Adapting to New Technology Including Ecommerce and Social Media Platforms

This report discusses the positive and negative impact of adopting new technology including e-commerce and social media platforms. It covers the benefits of e-commerce and social media marketing, staff-free and cashier-less stores, and face recognition technology. It also highlights the challenges of high investment, time-consuming training, lack of face-to-face communication, expansion of fraud news, and the need to hire new employees. The report includes examples from Morrison and other retailing companies.

Adapting to new
technology including e-
commerce and social
media platforms

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Positive impact of adopting new technologies including e-commerce and social media
platform..................................................................................................................................3
Negative impact of adopting new technologies including e-commerce and social media
platform..................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCE...................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Adopting new technology is one of the biggest opportunity for a company to grow within
their targeted market. New technology will help companies to increase their productivity and
profitability. New tools and machines will help companies to reduce their wastage of raw
material as these machines utilize each unit of raw material for production of products. On the
others hand, it will provide a issue as well because for adopting new technology within the
company it will consider as costly investment for the company as the new tools and machines are
high in cost (Sadiq and et. al., 2020). Secondly, providing training to employees to operate
adopted technology is time consuming procedure. It might be possible that company may hire
new talents to the organisation for handling new procedure of production by their changing
technology. Adoption of e-commerce and social media platform for promoting products will
beneficial for companies to reach at global customers. Promoting products and services on
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platform will help companies to attract
more customers especially youngsters because most of the customers nowadays use social media
sites to analyse reviews about the product and services which they want to purchase. Most of the
companies have separate department for handling their social media or e-commerce sites
appropriately for their organisational benefit. Morrison is a retailing company which is
headquartered in Bradford, UK. It is founded in 1899 by William Morrison. The following report
covers positive and negative impact upon company to adopt new and advance technology with
Morrison and other retailing companies.
MAIN BODY
Positive impact of adopting new technologies including e-commerce and social media platform
Retail industry is one of the fastest growing industry in UK which is changing the way of their
operations on regular basis. Few of the modern and advance technology which can be adopted by
various companies within retailing sector is given below-
 E-commerce and social media marketing- It is one of the most benefit providing digital
technology within retailing industry which help companies to expand their business
through online. E-commerce allow customers to order their products while sitting at

home and companies deliver the orders on time (Cheng, Su and Zarifis, 2019). It also
help customers to track their orders while delivering. With the help of e-commerce,
customers have opportunities to compare the prices and quality of the products with other
substitute products of another company to make a perfect purchase decision. On the other
hand, social media marketing also help retailing companies to have attract more
customers by promoting their products and services on social media sites such as
Instagram, Twitter and many others. In context of Morrison, they are having many
followers on their Twitter account and Instagram account. They upload pictures, videos
and essential information on these sites regarding any discounts or offers, introduction of
new product and many others. Most of the customers uses social media platform to
analyse reviews of companies and their specific product.
 Staff- free and cashier less stores- Social distancing is most important concern after
covid pandemic. Hence, most of the retailing companies focus on this factor and having
staff- free and cashier free stores will be great opportunity for companies to maintain
their social distancing rules (Adesoji, 2017). This can be become successful by RFID
tags, machine learning, computer vision systems, facial recognition devices and many
others. All these technology will help retailing companies operate their operations in a
smooth and polite way without having any threat. Such kind of high tech and advance
technologies is used by Amazon within their Amazon Go Grocery stores. They use
sensors, face recognition system and IoT network to track the items which customers put
in their carts. There is no cashier in Amazon store and the charges of items which is
selected by customers get automatically paid by their credit card which is mostly used by
customers.
 Face recognition technology- This type of technology help retailing companies analyse
facial expressions of customers and anyone who enters the store. This technology will
help companies to specifically offer those products only which is preferred by customers
most of the time and which a customer want to purchase that is recognised by this
technology. This technology also help stores to recognise thefts and other people who just
enter the store with the aim of stealing their items or to conduct any unlawful activity. In
context of Apple, Albertsons, H-E-B Grocery and few others uses this technology to

