Digital Business Report Analysis - Essay Example

Digital Business Report Table of Contents Background 3 Justification of Choice of Business System Option 4 Legal Aspects 5 Marketing Strategy 6 ACCESS Model 8 Audience 8 Concept 8 Competition 9 Execution 9 Social Media Tools 10 Sales Viability 10 References 11 Background Electronic-commerce or E-commerce generally refers to trading through the internet. In recent times, e-commerce has been gaining profound attention from both domestic and international entrepreneurs and customers. In other words, e-commerce has provided business organisations with new opportunities for conducting their business. It has been observed that implementation of e-commerce has offered businesses with several benefits in terms of creating business value. E-commerce so far has been able to deliver numerous benefits to businesses of all sizes irrespective of their breadth and depth of operations. The benefits delivered by e-commerce to business organisations are often categorised into two segments including tangible benefits and intangible benefits. Tangible benefits of e-commerce are closely linked with increasing business efficiency, reducing operational costs, retaining and increasing customer base along with better automation of the process. On the other hand, intangible benefits of e-commerce to a business venture are associated with secured transaction, rapid delivery, ease and effectiveness of advertisement among others (Kuzic & et. al., 2002). In a nutshell, the e-commerce business venture idea is to set up a webstore, which will sell second-hand educational textbooks. The webstore is named as textbookpalace and its target customers will include secondary school, A-level, college and university students. The second-hand books will be acquired from libraries, schools, universities, charities, bookstores, and private individuals. However, the major supplier for the second-hand book will be the students who able to sell class notes, old tests and textbook. Contextually, certain challenges are identified with the idea of opening and operating the webstore. The most prominent challenges in this regard are associated with the security and privacy, legal aspect and customer service (Kuzic & et. al., 2002). Moreover, as a tool of project management agile methodology will be used. Justification of Choice of Business System Option textbookpalace will use Shopify as an e-commerce platform for creating webstore. The rationale behind choosing Shopify is that it provides the simplest way for creating online store. This platform also provides most of the features required by small retailers while it is also extremely easy to use (IBM, 2011). Besides, it offers numerous essential features such as ease in organising products, customising storefront, accepting credit card payments, tracking and responding to customers’ orders among others (Innovation Pei, n.d.). From the business perspective, Shopify offers significant flexibility, usability and affordability in terms of costs and at the same time, it also widely differs from other e-commerce applications. Buyers often are attracted towards design and style of online store. In this regard, Shopify offers customised business solution for online store. It also provides secure hosting for selling any kind of products online. It further provides the mobility of uploading logo, changing colour fonts and much more. The businesses using this platform have full control over their web design. In addition, it provides different types of templates along with distinct themes which enable the webstore to customise website design without the knowledge of HTML or CSS. The webstore can also customise homepage layout. It also includes content management system which enables the webstore to create new tab pages easily. The application is also supported with build-in blog software which facilitates in creating new blog as well as importing it from other existing blogs. Nonetheless, blogs in the present marketing environment are considered as an important marketing tool that facilitate in increasing the sales of the products offered by a business. In addition, it also offers customers to provide their comments thus facilitating in gathering feedback for further improvement in the service. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the recent marketing purview has emerged as an instrumental for the success of retailers in accordance with day-to-day changing business environment. Notably, the application offers the webstore to create groups of customers and gather information about them for understanding customer behaviour. Besides, it also allows setup of unlimited staff account for the online store thus restricting any interference to administrative account. There has been a growing concern in the digital world regarding the security of financial information provided while conducting online transaction. In this regard, the application provides the encryption facility which ensures the conduction of secure transaction through the use of credit card. It also ensures automatic backup which reduces the threat associated with the loss of stored data. Moreover, it also offers mobile shopping feature which enables customers to shop using their mobile anywhere and anytime (Shopify Inc, 2014). However, it is planned that the webstore will move on to an alternative