Business Consumer to Sales (Essay Sample)

Business Consumer to Sales
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Introduction
Companies, online merchant sites or businesses can leverage the Internet to conduct business. They can take the advantage of the internet platform increase their business to consumer sales operations such as marketing, sales, purchasing products online, and customer service transactions with end consumers (B2C). Many of these companies and online merchants such as amazon.com, eBay.com, E-Trade and Souq.com have developed online e-business strategies with public B2C sites. However, others such as JadoPado.com and Alshop.com have not fully taken advantage of Internet to create a virtual store or market where consumers can buy products online. These online companies have not leveraged this idea, and they remain in closed consumer mark (Barschel, 2007).
This paper reviews the traditional companies operating as bricks-and-clicks firms, as well as dot.com companies, and selected websites for companies in this industry. It also provides an interesting analysis and comparison on how these companies are leveraging the Internet today to expand their business, increase marketing or sales and enhance customer service transactions with end-consumers (B2C) (Barschel, 2007).
Examples of selected companies that have developed online e-business strategies with public B2C sites
1. Amazon (URL: ttp:///)
2. Shopify (URL: /)
3. Souq (URL: http://uae.souq.com/ae-en/)
4. JadoPado (URL: https://jadopado.com/)
5. Alshop (URL: /) (Bygrave et.al, 2004).
Reasons why I have selected the above five companies
I have selected the above companies because they have developed online e-business strategies with public B2C sites. They can give a clear indication of how online merchant companies can use Internet and current technology to expand their business. The Amazon, Souq and Shopify sites have taken advantage of the internet and leveraged the Internet technology to create a website with the best-developed graphics and animation. These sites are also customer friendly and secure market platforms with a sense of community. However, for shopify.com, the site download is not easy compared to Amazon and Souq (Bygrave, Zacharakis, Bygrave, & Gale, 2004).
Analysis of each selected company
JadoPado and Alshop.com lack the sense of community. The sites are designed just to showcase the products without putting in mind how to attract the buyers to the site through graphics, animations or easy download (Codita, 2011).
Amazon and Souq sites have a good feel and attractive look. The sites are well designed putting into consideration the 7C’s and the customer or consumer requirements. This kind of design aims to expand their business and reach out to more online consumers or target online visitors and convert them to customers. Their sites are friendly, easy to navigate; downloads are easy, and all payments are secure. They understand how they can attract customers and offer that great business interactive platform with their customers (Bygrave, Zacharakis, Bygrave, & Gale, 2004).
Shopify site is also good and attractive to target consumers, but the only major problem is that downloads are difficult. Shopify has integrated the 7C’s and employed many e-marketing techniques to attract customers and increase sales (Barschel, 2007).
JadoPado and Alshop face myriad challenges in terms of design and internet security. These sites have not also fully integrated the 7C’s. The site doesn’t feel good or complete, the design graphics and animations are weak, and that is why the number of online traffic visiting their site is low (Barschel, 2007).
How the companies have leveraged internet and developed online e-business strategies with public B2C sites
Business-to-consumer sales involve customers gathering information, purchasing physical goods, information goods and receiving products over an electronic network after making payments online. Examples of B2C business models are the online retailing companies such as Amazon.com, alshop.com, eBay.com, shopify.com, Beyond.com, and souq.com. Other B2C examples involving information goods are E-Trade and abudhabifilmfestival.ae/en/ in Middle East where consumers get information and purchase products and services online. Products are delivered manually or electronically via the physical address provided (Barschel, 2007).
The advantage of B2C e-commerce is that it reduces transactions costs by increasing consumer access to information and allowing consumers to purchase a product or services they are looking for at the most competitive price in the market. Online merchant sites such as Amazon or UAE based Souq.com use B2C model as a means of reducing market entry barriers. For example, the cost of putting up and maintaining a Website is cheaper than installing a “brick-and-mortar” structure for a company (Barschel, 2007).
For sites dealing with information goods such as alshop.com, B2C e-commerce saves them from factoring in the extra cost of a physical distribution network to consumers. Thus, they can maximize on profitability as well as meeting the consumer demands (Barschel, 2007).
How these B2C companies are leveraging the Internet today?
B2C companies can leverage the internet today through B2C marketing; this is about reaching consumers with an informative and attractive message. The contents of the message should create an interest in the viewer, and then to translate that interest into a sale. To accomplish these goals, B2C companies’ marketers must first gain a number of different marketing skills and identify the consumer needs (Bygrave et.al, 2004).
Effective B2C marketing entails developing an understanding of the consumer through market research practices. Market research helps companies such as shopify.com or Alibaba.com effectively acquires a marketing brand that can paint a picture consumer preferences, needs, and habits of a consumer market segment or demands.
The most effective marketing tools these companies should increase online traffic and convert these visitors into customers or sales are through the use of social media. With the social media, the content message can reach a million of viewers. They should also use backlinks to advertise and market their companies to consumers; this can be done by posting articles with backlinks on blogs, social sites or forums. The backlinks will direct visitors to the merchant site (Bygrave et.al, 2004).
An explainer video is also an effective marketing tool online merchant companies should use. Explainer video is a superficially cookie cutter shorts that pop up all over the web pages. They are short trending online marketing videos often found on a landing page, websites, homepages or popular product website. The advantage is that, the conversion rates for sites with an explainer videos increases more than 100%. Great Explainer videos are fantastic assets for a business and online marketing. Therefore, it should be engaging, sweet and powerful to the viewer (Bygrave, Zacharakis, Bygrave, & Gale, 2004).
Describe and compare the ways that these companies’ websites address the 7Cs
Merchant sites such as souq.com and Amazon.com use B2C model and 7C’s applications to provide an interface for businesses directly to their consumers. For some companies such as shopify.com or uCommerce (uCommerce.com) that run a chain of retail stores, B2C is one of the most important pieces of their marketing and Internet strategy. However, some companies are not much concerned about B2C, and they have already employed third parties to distribute, market, and sell their products (Bygrave, Zacharakis, Bygrave, & Gale, 2004).
UAE-based online merchant Souq (http://uae.souq.com/ae-en/) is one of the most prominent players in the B2C E-Commerce market in the Middle East. Souq is the unbeaten leader in UAE and has received over a $100,000,000 of investment. In addition, their business is predicted to boom, as internet connections spread and the consumer population becomes more familiar with online shopping (Codita, 2011).
Souq.com has the highest conversion rates in Middle East because the company took into consideration the most important factors for online consumers or shoppers such as pricing, easy site n...