 2
The dispersion of prices (that is, the spread between the lowest and highest
price for a particular product) will narrow.
I defiantly agree with this. As a consumer I am always
looking for the best price on something and comparing it to other companies and
I’m sure many other people are doing the same so this is going to force
companies to keep prices competitive in order to stay at the top.
The importance of brand names will decrease.
Many customers may have already established a
loyalty with a particular brand, therefore it might be harder to have them
cross over to a new brand. Some customer that may have had a bad experience with
a particular brand may be more likely to change brands. For this reason there may
not be a decrease in the amount of customers that have already established
brand loyalty.
Price competition will make all products
cheaper.
This is not necessarily correct, some business may
not be able to cut the costs of the products that they have. Having price
competition will encourage business to keep cost low, but I do not think it
will make all products cheaper.
Digital markets will become dominated by a
handful of mega-sites, like Amazon.com.
Yes this may happen, as they are the larger
companies in the market, generally when you search for a particular item the
larger retailers will be at the top of the search list. As a customer you would
typically go with one of those larger profiled companies, as these larger businesses
have established a trust by the customers. They also may have better methods
and products available to customers.
How do you think the balance of power
between buyers and sellers will change?
The buyer will still have control of power
between buyer and seller. As there is more options available the buyer can
compare product and price, therefore this gives them the power to buy or not. The
seller will need to try and influence buyers and this may be hard as there are
so many other options available to them.
Prices are clustered online.
This may correct, as many online business have
the ability to change the price on the products. In general business set a
price that they have set from a profit margin that they would like to obtain. Therefore
they have the ability to compare their prices with other online traders, this
may begin to become a cluster, due to the nature of them competing with each
other.
Online prices are elastic. ( i.e. immune to
change up and down with demand)
Yes this is possible. If a brand is new to the
market they can have a lower introduction price and once the demand becomes
higher for the product they can slowly increase the price. When demand is high
for a product generally the cost will be stable. When the demand is low then
they might have a promotional strategy where they can offer augmented products
with the other product.
Online prices are generally transparent (the
extent to which prices for a given product or service are known by buyers in
the marketplace.).
This could be considered as a true statement,
online prices are sometimes transparent due to some business not giving the
true facts on the final costs. This can be seen in business that give an extra
cost when you use your credit card or sometimes there is no postage fees shown
until final payments are made.
M-Commerce Services and Applications
Mobile commerce has been slow to take off in Australia,
partly because of high data costs. The introduction of the iPhone and other
smart phones will probably see a huge increase in M-Commerce in the new few
years. There is an increasing amount of free and commercial content already
available to Australian mobile subscribers. In many countries it M-Commerce is
regularly used for-
Mobile bill paymentContent and products
Banking and financial services
Wireless advertising
Location-based services
Games and entertainment
Question 3
What types of m-commerce services does your cell
phone provider offer?
Optus is currently my and they with them it allows me to
Pay phone bill
Have internet access
Download and purchase music, movies and any app.
Play games, social media use
Email
Which of these services do you use?
The internet, generally pay phone bill through the app. Regularly email
from my phone. Social media is also used. The only product that I am not likely
to use is play games.
What types of transactions do you perform through
your cell phone or other wireless device?
Sourcing emails, communicating with people through texting or social
media. Generally all my transactions are done via wireless devices. This has
become a part of everyday life and it would be incredible difficult to try and
do anything without a wireless device.
What types of transactions would you like to
perform, but are currently unable to?
At the moment there are none that come to mind. Everything that might
need to be accessed is already available to me on my wireless devices.
What is your opinion of wireless advertising/mobile
marketing?
This is a clever way to try and entice and encourage people to buy
products. As a customer it can be very annoying when they are flashing at the
bottom of the screen. Also when you close them, they sometimes take you to the
site, therefore this can be annoying. But in saying that I guess that business
need to try and get customers to try their products and this would be the
easiest way for them to communicate with them.