service platform in future. Legal Aspects textbookpalace will be a five man partnership venture. A partnership is an agreement in which two or more than two persons mutually combine resources in a business with an idea to make profit. A partnership business structure for textbookpalace is chosen as it is easy to form and owners of the business will share management of the entire business along with the debts and obligations incurred. This form of business structure eliminates the aspect of single person liability. Besides, partnership business requires low cost for the establishment of the business as the cost is distributed among the partners either equally or based on the decided criteria. A partnership business is also subjected to comply with low government regulations and at the same time this type of business is also eligible to avail certain possible tax benefits (Small Business BC, n.d.). Furthermore, textbookpalace will duly comply with requisite legislations and regulations. The webstore will fulfil all legal obligations for ensuring successful establishment of the business. Considering the UK online business environment, the government requires the online businesses to comply with Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) (the Act). Correspondingly, textbookpalace will ensure that DPA registration procedure is appropriately completed in order to mitigate any possible legal obstacles now and in later stage of the webstore operations. Besides, there are certain taxation provisions related with the e-commerce based business in the UK. The online businesses in the UK are obligated to comply with Value Added Tax (VAT) regulations (Pinsent Masons LLP, n.d.). Correspondingly, the webstore will also ensure due fulfilment of the VAT legislation. Marketing Strategy As stated earlier, the business idea is to sale second-hand books, the major target group will be the students from secondary school, A-level, College and University. Beside the students, there are other groups and individuals who are fond of reading books. Thus, the products of this store will also target those individuals and groups who share reading books as their interest. Students being the major target group of this store, the marketing strategies will be primarily targeted towards them. The key elements of the store will be great customer service, fast delivery, and a reasonable price. The webstore will also ensure that unique experiences are shared by the customers while dealing with it. Apart from this, the store will also ascertain to provide customers with easy and simple navigation. In order to measure the success of the store, vision and mission has been established. Vision: The vision of the webstore for the first year of its establishment is to gain a good reputation through the sales of its products at a reasonable price. Besides, the store will also ensure steady flow of cash and growth. Mission: The mission of the webstore is to establish itself as a trusted and reliable second-hand book supplier that is known throughout the UK. In order to be successful and realize the established vision and mission, textbookpalace will need a functional marketing strategy. A marketing strategy entails a gamut of plans that would facilitate the store to measure its resources and apply them in order to increase its sales and attain competitive advantage. Generally, it involves several analysis frameworks that will provide necessary information for framing actual strategy. In this regard, ACCESS Model propounded by Safko & Brake (2009) provides a parameter for setting up and employing a social media strategy. ACCESS stands for Audience, Concept, Competition, Execution, Social Media and Sales Viability (Safko & Brake, 2009). ACCESS Model Audience Audience are the most important component for the success of the webstore. It is thus essential to derive a considerable understanding regarding the characteristics of audience in order to recognise the target audience and to identify ways for serving them best. The facet of online shopping is identified to be growing rapidly in the UK. Notably, books and music categories among others have revealed the highest online purchase in the country (Oates, 2011). It has been observed that a majority of students are engaged in web surfing through the use of devices they possess. The devices are predominately used for reading books. Almost 83% of the students in the UK have been identified to expect books that are available to physical shops to be available online. Besides, opinions of professors and peers are ascertained to be important for the students while buying books online (NUS Services Research Team, 2012). Thus, secondary school, A-level, college and university students are the vital audience for textbookpalace. In order to draw the attention of the target group and mark the visibility of the store, posting questions on LinkedIn and answering the questions posted will be undertaken. Concept Defining concept is another major aspect for efficiently serving the target audience. Concepts generally mean the products that will be offered to customers. textbookpalace is a webstore that will offer second-hand book to the target audience. The customers will be able to purchase second-hand books at reasonable prices and can save considerable amount of money. They will also be offered with ease of