Positive and Negative Aspects of Selling Products Online and Offline

Integrated Professional
Skills

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Compare and contrast between the positive and negative aspects of services and products
being sold online and offline..................................................................................................3
Discuss the challenges and measures of security and privacy that individuals and business
take when they go online........................................................................................................5
Compare and contrast online services on the basis of different aspects.................................6
Digital communication skills..................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Technology plays an important role as it directly impact on the choice and preferences of
customers. Nowadays, technology is changing rapidly and impact on the overall buying
behaviour as customers like to consume and buy those products as well as services, which is new
or innovative in market. The companies are now shifted to online offerings due to innovation in
technology and preference of customers. Providing the goods and service though online medium
help company to reach maximum number of people and enhance their productivity and
profitability level. For the present report, Marks and Spencer is taken into consideration. The
company specialize in offering quality clothes and food products. It offer product in more than
12 countries by both offline as well as online medium. Its managers make use of advanced
technology so that they can offer new and quality products in market that help in attaining
competitive advantage at marketplace. The report covers positiveand negative aspect of selling
products. In addition to this, the challenges faced by company in offering product online is
described in the report.
MAIN BODY
Compare and contrast between the positive and negative aspects of services and products being
sold online and offline.
At this world of digitalization, where people are more moving towards setting up their
business online as they saves much costs at the online platforms. Every business now and then is
setting up their operations at online platform. As in the case with marks and Spencer the
company operates at both online and offline base. The company does show all its products at
online platform which enable the people to look at the products and make a purchase. There are
many positive aspects to run the business online and these are as follows:
Global access: The online platform sites help the customers and the business to get a global
access for the site. Here the customers can visit the site 24 * 7. Online platforms allow
flexibilities to the customers so that they do not have to visit to the stores and they can place
order irrespective to the places or time they are putting order. Websites at online platform has a
merit that they can be get visited at any hour and from any place (Sonck, Kuiper And de Haan,
2012). Now the people do not have to make time from their busy schedule to go for stores or

malls to purchase the products. They can avail the services and but the products through online
now.
Improved customer service through greater flexibility: The business can give more services
through flexibility in their operations. Some sites has the options for giving gifts in which the
customers can buy the products to gift it to someone else. The company would wrap that product
for that person and would make it very much presentable for him. Apart from this, the businesses
also provide the delivery services in which the products would get delivered at their door steps.
Cost savings: Business can save a huge cost when they operate at online platform. Their cost for
warehouse, store, work force, store electricity, maintenance cost and other cost has been saved
through this (Van Deursen and van, 2014). When a business would be able to saves its cost, the
profits margin for the business automatically would get increased.
Faster delivery of products: The customers experience faster delivery for their products.
Normally the customer would get its ordered products within 3-4 days which is already pre-
informed to the customers. The customers also have the opinion of one day or next day delivery
for which they have to pay extra price as a delivery charges.
Less paper waste: The online platform has helped the society into the reduction of paper work
which has saved the paper to a very extent. All the work has been performed electronically now
which was done earlier at papers. Also maintaining a paper work is a tough job especially when a
business has a lot of transactions in a particular day. The same case applies with marks and
Spencer. The company saved a lot of paper work via launching them at online platform sites.
Apart from positive aspects there are many negative aspects also which a business faces
by launching their business at online platforms. Some of them are as follows:
Privacy: When an individual places the order at the online platform, he enters his personal
information in it to get the item or the product delivered to him. Some people also choose
prepaid method where they paid for the item via their banks or money wallet, this activity has a
demerit that this personal and private information about the customer which he should not have
to share with anybody get saves. This information can get hacked by anybody and can be used by
somebody else. This is always a huge disadvantage of online shopping.
Price wars: As now all the businesses are coming at the online platform they all can cut their
prices or cost which benefits them as they can now provide the products or the services at lower
prices to the customers. But this has started creating a war of prices where the business provides