An Online Presence for a Mobile Phone Shop - Research Proposal Example

An ONLINE Presence for a MOBILE PHONE SHOP Introduction Globalisation is a term that is fast becoming a household phenomenon in today’s competitive business environment. Today, trading in the global environment is hardly limited by geographic borders that used to prevent easy accessibility among traders from one place to another. Such freedom in trade and the ease in the limitations that used to exist are not necessarily because there are trade agreements that allow for easy entry of businesses into other countries. Rather, the ease exists because the internet has become a common platform where businesses converge to engage in a borderless trade forum in what is known as electronic commerce or e-commerce for short (quote). E-commerce is fast becoming such a powerful tool in global business activity that businesses that do not have an electronic representation are not expected to be as successful as those that have electronic representation. Apart from the fact that e-commerce helps in giving a company a borderless trade opportunity, it also ensures that there an easy and more accessible means of promoting one’s business and consolidating a firm competitive advantage through brand equity (quote). By and large, e-commerce also meets the innovative needs of today’s consumer, who can be said to have been more informed and complicated in trade activity than he was decades back (quote). It is important to note that as much as e-commerce sets the tone for competitive global business activity to take place, e-commerce is only an end in itself that needs a means to success. The means or medium to undertake a successful e-commerce has been identified to be an online presence for a company (quote). This means that for a company or firm to successfully engage in e-commerce, it is important that that firm has an online presence through which it undertakes internet or electronic based transactions. There are a lot of ways in which online presence may be explained or defined, most commonly though, it involves and requires that a company will have a website that serves as a market place for the virtual consumer. Online presence may also involve a heavy use of the internet as a means of advertisement for a company through the use of the new media. Largely though, having an interactive website that serves as an online marketplace is the most ideal requirement. This research paper therefore seeks to investigate the role of online presence in e-commerce for a mobile phone shop. By this, the research will thoroughly address the issues that ought to be considered when a mobile phone shop wants to have an online presence and methodology that can be used in achieving this. Purpose/Question The purpose of the research paper is to create an online presence for a mobile phone shop. This means that at the end of the research, the researcher should achieve a working internet shopping place for a phone shop where the virtual consumer can go and undertake very basic shopping activities, most of which have been described as part of the objectives of the study. By emphasising on virtual consumers, reference is being made consumers around the globe who may want to only interact with the company through its online shopping centre. It also includes traditional consumers who may want to engage in online shopping rather than be present at the shop to engage in physical shopping. The research paper will be guided by the following questions: 1. What is the core deliverables needed to accomplish an online presence for a mobile phone shop? 2. What will be the system requirements needed to carry the online presence through? 3. In what ways will the mobile phone shop benefit from e-commerce? 4. How will e-commerce for the mobile phone shop be an advantage for its consumers? 5. What are the core factors that should be considered in developing and expanding the online presence into a competitive strategy? Objectives To achieve the overall purpose of the study, it is expected that the following objectives will be accomplished by the researcher. Each of the objectives represents a task that the researcher must undertake as part of the online presence being created for the mobile phone shop. At the end of the day, it is expected that each of the objectives must be achieved before the overall purpose of the study can be touted to have been achieved. The objectives of the study are thus given as follows: 1. To create an interactive website where users can exchange information with hosts of the website. 2. To create an adaptive website where data of users can be processed for market and trade decisions. 3. To create a website where the products and services available at the mobile phone shop can be assembled and displayed. 4. To create an enhanced website where consumers can sign in and operate an editable account 5. To create a purchasing portal where consumers shall have the opportunity to sorting products according to their i. Prices ii. Brand iii. Usage status iv. Functional specifications v. Shipping method vi. Payment methods vii. Minimum order allowed 6. To create a security platform where data from users can be protected safely from unauthorised users. 