A lot of company turned into social media as a platform to have two-way communication between the company and its customers as sellers and buyers, and this platform enables customers to be involved in the content generation to serve customers better and satisfy the customer’s needs (Sashi, 2012). Furthermore, Sashi (2012) also highlighted digital media’s interactive nature that allows customers to share and exchange information with each other.

How to create a social media strategies?

1. Create a realistic social media plan

What is the goal that you are trying to reach from that social media platform? Make a realistic and specific goal. Instead of having a blurry goal (having a lot of followers in a short amount of time), create a detailed plan instead (having 500 followers in 1 week).

2. Create a target market profiling

Choose the target market for the product that you want to sell. If the product is shoes, is there any specific target market that you’re trying to reach? Does it aim for teenager or adults? What about their average income? Are they high school students or university students? Are the design of the shoes for sport or daily gear? Go beyond demographic criteria.

3. Choosing social media platform

There is a lot of social media platform available around the internet, starting from blogs to social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. After you created your target market profile, it will be easier to choose the platform that suits your need. Facebook and Instagram both have an option for business tools, which provide a lot of information for business owners (insights, page visited, etc.) that could help business owners to create a marketing strategy.

4. Attract attention and engagement

The journey is not finished yet. After choosing the social media platform, we have to create a variety of content that will attract people to see our social media account. Creating content is one of the ways to attract customer, and this is the crucial part. Be creative! The content could be a picture or video of our product or someone who’s using our product. Don’t forget to engage with your followers, especially when someone is asking a question about our product in the comment section. Try to create a variety of content every post to find out what kind of content that attracts people’s attention.

5. Monitor feedback

Feedback is an essential part of learning! Don’t be afraid if some customers give us bad feedback on your product. Bad feedback can be demotivated sometimes, but it does not mean there is nothing to be learnt from the experience. Take the negative feedback, and turn it into positive learning experience :)

6. Sponsorship/Endorsement

Thanks to social media features, finding endorser is not as hard as before. With its search features, we can find people who wear a similar product on Instagram. However, choosing endorser could be a tricky thing as well. Sometimes endorser can charge business owners with a high price, so be wise about your social media budget and choosing your endorsers.

What other strategies that you would add for your online store?

Reference:

Sashi, C., M. (2012). Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media. Management Decision, 50(2), 253–272. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251741211203551

Blog 5A — Online Store’s Social Media Strategies was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Still, remember the old blog post about internet influence in marketing? Well, thanks to the internet and technology, big data is now part of the common term that people mostly heard about around the web. However, not a lot of people know much about what important information is and how big data can help marketers do their magic in the marketing world. Big companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook are using big data on their business. The most straightforward example to see from Facebook is the “friendship anniversary” on your Home page (thanks for reminding me of those old friends, Facebook).

So, what is big data? And why is it very precious to marketers?

Big data

By its literal definition, big data consists of a large amount of data. Now, there are several definitions of big data that are available in Google search. Based on an online survey of 154 C-suite global executives (as cited in Gandomi & Haider, 2014), the understanding of big data is ranging from what important information is and what big data does.

Gandomi and Haider (2014) also stated that the term big data became global as recently as in 2011.

Big data has three characteristics that help define itself. These three characteristics are known as Three V’s: Volume, Variety, and Velocity, which are the three elements of challenges in data management (Gandomi & Haider, 2014).

Volume

Are you familiar with bytes, as in mb, MB, TB, GB, and others? The volume of big data is measured in petabytes, exabytes, or zettabytes; one petabyte is approximately close to 20 million traditional filing cabinets of text (Eruvelles, Fukawa, & Swayne, 2015); one zettabyte is roughly close to 250 billion DVDs (Cisco, 2014). That’s a considerable amount of data!