navigation. Since, the webstore will use Shopify as a platform for online transaction, customers will also be able to comment regarding their experience in dealing with the store as well as they will be able to post any complaints regarding the products and the services offered to them (Shopify Inc, 2014). This will aid in collecting information from customers and making the use of information for improving its business process. Competition Competition is an integral constituent to any business in the contemporary environment. It is thus crucial to analyse the action of competitors in order to sustain long-term competitive advantage. textbookpalace will possibly face challenges associated with increased competition while operating its webstore business. Beside the competition posed by physical book store, there are several online book stores already operating in the UK. Few prominent names include Blackwell UK, Waterstones and WHSmith plc. Nonetheless, these book stores are primarily concerned with offering of new books and the prices of their offered books are quite high (Blackwells, 2013). In order to deal with this derived competition, textbookpalace will adopt price discrimination strategy. In addition, customers will be provided with ease in their payment system, timely delivery of books and increased customer services. Execution Execution is generally associated with the implementation of social media strategy. textbookpalace will be registered under.co.uk domain. This domain is opted as it facilitates in easy tracing of customers and a majority of people in the UK uses this domain for searching online (Webfusion Ltd, 2014). Besides, pay-per-click (PPC) system will be adopted. It will facilitate in tracking the number of visitors who pop in to the webstore website. It will eventually assist in obtaining quality of traffic, converting visitors to customers and creating action necessary for generating revenue (Douzet, n.d.). Social Media Tools Social media tools cover the identification of tools that can be used to meet the target customers’ demand. Visibility on the social network of the target audience will be the prime focus of the webstore. textbookpalace will use two social media platforms namely Twitter and Facebook. Twitter account and Facebook group will be created in order to promote the products offered by the webstore. The webstore will post latest updates regarding the availability of books in Twitter while Facebook will be used as an advertisement tools where information regarding books and prices will be featured. In the recent times, mobile phone has emerged as a viable solution for mobile users. In this regard, textbookpalace will also use built-in mobile commerce shopping cart feature offered by Shopify (Safko & Brake, 2009). Sales Viability It deals with value creation using social media approach. Apart from selling second-hand books to target audience, textbookpalace will also sell advertising and subscriptions. textbookpalace will charge nominal fees in the form of commission which would aim at increasing the profit generation capability of the webstore (Safko & Brake, 2009). References Blackwells, 2013. Students. Home. [Online] Available at: http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/editorial/students/students.jsp?route=students [Accessed February 23, 2014]. Douzet, A., No Date. An Investigation of Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising: Modeling the PPC Paradigm to lower Cost per Action. Background Information on the Pay Per Click, pp. 1-7. IBM, 2011. E-Commerce Platforms. Special Report 11, pp. 1-24. Innovation Pei, No Date. E-Commerce: Purchasing and Selling Online. Why E-Commerce for Small Businesses, pp. 1-15. Kuzic, J. & et. al., 2002. Electronic Commerce Benefits, Challenges and Success Factors in the Australian Banking and Finance Industry. ECIS, pp. 1607-1616. NUS Services Research Team, 2012. Understanding Usage of, Attitudes Towards, and Aspirations for etextbooks Amongst Students in Higher Education. Results. [Online] Available at: http://www.coursesmart.co.uk/go/ukstudent/NUS_eTextbook_presentation_for_press.pdf [Accessed February 23, 2014]. Oates, D., 2011. The Changing Face of UK Retail in Today’s Multi-Channel World. Consumer Buying Behaviours: Experian Commissioned Research. [Online] Available at: http://www.experian.co.uk/assets/business-strategies/white-papers/RWC-whitepaper2.pdf [Accessed February 23, 2014]. Pinsent Masons LLP, No Date. Taxation of E-commerce. Introduction to Taxation of E-commerce. [Online] Available at: http://www.out-law.com/page-7512 [Accessed February 23, 2014]. Shopify Inc, 2014. Sell Online. Create Your Online Store Today. Introduction. [Online] Available at: http://www.shopify.in/tour/sell-online [Accessed February 23, 2014]. Small Business BC, No Date. How To Choose Right Business Structure. Advantages & Disadvantages Of General Partnership. [Online] Available at: http://www.smallbusinessbc.ca/sbbcfiles/files/How_to_Choose_the_Right_Business_Structure.pdf [Accessed February 23, 2014]. Safko, L. & Brake, D. K., 2009. The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons. Webfusion Ltd, 2014. Start Your Online Journey with A .Co.Uk Domain Registration From 123-Reg. Domain Names. [Online] Available at: https://www.123-reg.co.uk/domain-names/co-uk-domains.shtml [Accessed February 23, 2014]. Read More