7. To create a search engine generator that directs internet users who are in need of mobile phone products and services to the website. DELIVERABLES In line with the objectives that have been set above, the researcher seeks to have the following realistic outcomes at the end of the research. The deliverables have been systematically divided into stages to make it easier to target each of them and to enable the researcher to attend to each of them in an orderly manner that reflects the objectives of the study. Stage Deliverable Outcome Pre-development A complete procurement documentation Procurement report A complete market feasibility study Printed research document Development A market-based website A functioning website A guaranteed website that is hard to break through its security. A website security system An all day accessibility of the website to the public. A 24 hour interactive online chat service A shipping correspondence Distribution contract with various shipping companies Post-development A constant evaluation of the system An evaluation plan A progressive development of the system. A future development plan Appropriateness The proposed system where the mobile phone shop is to have an online presence is rightly in line with modern information technology and fits into the new media platform. The internet is constantly commanding control in the way people interact and engage in their regular daily activity. The internet has become so powerful that it transcends different cultures and serves the needs of different social groups (quote). For this reason, the internet has become the hub for the new media, where people all around the world are now seeking to channel their means of communication. To give the mobile phone shop an online presence by creating an e-commerce based website therefore means taking part in the opportunity that the internet presents to businesses today. As much as the internet has created a platform for e-commerce to be made possible, it can also be said that the success completion of the project will also add up to information technology, thus becoming relevant to it. This is because for most of the time, information technology and for that matter the internet has not been used in a very integrated way, where it combines some of the major deliverables being considered for the study. Rather, most studies and practitioners have only focused on how to make one end use of the internet at a time (quote). Especially in the literature of information technology, this gap will be bridged through this research. This is because a new paradigm that endorses the use of the internet for the purposes of commerce, information security, social networking, and market based research shall all be pursued at the same time. Innovative Aspects The successful completion of the research will serve as a platform for industry potential employees and information technology professionals to be equipped with a great level of innovation in the industry. This is because there are very specific areas of innovation that the study will focus on. Two specific innovative aspects of the research shall be relatively new and important phenomena of ‘glocalisation’ and social commerce. Glocalisation has been used lately to represent an innovative way of combining global and local ideas in the e-commerce sector of information technology (quote). Most people see this as a rebirth of the think locally, act globally franchise that was very popular at the beginning of the globalisation concept (quote). Through this innovative aspect of glocalisation, the study will seek ways of promoting local content in terms of mobile phone products and services to a global audience or target group. The rationale behind this is to keep local business trademarks alive, whiles expanding the market base of the local product to gain international recognition. Very often, people have been more comfortable with the idea of gaining global recognition with their products and services by following trends that are generally considered to be global. This way, they tend to go all global through globalisation. This research will beat that idea by introducing a local product to the global market. It is expected that industry employees can maximise the benefits that this innovation brings. The other innovative aspect has to do with social commerce. Very often, companies involved in e-commerce look strictly to website-driven channels to promote their products and services and to interact with consumers (quote). With such ideas, the only platform that the companies provide on their websites is for consumers to come and make order, follow their orders, have their orders delivered, and that is all. However, quote (year) noted how important social media has become an innovative part of information technology as suggested that social media networks serve as the initial point of contact and research for most consumers. This means that the best place to get the most of a company’s targeted consumers is through social media networking. Knowing this, the research will rightly incorporate the innovative aspect of social commerce where a social media networking platform is created as part of the online presence being created for the mobile phone company. Normally, one can engage in social commerce either by making exclusive and extensive use of social media networking sites, or by creating a social networking platform on their own websites. In this instance, both approaches shall be used, with particular emphasis on the latter. The reason for focusing on the latter is that it will help in attracting people directly to the website for social networking purposes rather than having the redirected to the website from other social networking sites. Methodology Details of the approach you will take to completing your project Verification and validation There are very specific objectives for the study, for which the researcher is seeking to achieve. As much as each of the objectives will come with very special significance to academic and professional practice, it is very important that there will be verification and validation processes that check to see that the outcomes that are measured are the exact outcomes proposed by the researcher. To do this verification and validation, there are two major avenues that will be provided by the researcher. In the first place, the researcher shall focus on the verification aspect, which shall deal purposely with the system, rather than the people in the sample size to use the system. The verification will comprise days of expert testing of the system to ensure that it functions according to modalities and deliverables that has been set for it. The second