analyse the needs and wants of their customers as well as their preference toward
particular product.
Negative impact of adopting new technologies including e-commerce and social media platform
Technological development is good for companies but there are various kind of demerits for
using advance technology and few of the demerits are given below-
 High investment- One of the biggest disadvantage of adopting new technology is the
amount of investment. It consist to invest high to purchase advanced and modern tools
and machines within the company for their professional growth (Li and Ku, 2018). Due
to this reason most of the SMEs are facing lack of technology because they are not
having enough revenue to purchase good machines. Installation of such machines also
consist of high charges. Hence, most of the companies need to prepare a fix and high
budget for adopting new technology.
 Time consuming to understand and work with new technology- Another challenge for
the company to adopt new and advance technology is that it consume lot of time to train
employees to work with new technology and change their process. In context of changing
technological factor of a company, change in process and the way of working by
workforce must changes. Hence, providing training to employees to learn abbot new
technology and how they can operate the specific machines will consume time. On the
other hand, hiring professional trainer who will train employees will also charge a fixed
amount. In context of Morrison, the adoption of new machines in manufacturing
department for packaging the products consist to train all employees of manufacturing
department well.
 Lack of face to face communication may create confusion- In context of adopting staff
less and cashier less technology, lack of communication arise and due to lack of direct
communication companies are unable to maintain good relations with their customers.
Advancement in technology cut down the communication channel and now employees
and customers neglect to communicate directly (Cheng, Su and Zarifis, 2019). This can
cause confusion and misunderstanding by conveying wrong message. In context of staff
less retailing stores, a customer can face many issues to understand the features and
prices of a product. Some of the customers are having lack of technological knowledge.
Hence, to handle such customers, physical staff is needed.

 Expansion of fraud news by media and competitors- Using social media and e-
commerce technology can also provide negative effect on companies because social
media is the platform where anyone can upload any information which can impacts bad
upon an company's brand image. In context of retailing sector, their competitors share
their prices with comparison of other companies due to which customers switch to other
brand. Today, most of the customers uses social media platform to provide reviews of a
company whether it is positive review or negative review. Negative reviews were
highlighted more on social media and it get spread rapidly.
 Hiring new employees- Another issue for adopting social media marketing and e-
commerce is that it need to hire new employees who are having IT skills. In context of
any retailing company, their most of the employees are having customer service skills
and they are lacking behind to hire IT skill employees (Lin, Wang and Hajli, 2019).
Hence, with the adoption of e-commerce and social media marketing, it is essential for
companies to hire new group of employees who can handle their social media and e-
commerce marketing easily.

CONCLUSION
From the above information it is concluded that adopting new and advance technology is
one of the best way for an organisation to grow high and attract more customers. Modern and
advance technology will help employees to increase their productivity which further help to
increase company's profitability. Social media marketing and e-commerce marketing help
companies reach customers at global level. Retailing companies are having various kind of
technology which help their customers to chose their products easily and make less efforts by
their employees to increase sells. There are many positive impacts of adopting new technologies
like face recognition technology will help companies to identify the facial expressions of people
who enter the stores and analyse which customer prefer to buy which kind of product. It also
help companies to save them self from theft and many other unlawful activities by analysing the
aim of people entering the store. On the other hand, there are many demerits of adopting new
technology like high investment, lack of communication, time consumption for training
employees and many others. High budget is required to purchase new tools and machines within
a company. Hence, this is the reason that why SMEs face lack of technology situation because
they are not having enough revenue to invest upon technology. Increase in social media and e-
commerce marketing also impact upon companies because many fraud news and competitors
strategies of spreading wrong information about specific company can impact bad upon
organisational brand image.

REFERENCE
Book and journal
Adesoji, A., 2017. Mobile technology, social media and 180 million people. J Bus Adm Manag
Sci, 6, pp.82-5.
Cheng, X., Su, L. and Zarifis, A., 2019. Designing a talents training model for cross-border e-
commerce: a mixed approach of problem-based learning with social media. Electronic
Commerce Research, 19(4), pp.801-822.
Cheng, X., Su, L. and Zarifis, A., 2019. Designing a talents training model for cross-border e-
commerce: a mixed approach of problem-based learning with social media. Electronic
Commerce Research, 19(4), pp.801-822.
Li, C.Y. and Ku, Y.C., 2018. The power of a thumbs-up: Will e-commerce switch to social
commerce?. Information & Management, 55(3), pp.340-357.
Lin, X., Wang, X. and Hajli, N., 2019. Building e-commerce satisfaction and boosting sales: The
role of social commerce trust and its antecedents. International Journal of Electronic
Commerce, 23(3), pp.328-363.
Sadiq, W. and et. al., 2020. Engagement marketing: the innovative perspective to enhance the
viewer’s loyalty in social media and blogging e-commerce websites.
Yahia, I.B., Al-Neama, N. and Kerbache, L., 2018. Investigating the drivers for social commerce
in social media platforms: Importance of trust, social support and the platform
perceived usage. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 41, pp.11-19.