2.4 Potential of Online Sales
The development of e-commerce strategies usually starts by getting information from different companies on what they want to sell and how they want to sell it. In the electronic sales platform, some organization may sell their whole product range, or just a few selected items. Many organizations are seeking to realize the potential of e-commerce and to engage in the e-marketplace (Rowley J, 2000).
In order to be successful in operating an online business, there is a need to identify the potentials of online sales of their products and its consumers’ patterns and behavior, or how they react towards the online shopping platform. Not all products is suitable to be sold electronically. Almost 50% of advertisement
Swaminathan, Lepkowska-White and Rao (1999) suggested that shopping orientations is one of the important indicators in making purchases online. Vijayasarathy and Jones (2000) identify seven types of shopping orientations, based on a relationship study between shopping orientation and online shopping orientation. The orientations are in-home shoppers who liked to shop from home, economic shoppers who shopped around before making purchase decisions, mall shoppers who preferred to shop at malls, personalized shoppers who liked to shop where they knew the salespeople, ethical shoppers who liked to shop in local stores to promote the community, convenience shoppers who placed a premium on convenience when shopping and enthusiastic shoppers who enjoyed shopping. The results of the study shows that customers who prefer traditional in-home shopping, such as by mail order via catalogs, may tend to exhibit a higher intentions and more prone toward accepting the idea of online shopping, whereas individuals with a preference for mall shopping have lesser tendencies to have online shopping intentions.
With the emergence of a more diversified retail outlets and increasing competitiveness in the marketplace, customers’ shopping orientations need to be understood by the online retailers so that customers’ online purchase intention can be maximized, which ultimately leads to the increase in online sales. Vijayasarathy & Jones, 2000; Park, 2002; Brown, et al., 2001; Seock, 2003; Gehrt, Onzo, Fujita and Rajan, 2007 have all acknowledged that shopping orientations have significant impact on customers online purchase