Benefits and Risks of E-commerce

This assignment delves into the world of e-commerce, analyzing its benefits for consumers such as convenience and time-saving. It also examines potential risks associated with online shopping, emphasizing the importance of data security and privacy. The report highlights the advantages of e-commerce over traditional retail while cautioning consumers about sharing personal information online.

Internet Marketing in Business

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1 Role of internet marketing.....................................................................................................1
P2 Use of internet marketing in M&S Ltd..................................................................................2
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
P3 Benefits to customers of a business using internet marketing...............................................3
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................4
P4 Benefits to the business of using internet marketing within the marketing mix....................4
P5 Role of internet marketing in making efficient, effective and successful business of M&S.6
P6 Challenges of globalisation faced by M&S Ltd when using the internet marketing.............6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Internet marketing, or online marketing, refers to advertising and marketing efforts that
use the Web and email to drive direct sales via electronic commerce, in addition to sales leads
from Web sites or emails. Internet marketing and online advertising efforts are typically used in
conjunction with traditional types of advertising such as radio, television, newspapers and
magazines (Internet marketing. 2017). Internet marketing can also be broken down into more
specialized areas such as Web marketing, email marketing and social media marketing. This
report is based on the topic of Internet marketing in business and is on the case study of Mark &
Spencer in which roles internet will be discussed for the growth of company.
TASK 1
P1 Role of internet marketing
Internet marketing has obviously been talked and written about a lot over the last ten
years and more. One of the aspects of most of these discussions that fascinates is that Internet
Marketing is usually talked about as if it is just a further marketing and sales channel, in line
with TV, Radio, Print media etc. This is very intriguing, because this is both right and wrong at
the same time (Leung, Xue and Bai, 2015).
The Internet obviously enables M&S to advertise and sell its products and services. For
advertising, think banner ads (very reminiscent of print ads, by the way). Obviously, people can
buy things online. An innovative idea can go a long way toward creating a successful small
business. But ultimately, a company can't be profitable unless it can convince consumers to try
its products. The Internet is a channel that businesses can use to advertise, connect with
customers and make sales. The right Internet strategy can play a significant part in the successful
marketing and sales of products. Web Advertising: Marketing is one of the vehicles businesses use to attract customers.
The Internet provides a platform to place advertisements with the potential to reach
millions of consumers around the world. Several advertising options are available on the
Web (Fawzy and Dworski, 2010). The Web as a Sales Channel: The Internet also gives retailers an additional channel to
sell products. Thirty years ago, a retail store without a physical storefront was all but
unheard of. Today, you can buy almost anything you want on the Internet by visiting a
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company's website. This lets you sell more products without the cost of having to rent out
and stock additional retail floor space.
 Market Research: The Internet can be used to gather consumer data through Web-based
surveys, email surveys and online tools that let you track user activities and preferences.
P2 Use of internet marketing in M&S Ltd.
Marks & Spencer is looking to make sure its brand is sending customers the same
message whether they shop in-store or online or sees its advertising on TV or mobile as it puts its
ad account up for pitch (Chaffey, 2010). Company's marketing boss, explains: “We’re on a
mission to put our customers at the heart of everything we do and it’s vital we offer rich
engagement across all their experiences with M&S – from in-store, to digital and mobile, to TV
advertising.”
That statement sets out the M&S strategy. Earlier this month company expanded
Bousquet-Chavanne’s remit, giving him responsibility for customer, marketing and M&S.com as
it looks to more closely align its stores, online and advertising. And in February it ended its
relationship with AKQA, which worked on its digital activity.
M&S is under growing pressure to turn around its clothing business after nine
consecutive quarters of decline. Sales improved slightly in the second quarter due to internet
marketing, falling by 1.3 per cent, compared to a 1.6 per cent drop in the prior period. Bolland
said company is seeing a “positive trend” as the retailer integrates marketing, the in-store
experience and its new collections. Its new store layout, which positions clothes around capsule
ranges such as dresses, coats and tailoring is now available in 70 stores, with a further roll out
planned for next year.