How come there are thousand and thousand of data out there, do you ask? Let’s take Google this time as an example. One of The Guardian authors downloaded all of his data that are stored in Google. The file about himself is 5.5 GB, and that is a lot of Word documents (Curran, 2018). According to Curran, the data includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, Google Drive files, data from your calendar, location history, and other stuff (2018). All these data only come from one person, imagine the volume of data for ten-person.

Get your own data if you’re interested: google.com/takeout

Velocity

The second characteristic of big data is velocity, which means the relentless rapidity of data creation (Eruvelles et al., 2015). Velocity refers to the frequency at which data are created and the speed at which it should be analysed and acted upon (Gandomi & Haider, 2015). With the evolution of technology and the internet, all data that are received are mostly in real-time based and in high-frequency data. With velocity, better decisions could be taken based on current data on evidence at a given time (Eruvelles et al., 2015).

Variety

The variety of big data comes from the compilation of unstructured data. Unstructured data consists of textual information (blogs or text messages) and non-textual data (videos, images, and others). Unstructured data are mainly captured through social media, where everybody is pretty much about sharing their personal and behavioural information with friends or families (Eruvelles et al., 2015).

So, what are big data’s implications to marketing?

With the three characteristics that big data has, big data can interestingly improve marketing. Thanks to big data analytics technologies, social media data can be mined and monitored automatically (such as customer opinion regarding a product) to help marketers make a strategic marketing decision (Fan, Lau, & Zhao, 2015).

For example, big data can help narrow down the target market demographics based on customers’ preferences in social media. How many times did you see an ad about things that you probably see somewhere else when you’re scrolling down on your Facebook or Instagram?

Reference:

Cisco. (2014). Visual networking index IP traffic chart. Retrieved from http://www.cisco.com/cdc_content_elements/networking_solutions/service_provider/visual_networking_ip_traffic_chart.html

Curran, D. (2018, March 30). Are you ready? Here is all the data Facebook and Google have on you. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy

Erevelles, S., Fukawa, N., & Swayne, L. (2015). Big data consumer analytics and the transformation of marketing. Journal of Business Research, 69, 987–904. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.07.001

Fan, S., Lau, R., Y., K., & Zhao, J., L. (2015). Demystifying big data analytics for business intelligence through the lens of marketing mix. Big Data Research, 2, 28–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bdr.2015.02.006

Gandomi, A., & Haider, M. (2014). Beyond the hype: Big data concepts, methods, and analytics. International Journal of Information Management, 35, 137–144. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2014.10.007

Blog 5B — Big Data relationship with Marketing was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

e-CRM refers to the marketing activities, tools and techniques, delivered over the Internet (using technologies such as Web sites and e-mail, data-capture, warehousing and mining) with a specific aim to locate, build and improve long-term customer relationships to enhance their individual potential (Lee-Kelley, Gilbert, & Mannicom, 2003).

Using e-CRM to engage customer engagement has its challenge because engagement aims to create a long-term ability of a brand to gain customer’s attention on an ongoing basis whether the engagement happens on-site, in third-party social networks or in email or traditional direct communications (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016).

I will use the Block Australia TV show to analyse its e-CRM Activities. I love The Block because this TV show talks about renovating the house, starting from the beginning until it’s finished and ready to sell. The participants are grouped into a team of two, and each of them gets a house to be fixed. Seeing the house transformation is really blowing my mind away.

Using Lee-Kelley et al., (2003) definition of e-CRM, the official website for The Block by 9now has a lot of activities to engage their viewers online.

9now uses this activity to gather data information about its viewers to get accurate profiling of its customers. This data will be saved to their databases that can be utilised for CRM purposes (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016). Viewers can also opt-in or out in the mail updates, especially about their favourite TV show. This activity also highlights one of the benefit in using e-CRM to support customer engagement, targeting more cost-effectively (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016).

Another benefit that was mentioned is an opportunity for gamification, where a brand is applying game-based thinking to engage and develop loyalty. With this game, The Block can uniquely engage with their viewers.

