What Is eBusiness? Essay Example

X Ltd. is a shoe company that has retail outlets distributed all over the country. It serves customers who visit the stores on a daily basis. The stores have become so popular such that they have attracted customers from bordering countries. On a normal day the stores are so busy such that the employees close two hours later than the normal working hours. They are even forced to send away some customers who come when they are closing. Next to the major store is another shoe company that end up getting the customers sent away by X Ltd. This has not been happening until lately because normally all the customers sent away because of coming very late in the evening after the closing hours would come the following day. It has therefore been investigated on how this company manages to grab some of X’s customers and still manages not to overwork its personnel and results have shown that the company has started using e-business. E-business is defined by McGuigan (2009) as a word used to express the idea of businesses that are run on the internet or those that improve their productivity by utilizing the internet technologies. Even from the word ‘e-business’, it can easily be noted that the word stands for electronic business which brings about the concept of the use of electronics or what is generally known as computers in business. These computers are then used to access the internet and this is where the term e-business brings another meaning of internet business. Techno Brain (2006) describes an e-business as an important part in the overall business strategy. It emphasizes on e-business taking advantage of internet technologies to help all the stakeholders rather than just enabling the existing systems to the web. In this case X Ltd would really do great if it adapted the internet to its current marketing operations. This could be done by first ensuring that the company has enough computers in all the stores which should all be internet-enabled. The next step would be to create a website where all details about the company would be described. For instance, they can describe the history of X ltd, the location of the stores, the products offered and other details that a potential stakeholder would require. The other thing that could be done is enabling purchase of goods through the internet to reduce the current queues and overworking of the employees. Things would be easier if they would offer delivery or even shipping services where the customer does not have to visit the stores.

This conversion to e-business would contribute to the need to change the current marketing strategies of X ltd. The main change here would be converting from normal marketing to internet marketing. Internet marketing would create a broader scope where the audience or the number of customers would increase drastically. This is a result of the nature of the internet which enables instant interaction between the company and the public. Digital customer data can also be managed using internet marketing not forgetting the management of customer relationship. The other strategy would be advertising through the internet after a close research of its competitors. Since they are new in the internet market, it would be tactical if they first offer a lower price for their products compared to their competitors so that they have the competitive advantage. This strategy aims at penetrating a market and they can resume to normal prices or even higher prices after gaining publicity.

The other marketing strategy would be to retain that customer that company X worked hard to acquire such that they even lowered prices to woo them. Strategies have to be designed to make sure that even after hiking the prices, this customer will still remain. Some of the things that could be done here include offering more services compared to the competitors for example after-sale services and letting customers give suggestions towards improvement of the products. This way X Ltd will always be the leading company in shoe industry.

References

McGuigan B. 30^th Aug, 2009. What is eBusiness. Retrieved on Oct 15, 2009 from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-ebusiness.htm

Tecno Brain (2006). EBusiness. Retrieved on Oct 15, 2009 from  http://www.technobrainltd.com/EBusiness.aspx