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Bolland said he is also working to boost perceptions of the company brand around style
and “fashion ability” by working more closely with the fashion press, inking a deal with London
Fashion Week for a M&S catwalk and launching a studio in the London School of Fashion to
give it early access to market trends.
TASK 2
P3 Benefits to customers of a business using internet marketing
The amount of benefits that consumers can receive when purchasing and receiving goods
or services over the internet are numerous. One of the biggest benefits that consumer can receive
by using the internet to purchase goods or services over the internet is that they can contact the
company themselves over a certain product or if they are curios on a certain aspect of the
company (Leung, Xue and Bai, 2015). This can be done in many different ways such as reviews
and comments with other consumers that use the company to purchase their goods and services
or they can directly talk to the company and e-mail their customer service etc. Internet users are
growing more and more every day and this means that more and more users will use the internet
for shopping, this should enhance the amount of benefits going to e-commerce users. Various
other benefits can be like: Price transparency: Price transparency is when the company allows the consumer to see
the same product or serviced offered by more than one company. also for it to be price
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transparency there cant be any intermediary this is a middle man who brings the two
business parties together (Berisha-Namani, 2013). Responsive transactions: Responsive transactions defines how quick a consumer can
purchase the product from a company off their website. Responsive transactions should
normally be extremely quick process, this means the time spent purchasing a product
won't take a long time.
 Dynamic Pricing: In dynamic pricing both the purchaser and the seller will have to know
the price of the offer the buyer is putting in, but for it to be a successful offer the
purchaser will have to increase the amount of money form the prior bid, the purchaser
can offer as much money as they want because in things such as auction houses there are
no set offer limit.
TASK 3
P4 Benefits to the business of using internet marketing within the marketing mix
Internet Marketing Mix for M&S Ltd. will analyse the strategies that it has adopted in
order to fetch in more customers for the company. This is described as 4Ps whose brittle
substances are Product, Price, Place, promotion. Product: M&S Ltd. has implemented a unique strategy in terms of product marketing to
the customers. In Internet marketing, the foremost hurdle is that of the lack of tangibility
of products. Hereby, the companies need to adopt techniques that can seem to engage the
target. In this case, target is everyone from the age of 15-60; being a family product, there
is a high possibility to be visited by a large variety of age groups (Williams and et.al.,
2010). Price: In Internet Marketing, a customer tends to perceive a mental image of the products
by seeing then tasting. Moreover, being denoted as a reputed brand, the company also
faces certain risks of psychological barriers before setting up a price for the products. In
addition to this, it should offer a price that is comparable to the prices of similar products
offered by other companies. Place: This is a great and perhaps, one of the most accessible places to shop for the
products; however, at M&S Ltd UK, it is more of an information provider than being a
shopping destination. Through this, they can definitely take a step ahead in forming a
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community of educated customers combining to form the loyal base of customers
(Sozinova and Fokina, 2015).
 Promotion: Banner advertising and direct mails can be effective methods to promote the
products to the target customers. Direct marketing has been in use by the company to a
large extent which considers its reputed brand image in the market. Moreover, it has
initiated different promotional campaigns that are embedded and adjusted within the
website structure.
(Source:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/a2/f4/54/a2f4540924240be00adb0eec75266349.
jpg)
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Illustration 1: Marketing Mix

P5 Role of internet marketing in making efficient, effective and successful business of M&S
There are various role of internet marketing, which provides helps in business to be
effective, efficient and success. Customer reach: Customer reach will benefit M&S as they are able to reach a wide
target audience from their website by shipping the product brought around the European
Union (Andreopoulou and et.al., 2014). Knowledge of competition: Using internet marketing within the marketing mix allows
M&S Ltd to have a greater knowledge of their competitors as they are able to access their
websites and other websites provide information on competitors which they are able to
access and read. Psycho graphics (Personalities): The benefits that psycho graphics gives M&S Ltd are
that they are able to look at each individual personality in detail and then look at how
they can reach and target each personality specifically.