In the official website, there are a lot of articles that share the behind story of any episode; page filled a lot of information about the team, blog post about where to buy some furniture or decoration that the team used, etc. However, in any of those blog posts, there is no place to put a comment to engage with viewers. All communication goes through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, that can be seen from the top right of their website that will link to its respective page.

As we can see from the picture above, a lot of fans or viewers commented about their Monopoly games, and some of them think that it is expensive, $90 for a monopoly game. So far, there is no response from The Block Facebook handler regarding their viewers’ comments.

Besides gaming, The Block also posted about the new application for 2019, where almost 250 people showed their interest in applying.

Same activities are shown on their Twitter page, with more focused on giving out information about their shows. However, not a lot of comments are happening on their Twitter account.

A lot of customers also put a lot of comments on their Instagram account, but again, not a lot of interaction coming from The Block account handler.

However, even though from their Facebook and Twitter account rarely gave any comment, does not mean that there is no interaction happened at all. The customer provides their opinion that attracts another customer to tell their opinion as well. This can be counted as CRM data that can be used for The Block and 9Now to know more about their customer and engage them to help to create a long-term relationship with their customers. As mentioned before, to develop and manage a long-term relationship with customers, not an easy task to do. The Block did apply some e-CRM activities to help to target their market; however, in my own opinion, two-ways communication between The Block and their customers will increase the chance of a long-term relationship between them.

What do you think about The Block e-CRM activities? Do you think they have done everything to create a long-term relationship with their customers?

Reference:

9Now. Viewed on 15 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.9now.com.au/the-block.

Chaffey, D. & Chadwick, F. 2016, Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice, 6th edn, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, United Kingdom.

Lee-Kelley, L., Gilbert, D., & Mannicom, R. (2003). How e-CRM can enhance customer loyalty. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 21(4), pp. 239–248.

The Block. Retrieved from https://www.9now.com.au/the-block/season-14/extras/home

The Block Facebook Page. Viewed on 15 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/TheBlock/

The Block Instagram Page. Viewed on 15 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/theblock/

The Block Twitter Page. Viewed on 15 September 2018. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/TheBlock/

Blog 4B — e-CRM in Australian TV Show was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The marketing mix is the set of straightforward, tactical marketing tools that are mixed by the company to produce the response that the company desires in the target market (Armstrong, Adam, Denize, & Kotler, 2015, p. 49). In other words, the marketing mix is a list of things that helps the company to bring product or service to the market. 4Ps (Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion) is the most-known way to define marketing mix, introduced by E.J. McCarthy in 1960.

The Internet offers the endless possibility to companies due to the creation of digital infrastructure that building significant shifts in markets and competition, especially using the internet does not cost as much as using traditional way (Armstrong et al., 2015, p, 26). The Internet also created the trend that people like to do lately: online shopping. It is just one example out of many. The possibilities that the internet has is also endless, especially with all new technology that keeps emerging each day. Besides, the internet provides more straightforward implementation of global marketing strategies as a presence in the international world (Melewar & Smith, 2003).

The main question for today blogpost is: How internet implicates each element on the marketing mix? What are the consequences of the internet on the marketing mix? Let’s talk about the implication one by one.

Product

In the marketing mix, product refers to intangible or intangible good or service to meet a specific customer need or demand. With internet influence, products could be transformed into digital products or services, such as music, ebook, software, or games (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016). Before the internet, there was a limited way to listen to music because it is only available on cassette or CD. After the internet, there were several ways to download music, started from the development of Napster to Spotify, where users can stream music (service).

The Internet also provides a channel for manufacturers to show their products in catalogues format (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016). This impact helps manufacturers or companies to grow their market from local market to international market. Furthermore, the internet also allows the organisation to offer additional information about their products to the customers which adding value to the service or product that they provide that could enhance customer experience that would lead to brand loyalty (Melewar & Smith, 2003). Example for this statement would be free shipping when buying items more than $45 like what SHEIN does. SHEIN even has an extra 15% off if customers spends more than $55 on their website.

