Week 4 Homework

Page 126 exercise: Advise Robert Terwilliger on the advantages and drawbacks of using a third party website to sell the Modeller's Stand (case study 9).

Robert may avoid using a third party website such as ebay or amazon to sell his products for a few different reason. Firstly a drawback of using a third party website to sell is that there is a lack of profit due to many popular websites take a percentage of profit or charge an advertisement fee per product. Robert may feel de-motivated that he has to pay another company to sell his products. Sites such as Ebay are used worldwide, however they have a very large amount of sellers on the sites that mean that Robert may find competitors who are charging a more competitive price that may deter sales. Finally its very clear for customers to see reviews of products/ service they receive. The issue is that is people are not completely satisfied it may be costly for Robert to refund the products or if people write a bad review it might make potential customers go to competitors.

On the other hand Robert should find advantages of using a third party website to sell his products from that his products will have a worldwide presence there he can expand his potential customer base. Robert may find customers are happy with the service they get due to the fact the customer doesn’t have to leave the house. Companies such as DPD offer customers to choose when their products will be delivered and notify them when its nearly there. Finally as the business won’t have a physical presence it means there will be no high overheads from utility bills therefore paying a small amount of profit to a third party company may be a lot less costly than opening a shop for example.

Page 147 exercise: Advise the owners how suitable the use of CSEs might be for the Gilded Truffle Hotel (case study 3). Explain both the positive and negative aspects of the practice for the hotel.

A comparison-shopping engine allows individuals to see different lists of prices for specific products. Most price comparison services do not sell products themselves, but source prices from retailers from whom users can buy. In the UK, these services made between £780m and £950m in revenue in 2005.

Websites like Hotels combined can be an excellent way to promote a hotel and try to gain a competitive advantage. Hotels combined offers a service where customers can search dates and compare hotels on their choice of location. This kind of CSE has may be useful to the Gilded truffle hotel-
Benefits-
Each different type of shopping engine will have different advantages and benefits for the consumers, as well as the merchants who use them. For example, some of the services offer mobile applications that will allow you to actually compare the various processes while you are on the go, or to help make the decision of what product you should purchase. No matter where you are searching the results can substantially impact the rating that your webpage receives.
Negatives- Can be difficult to compete due to if customers post bad reviews of the hotel it may put others staying off.
Finding ways to market and improve the traffic to your ecommerce site is the best way to grow your business. Keep in mind that these programs are designed to provide the most relevant search results, which means that you need to make use of SEO rich content. Driving traffic to your site takes work, dedication, time and effort, however it is well worth the time and dedication that it takes to bring it into sight.

Although the CSEs all provide a guide on submitting to their engines, before adding products to their listings you should be prepared to provide details of all of the following attributes for each:

● The product’s full name
● A description of the product
● The product’s manufacturer and assigned part number
● The category on the CSE in which you wish it to be listed
● How you want the product to be