Social Presence Through The Web Interface And Its Influence On The Shopping Experience

This report focuses on technology as a macro and its effects towards the environment, society as well as the impacts technology has towards consumers. Online shopping has many disadvantages and marketers are researching to find out how the online shopping experience with the help of new technology can be better for the consumer’s enjoyment.

First of all, online shopping is so convenient that people are getting used to purchasing products on it than that in offline stores. It plays a big role in saving time and human energy in daily life. These days, people, especially women, are becoming busier every day not only with their work at offices but also with their household chores and families making spending time in shopping malls a difficult task for them to do. Meanwhile, online shopping allows customers to buy products with any devices from home either from far distances or any kinds of products from food to clothes. Moreover, many online stores are 24/7 available and the products are even delivered right in front of their houses, which probably help buyers’ lives more comfortable and easier (Sinha & Singh 2016, p. 64). Customers are no more wasting time on tiring and annoying queues, especially on some occasions like Black Friday or Boxing Day. Shopping online is even more favourable because it enables customers’ privacy. There is something that users often find very ashamed to buy in front of others’ eyes. Consequently, online stores appear as the best way for them to buy those kinds of products confidentially by sitting at home and browsing the Internet, which traditional shops can never have. Therefore, not only does online shopping give customers privacy in shopping but it also helps them feel more pleasant and compatible to satisfy their personal needs (Sinha & Singh 2016, p. 64-66).

Online purchasing is becoming more and more practical thing for contemporary customer. It is explained by high internet penetration in every country, lower cost than in retail network, door to door delivery. Internet plays an important role nowadays; therefore it creates a new market, which sometimes is quite difficult to measure. Online shopping is different from the B&M shopping due to the fact that there is no physical presence of goods, from other standpoint internet is able to sell way more services and motivation and decision making process directly connected to the feedbacks.

The trend toward shopping using the Internet is growing faster than expected (Cramer, 2014). Since Internet has become popular medium for people to shop, more companies then launched online shopping platform. With this new platform, they were able to do sales directly to their customer.

The idea behind this study is of great significance because e-commerce (online shopping) has grown tremendously since the turn of the century. It has shaped the way people do shopping for the most part.

Today, technology had a lot of useful, there are too many choices to buy goods Because of the fast development of innovation, business associations have changed over from the customary technique for pitching products to an electronic strategy for offering merchandise. In most cases, we should encourage people to use online shopping (OLS) instead of in store shopping because online shopping is costs less, is more convenient and save time. Online shopping is the first and the most choices for the most people who like access much stuff on their home without wasting their time and energy. The other benefit of online shopping is the goods that found online is too cheap special for the prime members. For example, Amazon has a lot of discount for the prime members, especially for the student prime membership has six months free for the first time and has more than 50 percent discount from the regular prime membership price.

In recent years Online shopping has become a major trend in every market around the world. Consumers have increased the use of Online

E-marketing is defined as “achieving marketing objectives through the use of electronic communications technology” (Chaffey et al, 2014). The purpose of this essay is to discuss how the growth of the internet is altering the relationship between consumers and brands and also the opportunities that are now available to retail marketers. Key points that will be focussed on in this essay are; the characteristics of the internet and their implications, communication models available to marketers, the market environment online and the overall impact the internet has on consumer behaviour.

Whereas many past stage models of Web design involved a linear approach toward the development of small business web presence, Burgess’ model builds off of Anghern’s (1997) approach focusing on virtual spaces that websites should occupy including: a virtual information space where information is passed from business to customer; virtual communication space (place to communicate with customers); virtual distribution space (automated delivery of goods); and a virtual transaction space (automated orders and payments). One of the fundamental differences between Burgess’s Web Presence Pyramid Model and previous models is the inclusion of small business presence on third party websites. In a 2012 study on the effectiveness of the web presence

Online shopping provides consumers with and experience of sensation. Making payments or shopping can be done everywhere and anywhere as long as there is an internet connection. The internet allows customers to do shopping online anytime and anywhere, which means customer can browse and shopping online 24-hours a day, 7 days a week from home or office, which attracts some time-starved shoppers come to Internet for save time to searching products in physical store. Additionally, Internet offers some good ways to save money and time. For example, shoppers do not need go out to the physical store and thus there is no transportation

Online shopping is considered to be more time saving (Khalifaand Limayem, 2003) (Gurvinder and Chen, 2004). Therefore, online shopping has become an important consideration for consumers as they tend to want to get their items quickly without bargaining on price or quality plus consumers can order a variety of products via the Internet (Yomnak,

We can say, that nowadays online marketing is the power which drives the clear majority of global business. Looking back in last ten years we can say that online marketing gradual, but fairly quickly shifting traditional marketing and change in general the way in which business and market communication operates and develops. It is the future. The basic concept underlying this research project is to finding out and critical appraisal of the various aspects of online marketing by showing its advantages over traditional and his impact on customer`s behaviour. They will be discussed also issues related to online shopping, such as personal security and privacy, high costs regarding the provision of e-business and distrust of some customers on the use of new technologies for shopping and payment. The purpose is to find out exactly where is the balance between the use of technology and human perception of sanity in that process.

Consumers have now more alternatives and a greater selection of products and information. They benefit from higher price transparency which is two edged for the companies. However, there are new limitations of electronic shopping for consumers compared to the bricks and mortal retailing. The shopping experience, habits and the way to evaluate the choice of product is different. On the internet one is not able to use all five senses like touching, smelling, tasting, seeing and hearing. There is less personal attention for the buyer and one can not buy with cash money. The fact that consumers are able to search for more information on the products and prices has also the disadvantage that the information is very broad and often not practical. People get “lost in hyperspace” (Van Baal, 2006). Another critical for breakthrough of online retailing is privacy and security concerns.

Despite the heavy expansion and encouraged viewpoint towards the advancement of the internet shopping in the future, unfavourable features are also becoming regularly attached to it. Consequently, though this process seems to be very user-friendly, there are a number of risks attached to it. For instance, Internet provides very insufficient protection for the use carrying out the credit card transactions as well as sharing personal information of the consumers (Pallab, 1996). Another concern of consumers is about buying a product without touching and testing it physically from an unknown vendor. Thus, consumers perceive some amount of risk while buying products online. Alternatively, it can be said that buyers may worry about the quality of the purchased product whether it will work as it is intended to be or not. Also, the effort made in doing shopping and money spent, all can go in waste. Various researches have been carried out on e-commerce and it has found various elements that has developed this inconsistency. Among all, trust of the consumer has been found to be of the major concern (Wang and Emurian, 2005).

2. Theoretical backgrounds 2.1 Internet shopping mall Internet shopping allows the purchaser to search and survey the information on service or product by accessing internet shopping site through internet in remote place instead of retail shop as a physical space, and then enables to select or order the goods, and ultimately pay the money using credit card to purchase the goods/services (Ruth, 2000). It is defined as the collective concept of on-line shops having the products in a variety of lines where advertisement and exhibition of the products for internet shopping is carried out through electronic shopping mall, server is equipped with data like prices, structures, characteristics of various products, webpage provides information on the product together with multi-media information (Hoffman and Novak, 1996). Internet shopping mall is characterized by connecting producer directly with final end-user while traditional off-line market comprises four steps from producer through final consumer. In addition, it is rarely restricted by time/space, and easy to acquire information from customer. Traditional commercial transaction requires a large amount of investment to maintain fixed assets and human resource, while e-commerce requires investment mainly for system installation only. Besides, in terms of