Discussion and Response E-Commerce and Mobile Technologies
Progress and advancement in technology have provided many benefits and advantages to all kinds of organizations. Retail organizations are also greatly impacted by e-commerce and mobile computing and have many advantages over traditional business.
E-Commerce is online retail where customers can buy, and organization can sell their products over the internet. I want to recommend a retail company to build an online e-commerce website to sell their product online. Online retail business or e-commerce has many great advantages, which will help this traditional retail entity expand its business. An online e-commerce website can access by the user from any corner of the world via the internet. This opens up a great opportunity and customer base for the company. The company is facing a business decline due to heavy competition in their local area. Expanding business geographically company can have more customers, more orders, and more sales and revenue. Apart from that, it can provide old customers with many advanced services as well. It is straightforward to compare prices online. The company does not need to open a new store in a different geographical location. Companies can maximize the use of their inventory and warehouse. The company can start selling a product online and provide goods delivery to the limited places at the initial stage and can later expand its operation (Niranjanamurthy et al., 2013). Once the company can establish an e-commerce website, the company can create a mobile application and leverage mobile computing benefits. Mobile with the internet allows users to shop any time without going to store or limitation of accessing a computer with internet.
Once the company sets up an online website or mobile application; it can invest in digital marketing. Companies can promote themselves as a business over the internet to provide online service to their existing customers and catch new potential customers' attention. The company can use search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is an important part of digital marketing, and if used the right way, it helps generate and gather quality and quantity traffic towards your website (Enaceanu, 2010). SEO requires very little investment and is autonomous and self-funded once set up properly. Apart from the search engine, the company can also do marketing on social media and promote their website and make it visible to attract more customers. Many social media like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest provide a platform for the business to target a specific audience. An audience looking for some particular products or being interested in knowing more about it.
The retail company has established an e-commerce website and mobile application and is doing the right digital marketing and generating quality internet traffic towards its website. With all this technological support, the company gathers valuable data regarding its customer, products, business, and market. The company has a better hold of its data. The company can use this data by implementing data analytics practice and gaining valuable insights and better visibility over the business. The huge amount of data collected by companies is known as Big Data, and data analytics can extract valuable insights from Big Data to thrive and progress. Companies can use Data visualization to understand past data and predictive analytics to predict future trends. Specifically, in the retail industry, the company can use big data analytics and can perform cost optimization by insights derived from data and generate optimum price for a product, Customer segmentation, and targeting by dividing similar customer into a group and implementing a specific strategy for them, Inventory management, Customer sentimental analysis by assessing customer feedback (Ridge, Johnston & O'Donovan, 2015). More advanced technology like machine learning and artificial intelligence provides cutting edge and timely information delivery and accurate decision-making guidelines.
This way, Traditional companies can utilize e-commerce and mobile computing advantages and sustain themselves in the industry for a longer period.
Reference:
1. Niranjanamurthy, M., Kavyashree, N., Jagannath, S. & Dharmendra, C. (2013). Analysis of E-Commerce and M-Commerce: Advantages, Limitations and Security Issues. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(6), 2360-2370.
2. Enaceanu, A. (2010). SEO Techniques for Business Websites, Database Systems Journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 1(1), pages 23-26, September.
3. Ridge M., Johnston, K. A. & O'Donovan, B. (2015). The use of big data analytics in the retail industries in South Africa. African Journal of Business Management, 9(19), 688 - 703.