The use of internet for shopping has massive prospective.
Shopping online allows the consumer to shop on a 24hour bases and throughout all the year as they wished in any location. It gives the consumer more opportunities and permits them to have speedy judgment. Furthermore, it gives the opportunity to network, swap facts and to contrast experiences with other customers in the electronic village. (Understanding consumer trust in shopping).
From the customer’s remark, internet usage reduces the cost of travelling around, gives rooms for selection of producers, delivers lower price products and services also it increases convenience. The reduction in cost gives firms opportunity to extend is electronic services and paved ways for new entrants into the market. It is an advantage for firms to be acquainted to consumer adoption behaviour. As the adoption of their brand increases profitability as more customer patronise their products. The internet opens fresh opportunities for checking for information before shopping.As Anna Jensen (2007) argued low search cost affects the use of shopping on line.
Remuneration that is guaranteed in terms of the large amounts of information obtainable and autonomy from before bodily contact with sales staff has been found to affect the use of the Internet shopping. Purchase is being made the customer has to consider the variety of risk related with the purchase. The different types of risk are perceived or anticipated as suggested by Soopramanien, Fildes and Robertson 2007. (Consumer decision making, E-commerce and perceived risk).
Research by Ernest and Young (2000) suggested that internet users buy online because of the choice of product they have, the competitive prices and the simplicity of use but they are concerned about the lack of opportunity of not having a look at the product before buying, also they are concerned with the safety of their information and the privacy of their card. (Bush et al, 1998). The main doubts is about the likelihood of their purchased being intercepted by someone else which invariably will lead to their personal details be manipulated by another person.Clearly with changing customer altitudes in the internet environment organisation needs to rethink ways to improve online shopping and gain profits. One efficient way of doing this is by customer retention strategies, introducing marketing initiative that would increase customer’s satisfaction which should lead to a long term relationship known as customer loyalty. (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS, issue 3, volume 2, 2008).
The most important issue about branding in this era is that most products are technically almost identical.Hence organisation as to device means of separating their product from other competitors. As cited in a recent article by Thjomoe, H,M, 2008 “ the overall consequence of branding is a open image , a traits that may be vital than many technical truth about the product”. (Journal of Brand Management Vol 16 No 1-2, 105-109,).
For an organisation to gain a high-quality reputation is to make an effort to be what they are longing to become in the future. (www. rockproducts. com).
Thus every organisation must be able to add value as Keller(93)argued a brand is a product, but one that adds other magnitude that differentiate it in some way from other products designed to satisfy the same need. (brand cheating). In view of this, to remain competitive organisation needs to be able to differentiate their product and services within their competitors. A way of the way of achieving competitive advantage is by branding. In view of the above problems and issues the research questions would look into the following based on the problems stated above.
