E-Commerce Strategy for Sports Goods Retailer - Essay Example

Introduction Regardless of the raise in use and attractiveness of the Internet in the recent years, the concern of why consumers choose to shop on the Internet for some products and not for others still remains cynical about Internet shopping (Asch, 2001). There were experimental researches on customer's choices for shopping on the Internet has not been competitive. Until just a few years ago, the Internet had been comparatively new to consumers as a shopping mode, and is still in an expansion phase. Lack of knowledge with its use and the risk distinguished by consumers in revealing individual information as a part of online purchasing has generated vagueness and caution about untried e-tailers. Moreover, the plea and implementation of online shopping have been hampered by substandard Internet retail site design and purposes. While, historical patterns have not had adequate time to build up to forecast consumer shopping behavior (Asch, 2001). As Internet retail sales persist to enhance at a slower rate than expected, business practitioners and Internet practitioners alike are looking for the product kind that consumers will purchase from the Internet (Aspinwall, 2001). The preferences of customers for shopping on the Internet may be based on the product type, which will in turn affected the need to acquire the information of product easily and at reasonable price. Moreover, the motivations of the consumers' to purchase on the Internet may differ based on the features that Internet retailers provide online shopping such as website quality, product quality, service quality and product information. With respect to Internet business, the influence of website quality on purchase intentions and loyalty is based on a specific type of product. Describing the product classifications have a important impact on clients' choices for purchasing on the Internet, and the value they designate to the Internet retailers' characteristics. Overview of the Business Even though it is always viewed as the kind of product bought will have a great impact on Internet retail investment, some studies presents the effect of the kind of product bought on Internet shopping choices. The new online business will be selling sport goods such as footwear, NBA Jerseys, Spandex outfits and other apparels needed in Sports activities. These products will be available globally as the consumers may order online. The name of the website is Sports Unlimited. The buying decisions of the consumers are based on the products' descriptions like the image of the brand, dependability, accessibility and style of the company's service (Bakos, 1007). For example, the status and representation of an e-tailer may be presented in the product quality or representation of their brand. Sports Unlimited should recognize that buyers have different product type therefore Sports Unlimited should categorize its products through shopping goods and convenience. The price of the products can be secondary. Marketing Strategy Target Market Sports Unlimited is challenge of creating their target consumers based to their efforts to market their website (Bellenger and Korgaonkar, 1980). Since Sports Unlimited fully understands the responses of their consumers, this gives them a great advantage. As such, this online sports shop target market are the ones who spends a lot of time surfing the internet and does a lot of sports activities or they can be just simple sports fan like the NBA. The Four Ps of Marketing Product. The management of Sports Unlimited has initiated their product development approaches by marketing their present sports goods in a new market. Delivering these sports products globally and thereby grabbing some advance opportunities of expanding market penetration and market contribution (Bloch and Richins, 1983). By having their own website, Sports Unlimited had updated their models as sports good shop to offer the consumers what they need and what they desire, enhancing the sports shop's own-brand sports product which could be strategically advertised. Price. There are some approaches that Sports Unlimited obtained cost advantages by enhancing process efficiencies, accessing unique gain to a large source of low cost sports goods. If Sports Unlimited is able to lower their rates by the same amount, the company will be able to maintain a competitive advantage according to cost leadership. Place. The best place to expand in order to be successful is through the Internet. Because the Internet reaches all countries in the globe, the online sports shop can now link with other sports related website that can help them advertise their products. Promotion. The chain of convenience store's current approach is a long-term strategic plan that focuses on creating value to gain the lifetime loyalty of their customers which include maintaining a strong core business, to be as strong in sports apparel/products, to grow internationally and to move into retailing services such as on-line shopping. Business Environment SWOT Analysis Strength Unique Website Design Low Cost website Low cost Products Accessible products Weaknesses monetary weakness Low brand consciousness Opportunity Large prospective market Increasing interest and customer requirements in characteristic of the sports products Threat Strong and competitive competitors Budget Allocation $3,000 AU- Market Research $5,000 AU- Web Design $10,000 AU- Web Programming $ 25,000- Marketing/Advertisement $7,000- Web Administrator Internet Presence In order for Sports Unlimited website to crawl the major search engines like Yahoo!, Google and MSN, the company should establish its Internet presence (Bloch and Richins, 1983). The first phase of establishing business online is to list down major and minor player in the industry of sports goods that they want to enter. The second phase is to create the list of the top websites in the sports goods industry, as well as websites that are just starting like them in terms of the levels of resources and traffic. Most of these websites are existing giants in the said industry that may be very difficult for Sports Unlimited to catch up. Sports Unlimited should research and analyze the diverse characteristics and facts on these websites. They should gauge the technology used to serve the content of these websites like flash and multi-media. Examine the aspects that make people click the link of these websites and what makes these websites profit. From the start, before introducing the website in the web, Sports Unlimited needs to recognize the measures of the success they want. What they think a successful website is Many owners of websites make the mistakes of launching the websites without the understanding and knowledge of the tools they need to identify whether they are successful or not. Sports unlimited should be certain of what they really want. Sports Unlimited should perform quantitative and qualitative measurement of their performance in order to measure the success of their website. These measurements will help them to measure existing performance and my help they examine the improvements needed (Brucks and Zeithalm, 2000). The different tools for measurements will provide the company with a complete representation of the website's performance and can offer Sports Unlimited the security to make more business decisions. Transaction metrics, traffic metrics and customer satisfaction are the metrics that can help measure website performance. Benchmarks are also use by some online business in order to permit them to obtain the concept on how other websites operates. Maintaining Internet presence is as easy as counting one, two and three through having the concept of how other companies get their own metrics. Benchmarking is a simple strategy to help Sports Unlimited to list top websites based on the leading search engines like Yahoo!, Google and MSN. After doing some benchmarking Sports Unlimited is ready to do some affiliate marketing and Search Engine Optimization in order to crawl up these major search engines. Legal and Ethical Consideration What are the legal and ethical considerations in having a business online In a society where legal and ethical matters are in some ways put limits to the business industry, when dealing with legal and ethical considerations, companies like Sports Unlimited has a major level of trust responsibility when dealing with clients (Bakos, 1997). It is very essential from both legal and ethical values according to e-business and legal point of view to ensure that the words written in their website and what is presented about the company is true. Issues are involved in marketing ethics and the value of understanding a business for internet marketing concerns and the purposes of advertising. There possibilities of disclosing intellectual property and trade secrets. It is also the responsibility of the website to protect the privacy of their clients that is why all the transactions should be in private especially their email correspondence. It would be smart to consider carefully the protection and privacy of the consumers. Bibliography Asch, D.,2001,. Competing in the new economy. European Business Journal, 13 ,3,, 119-126. Aspinwall, J. ,2001,. A test of the two-step flow in diffusion of a new product. Journalism Quarterly, 45 ,Autumn,, 457-465. Bakos, J. Y. ,1997,. Reducing buyer search costs: implications for electronic marketplaces. Management Science, 43 ,12,, 1676-1692. Bellenger, D. N., & Korgaonkar, P. ,1980,. Profiling the recreational shopper. Journal of Retailing, 56 ,Fall,, 77-91. Bloch, P. H., & Richins, M. L. ,1983,. A theoretical model for the study of product importance perceptions. Journal of Marketing, 47 ,Summer,, 69-81. Brucks, M., Zeithalm, V. A., & Naylor, G. ,2000,. Price and brand name as indicators of quality dimensions for consumer durables. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 28 ,3,, 359-374. Read More