 Advertising: Because M&S Ltd are an online business they are able to use adverting in
many different ways from emails to banner adverts. This is a good way of advertising as
it is very cost effective for company compared to if they was to create leaflets or a TV
advert. This is a great way to target specific groups of customers and even individual
customers with offers that relate to them so that they are more likely to shop with them
(Armstrong and et.al., 2015).
 Web Analytics: Using internet marketing allows M&S Ltd to be able to see what their
customers habits are when they visit their website. For example they could see how many
visitors have clicked on which link or product, they can also see the demand for each
product and what areas of the website are attracting the most customers.
P6 Challenges of globalisation faced by M&S Ltd when using the internet marketing
When focussing on competition through global website visibility, many challenges are
faced by businesses using internet marketing. Although many challenges occur businesses have
the opportunity to help overcome them. The challenges that business may have to deal with can
include situations such as: Keeping pace with market and technological change: Technology is always changing or
updating to work better or maybe to look better, to attract more people etc. Nowadays
technology is used nearly everywhere and has become very popular. Computers are one
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technology that is used for many, many reasons by millions of people throughout the
world (Shukla, 2010). Problems of managing overload of market feedback: Businesses that are situated online
receive more customer feedback than any other businesses. Feedback can include
compliments, complaints, and opinions on something; basically it can be about anything a
customer desires to let the business know. Feedback is a very good way of marketing and
most business appreciate customer’s opinions and ideas and use it to their full advantage
to satisfy a customer. Security of site information and payment systems: This issue is a big one, as security
online is important. There are many unreliable sites that contain many viruses, hacker
access etc. Online businesses are faced with this concern all the time as it involves
customer’s personal details and also the businesses itself (Roberts and Zahay, 2012).
 Low customer confidence in payment security: This is because some customers are
unable to believe that they are giving their money to the right business etc. Customers are
concerned about purchasing from the internet as they have to give out vital and most
importantly heir personal details that can lead to other problems such as theft.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that consumer who use e-commerce websites
to purchase products receive amazing benefits that they couldn't if they didn't use the internet and
went to the store. The major benefit is that it is extremely time-consuming and there is a lot less
effort required because they only have to click a few buttons and enter some details in order to
purchase their new products whilst the process could take long amount of time if they went to the
store.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Roberts, M.L. and Zahay, D., 2012. Internet marketing: Integrating online and offline strategies.
Cengage Learning.
Shukla, T., 2010. Factors affecting'Internet marketing'campaigns with reference to viral and
permission marketing. IUP Journal of Management Research. 9(1). p.26.
Armstrong, G., and et.al., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.
Andreopoulou, Z., and et.al., 2014. Internet marketing for sustainable development and rural
tourism. International Journal of Business Information Systems. 16(4). pp.446-461.
Sozinova, A.A. and Fokina, O.V., 2015. Special aspects of studying the internet as a marketing
communication channel of the service industry. Mediterranean Journal of Social
Sciences. 6(4). p.139.
Williams, M.J., and et.al., 2010. Internet marketing channel optimization. U.S. Patent
Application 12/707,111.
Berisha-Namani, M., 2013. Information technology, internet, and marketing. International
Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies. 4(1). p.103.
Leung, X.Y., Xue, L. and Bai, B., 2015. Internet marketing research in hospitality and tourism: a
review and journal preferences. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality
Management. 27(7). pp.1556-1572.
Chaffey, D., 2010. Applying organisational capability models to assess the maturity of digital-
marketing governance. Journal of Marketing Management. 26(3-4). pp.187-196.
Fawzy, L. and Dworski, L., 2010. Emerging business online: global markets and the power of
B2B internet marketing. FT Press.
Online
Internet marketing. 2017. [Online]. Available
through:<http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/I/internet_marketing.html>. [Accessed on
16th August 2017].
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