Price

In the marketing mix, price includes the actual amount that is expected from end-user to pay for a product. In the online world, Pricing element mix is very correlated to Product element because of online pricing based on the product range that is offered and the product lifecycle itself (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016), such as the discounted price for an extended item.

Melewar and Smith (2003) also added that the freedom in which the internet offers has resulted in several price reduction. This can bring a problem to companies or manufacturers as well, especially in global business, because a product price for one country could differ from other countries. For example, the price difference of Apple phone in every country.

Alongside with price differences, the internet opened up new pricing method in online world, auction (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016) and shipping fees. Auction system in eBay lets users to bid their numbers and keep outbidding other users until the seller close the bid.

Shipping fee can also be the deal-breaker for some customers. For example, on eBay, there are a lot of sellers that sell the same item, but they have a different shipping fee. This difference can be the determinant in making purchases for some customers, especially for customers who like buying in bulk. However, the customer tends to put other variables when making their buying decision. For example, even though they have to pay another $2 for the shipping fee, they realise they can get the item faster than not paying shipping fee at all, and they are willing to pay more for that.

Promotion

In the marketing mix, promotion involves marketing communication strategies that are used to inform customers and other stakeholders about an organisation and its products (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016). This includes advertising, sales promotions, special offers and public relations.

Chaffley and Chadwick (2016) listed the internet implication on promotion mix.

The Internet certainly has a significant role in Promotion element mix, especially in term of advertising. With the help of the internet and big data, promoters can tailor their advertising and marketing strategies to meet the customers’ needs and preferences.

Place

In the marketing mix, the place has to do with how the product will be provided to the customer. According to (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016), Place element mix in offline context intent to amplify distribution reach to achieve product’s global availability while reducing inventory, transport, and storage costs; meanwhile, in online context, the possibility of Place is less transparent since Place closely related to Promotion and Partnership element mix. The place concept itself is a bit blurry because, with the internet, the place is not seen as a problem because people can access the internet anywhere, without any geographical boundaries.

One of the internet implications in Place element marketing mix is the possibility of channels conflict (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016). It is necessary to consider the different forms of the channel the internet can take, is it acting as a communication channel; a distribution channel to intermediaries; a direct sales channel to the customer; or all combination. The kind of chain that the company choose to use will affect how they use their internet features.

Beside 4Ps, there are three additional Ps that are existed in service elements, which are people, process, and physical evidence. These 3Ps are also essential to be talked about because half of the products that are offered on the internet are services (Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, etc.).

People

In the marketing mix, people element related to how the organisation’s staff interact with their customer. In the online context, it described how their team handles the communication to customers through mail, online help, or using automated online service (Chaffey & Chadwick, 2016).

Process

In the marketing mix, process element related to the methods and procedures that companies are used to achieve all marketing function. Chaffey and Chadwick (2016) used the example of contact centre options in the online context, whether it is a customer-preferred channel; company-preferred channel; or delivering customer service through Live Chat.

Physical Evidence

In the marketing mix, a physical element related to how the product/service is purchased and used. Chaffey and Chadwick (2016) further explained terms that are part of physical evidence in the online context, such as web navigation, and performance.

Even though it seems like the internet gives a lot of room for marketing to evolve, we need to realise that everything does not come without any consequences. There are several danger on the internet as well, such as data breach, internet fraud, and others. It is still essential for marketers to pay attention to how they are planning to utilise their marketing strategy with internet capabilities.

Do you think the additional 3Ps is more important than traditional 4Ps in internet marketing?

Reference:

Apple Australia. Viewed on 15 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/au/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-8

Apple Singapore. Viewed on15 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.apple.com/sg/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-8

Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S., & Kotler, P. (2015). Principles of marketing 6thed. AU: Pearson.