avenue a test and retest validity system will be designed to ensure that data collected for the study are consistent with what the researcher is seeking to collect for the study. After the system has been designed, data will be collected from users about how adaptable the system is. The instrument to be used in the data collection process shall be tested and retested with a mock sample size to ensure its validity before applying it on the actual sample size. Evaluation For a system like this, evaluation could take two major forms. These are summative and formative evaluation. In the summative evaluation, the researcher would want to finish with the entire system before undertaking a thorough and comprehensive evaluation (quote). There is also the formative evaluation, which is part of a continuous process whereby the researcher will constantly evaluate the system through its stages of development (quote). Even though both types of evaluation have their own advantages, the formative evaluation will be used for the study. This is because by using the formative evaluation, it will be possible to identify mistakes with the system at very early stages so that corrections will be done before the whole system is complete. In most cases, this form of evaluation helps in avoiding total cancelation of the system or changing a very major part of it because mistakes do not deteriorate before they are identified (quote). As a way of ensuring that the evaluation is highly credible and serves as a useful avenue for decision making on the system, the researcher shall ensure that the evaluation of the system is conducted by a third party quality control and quality assurance team. By a third party quality control and quality assurance team, reference is made to the use of a group of experts who are not directly involved in the study to evaluate the system and its deliverables to know if they meet standards that were set for them ahead of the study. Ethical Considerations Apart from the researcher who shall also act as the developer of the system, there shall be other human respondents involved in the study. Most of these people will come in after the system has been developed and will be end-users and hosts respectively. The researcher shall collect various data from these people about the functionality of the system and how it has helped the mobile phone shop. To these people, an ethical consideration shall be made for them. First, a consent form will be prepared to spell out the aim, objectives and rationale behind the study. The form will also explain the role to be played by the respondents and why it is important for them to be part of the study. Thereafter, the modalities of participation shall be explained. For example, it will be expected that participation will be purely based on volunteerism and that no oone will be forced to participant. What is more, the consent form shall explain ways in which the researcher seeks to protect the identities of the participants. Most importantly, the researcher shall ensure that people taking part in the study will be kept anonymous and their data will be very confidential. There are no known human risks involved in participation but where any form of risks arises, participants will have the freedom to withdraw at any point in time. Process Impacts There are three major components of the system design, which are pre-development, development and post-development components. The pre-development and development components form the process stages where the researcher puts the real task of designing the system into action. Whiles at the process stage, there are a number of stakeholders who will be involved, each of whom will have the system development impacting on them in a different way. Generally, some of the impacts shall be positive, whiles others shall be negative. Where negative impacts are identified on the stakeholders, measures are going to be put in place to mitigate them. Overall however, the researcher shall ensure that the process becomes very beneficial with no known permanent negative impacts. The table below summarises the stakeholders at the process stage and how each of them might be impacted and how the impacts will be dealt with. Stakeholder impact mitigation Quality control experts Provision of expert guidance on the quality level of the process N/A Quality assurance experts Undertake quality management processes N/A Mobile phone shop workers Halting in their work for some of the time to contribute to either contribute to the system development or just give room for the development to take place Create an annex shop where sales will go on when the main shop is not available Product Impact The post-production phase will focus mainly on the product that will be created for the mobile phone shop. This product is the e-commerce website where trading activities and some level of social networking will take place. At the completion of the process when the product has been made, there are a number of people who will be impacted by the product. The impact could be positive or negative, where negative impacts require risk mitigation interventions to deal with. Below is a table that identifies the stakeholders involved at the post-development stage of the system. Stakeholder Impact Mitigation System engineers Possible security threats Undertake constant security updating on the system Shop owner Increase in revenue generation Financial investment into the maintenance of the system N/A An escrow account for maintenance Shop workers Effectiveness with the delivery of work Efficiency with the delivery of work Need to learn more about information systems N/A N/A Have an IT internship while on the job Consumers Easy access to the shop Constant access to the shop Possible delays in shipment Privacy issues on their personal data N/A N/A Have an online tracking system to monitor movement of shipped items Have basic security and privacy education on the site for users Read More