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204 Part 1 Introduction
8 Downloads
Download music
Listen to music
Watch online videos.
9 Interaction
Connect with my friends
Communicate with others
Instant message others I know.
10 Search
Get answers to specific questions
Find information I can trust.
11 Exploration
Find interesting web pages
Explore new sites
Surf for fun.
12 News
Read about current events and news
Read entertainment news.
Web advertisers and site owners can use this framework to review the suitability of facilities
to meet these needs.
Purchased online
Increasing numbers of consumers are now purchasing online, but research on behaviour
suggests it takes time for individuals to build up confidence to purchase. Frequency of pur-
chase is also increased through adoption of the broadband Internet. Figure 4.4 shows that
initially Internet users may restrict themselves to searching for information or using e-mail.
As their confidence grows their use of the Internet for purchase is likely to increase with a
move to higher-value items and more-frequent purchases. This is often coupled with the use
of broadband. For this reason, there is still good potential for e-retail sales, even if the per-
centage of the population with access to the Internet plateaus.
You can see from Figure 4.4 that Internet users take longer to become confident to purchase
more expensive and more complex products. Many of us will initially have purchased a book
or DVD online, but today we buy more expensive electronic products or financial services.
Figure 4.5 shows that the result is a dramatic difference in online consumer behaviour for dif-
ferent products according to their price and complexity. For some products such as travel and
cinema and theatre tickets, the majority buy online, while for many others such as clothes and
insurance fewer people purchase online. However, consistent with the trend in Figure 4.5, there
is now less difference between the products than there was two or three years ago. The figure
suggests that the way companies should use digital technologies for marketing their products
will vary markedly according to product type. In some, such as cars and complex financial
products such as mortgages, the main role of online marketing will be to support research,
while for other standardized products like books and CDs there will be a dual role for the web
in supporting research and enabling purchase.
The extent of adoption also varies significantly by country according to other political,
economic and cultural factors. Table 4.4 shows that there is a marked difference between the
amount spent online in different countries which will affect revenue projections for site in
different countries. It also shows the potential for further growth in e-commerce in countries
where e-commerce adoption has been lower.