Chaffey, D. & Chadwick, F. 2016, Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice, 6th edn, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, United Kingdom.

eBay. Viewed on 15 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=keyboard+cover+macbook+pro&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_osacat=0&_odkw=macbook+pro

Melewar, T., C., & Smith, N. (2003). The internet revolution: some global marketing implications. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 21(6), pp. 363–369, https://doi.org/10.1108/02634500310499220

SHEIN. Viewed on 15 September 2018. Retrieved from https://au.shein.com.

Blog 4A — Internet implications on Marketing Mix was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Strategy formulation often requires companies to evaluate new models since to survive in the digital age means companies need to continually innovate to defend market share for competitors and new entrants (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2016). Porter (as cited in Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2016) stated that the internet and the digital era help intensifying the importance of strategy, the however business also has to be cautious and paying attention to where the company should focus when developing their business strategy.

McDonald (as cited in Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2016) characterised both strategic plans that are appropriate to digital marketing planning which cover three to five years strategy and tactical plans over a shorter period. Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2016) elaborated on his statement, suggesting a digital transformation plan that covers four area:

1. Identifications of changes in competitive forces in macro-environment and micro-environment

2. Developing value propositions for online customers

3. Definition of technology infrastructure and information architecture to deliver value proposition

4. Changes to governance of marketing activities affecting 7S (Strategy, Structure, Systems, Staff, Style, Skills, and Superordinate goals)

According to their digital transformation plan, planning long-term strategic objectives are highly unlikely because, from area #1 itself, macro-environment aspect is uncontrollable, for example, law/legal variable.

However, it does not mean there is nothing that can be done. Other long-term strategies can be done with short-term tactical moves, with strategy adjustment according to the company’s goals. Micro-environment is controllable aspect from the procedure and adjustable as well. Honestly, I would opt for a short-term strategy because this kind of approach seems to fit best with the rapid changes in technology.

If you were the business owner, would you choose to do long-term strategy or short-term strategy?

Reference:

Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2016). Digital marketing: Strategy, implementation and practice[VitalSource version].

6379 — Blog 3B: Is setting long-term strategic objectives for a website is unrealistic? was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Huawei understands that strong brands drive innovation, and this reflects in its worldwide operations (Martinroll, 2018). Huawei focuses on customer-centric innovation (Shao, 2012), and it is Huawei’s most significant differentiator (Martinroll, 2018). When the Beijing government adopted a policy of supporting domestic telecommunications (Ahrens, 2013), Huawei moved on from phone switches to sell infrastructure equipment for mobile networks, mobile services and enterprise services. The government loan also helped Huawei to land a network business in Africa and Latin America, and the experience from that helped Huawei with networking-equipment deals with major carriers in Europe (Cendrowski, 2017).

Chesbrough (2009) concluded that internal leaders have a role in business model change, especially in managing the result of business model change processes and delivering a new better business model for the company. Huawei has an innovative way of implementing this theory, as well. Huawei leadership strategy is the rotating CEO system, where a small group of executives takes turns to do the CEO duties (Martinroll, 2018). According to this article, Huawei believes a group of rotating and acting CEO are more effective because they have time to prepare for their next term as acting CEOs, they will also have a chance to share their breadth expertise.

By 2012, Huawei had become the largest the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker. Gambardella & McGahan (2010) stated that when a firm implements an innovative approach to commercialising its underlying assets, business-model innovation happens. While doing their primary business (telecommunications equipment maker), Huawei also made “white label smartphones” where those smartphones branded with other companies’ brand. Huawei realised with their expertise in telecommunications equipment, Huawei has a unique position to cut costs of the smartphone’s spare part. For example, Huawei can create their integrated circuit chips (Hu, 2017). Other examples would be Huawei’s knowledge in cellular networks helped Huawei to produce modems that let Chinese users receive calls in basements and parking garages where most brands’ phones failed (Cendrowski, 2017).

Huawei did innovate not only their products but also their business model. Huawei started their business model from B2B (Business to Business) with selling telecommunication equipment to other telecommunication companies, now Huawei’s business model is expanding to B2C (Business to Consumers) as well by manufacturing smartphones to their customer.

Word counts: 477

Reference:

Ahrens, N. (2013). China’s competitiveness: Myth, reality, and lessons for the United States and Japan, case study: Huawei. Center for Strategic & International Studies Report. Retrieved from https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/publication/130215_competitiveness_Huawei_casestudy_Web.pdf

Cendrowski, S. (2017). Is the world big enough for Huawei?Retrieved from http://fortune.com/huawei-china-smartphone/

Chesbrough, H. (2009). Business model innovation: opportunities and barriers. Long Range Planning, 43(2–3), p. 354.

Gambardella, A., & McGahan, A., M. (2010). Business-model innovation: General purpose technologies and their Implications for industry structure. Long Range Planning, 43, pp. 262–271.

Hu, K. (2017). Good signals: Huawei pushes further forward. Retrieved from http://knowledge.ckgsb.edu.cn/2017/03/27/china-business-strategy/huawei-strategy-push-forward/

Martinroll. (2018). Huawei — transforming a Chinese technology business to a global brand. Retrieved from https://martinroll.com/resources/articles/strategy/huawei-transforming-chinese-technology-business-global-brand/

Shao, K. (2012). History is the key to understanding Huawei.Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/history-is-the-key-to-understanding-huawei-5994

6379 — Blog 3A: Huawei and Its Innovation was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For the YouTube assignment, I decided to share my knowledge in another interest of mine, space. Everything about night sky entices me; it always makes me wonder about the universe and everything in it. I could stare at the moon for hours, happened before lol.

Even though my drawing is not perfect, I am happy with how it turned out! I hope you enjoy watching it! Let me know if this little knowledge help you in the future xD

Thank you for watching! xx

6379 — Blog 2B: Planet and Stars (YouTube) was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As an online customer myself, I can be very picky when choosing a website that I will buy things from. There are too many things to consider, such as shipping delivery, the variety of items available, let alone quality. Hence, I tend to shop from the original product website before finding other online retailers, especially when your interests requires you to do a lot of research on Google, like my interest, journaling.

Journaling is not everybody’s cup of tea, especially with this digital era, when everyone prefers to write on their smartphone/laptop/tablet. I like the feeling of writing on any surface; it gives you the sense that you are writing something.

I have tried a lot of journal brand before, like Moleskine, Kikki K., and Traveller’s Notebook, that opens my door to Japanese stationeries. Japanese stationaries always have a special place in my heart because it usually looks simple, useful, and yet… beautiful. In terms of journal, Japanese brands introduce me to a variety of paper that I have not heard before, like Tomoe River Paper (I know right?). Tomoe River Paper is famous for its pen bleeding resistance to fountain pens and other ink pens. That intrigued me because my TN’s paper can not really handle my fountain pens! (Yes, I have fountain pens, you read it right)

The paper research journey led me to Hobonichi Techo. The first time I have heard about Hobonichi Techo was not from any website but an Instagram hashtag. On Instagram, Hobonichi Techo has its own occult. They showcase their Hobonichi Techo that filled with their own creativity on their Instagram. Some of them also write with fountain pens, and that was how I know that I would love Hobonichi Techo for journaling!

Not really, I’m just a sucker for pretty things lol.

Finding Hobonichi Techo website is a bit of unique experience because the shop is not really using English word for its website address, so I had to Google it first.

As you can see from the pictures above, the address starts with numbers, 1101. However, if you type 1101.com, it will not link you to the shop. So it is a bit tricky if I forgot the store name. But with Google power, nothing is tough these days, isn’t it?

Rose and Hair’s Online Customer Experience Elements

There was a lot of literature that was studying the connection of how the customer experiences on online could lead to long-term relationship building with the company. Rose and Hair (2011) compared the traditional face-to-face versus online customer contexts:

Based on their comparison, online customers prefer to have the freedom to do whatever they want on the company website because they want to gather all information needed about the company/product in their own time period.

Rose and Hair (2011) journal focused on a conceptual framework of OCE that was created of both cognitive and affective states of costumers. I will analyse the Hobonichi Techo website using my own experience in browsing through their website.

Antecedents #1: Information Processing

Rose and Hair (2011) pointed out that information processing is a crucial stage where online customers gather necessary information about the company/product and the vital part of the online process.

My experience while browsing the website, I found a lot of information available regarding not only their products but also “How It’s Used” information, which a bit different from another journal website that I browsed before.

Now, in my opinion, this “How It’s Used” page is not essential to the website itself because users can easily browse the store to see all the products available. However, this page is a game-changer. It gives more reason to journal lover like me to see the endless possibilities in using Hobonichi Techo once I have them on my hands. For new users like me, they also have “Shopping Instruction” page to guide us through the buying process, covers everything from product guidelines to check out.

Twin Antecedents #2 #3 #4 #5: Perceived ease-of-use (PEOU), Perceived Usefulness (PU), Skills, and Perceived Control.

Rose and Hair (2011) explained that several features in a site lead to perceived ease-of-use, which include: uncluttered screens; transparent organisation; logical flow; and easy navigation. Furthermore, Cao, Zhang, and Seydel (2005) added to evaluate website quality that proposes perceived ease-of-use and perceived usefulness are a series of features such as search facility, the responsiveness of the site, the multimedia capability, and the accuracy and relevance of the information.

According to my experience, the website is straightforward to navigate and use. All navigation tab located on the header, with a difference in color to highlight services. The menu design helps customers to build experience on the website over time.

Even though the website is using a lot of pictures on their website, it does not take long to load other page or all images on one page. Their multimedia capabilities even let customers to look on the journal detail (picture below).

In term of accuracy and relevant information, on their product page, the company provides clear size comparison for every journal, and also information about “other pages” where customers can see all other pages that are available on the product. All of this available information on the website is aligned with perceived control, which according to Rose and Hair (2011), relates to consumers’ feelings about the degree to which they have control over their access, search and evaluation of the content of an organisation’s website. The more thorough information that the site provides, the customers feel they have control over the website to browse around and enjoy the experience.

Antecedents #6 #7: Perceived benefits and Enjoyment

Cao et al. (2005) proposed that online customers seek gratification in escapism, entertainment and interaction. They also added to incorporate the associated construct of ‘playfulness’ in a measurement model of B2C website quality to help create a positive online shopping experience.

On the ‘Fun Stuff’ page, the company provides a manga comic on how to shop the 2019 Hobonichi Techo. The information also provided very thorough and detail.

Twin Antecedents #8 #9: Risk and Trust

Rose and Hair (2011) explained that these antecedents model proposes trust and satisfaction to be outcome variables that both independently and together have a direct influence on customer loyalty.

For the Hobonichi Techo website, the information that I gathered from this website makes me believe in them. All information that is needed is available, helpful help page, not-shady About page, and the security protocol that they use on their website.

Conclusion

Based on all the good experiences that I, myself, feel from this website, I am delighted to purchase the new journal from here! All information that I needed is available, without the need to do more research on Google page. Suffice to say; the website applied all Rose and Hair’s elements to ensure their online customer experience enjoyable.

Thank you for reading my writing! Now, some point to ponder:

Do you prefer to write digitally or traditionally?

Reference:

Cao, M., Zhang, Q., & Seydel, J. (2005). B2C e-commerce website quality: an empirical examination. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 105, pp. 645–661.

Hobonichi Techo. (2002). Retrieved from https://www.1101.com/store/techo/en/

Rose, S., Hair, N., & Clark, M. (2011). Online customer experience: a review of the business-to-consumer online purchase context. International Journal of Management Reviews, 13, pp. 24–39.

6379 Blog 2A — Hobonichi Techo? was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1. Interactivity

In their book, Chafley and Ellis-Chadwick (2016) stated that in an online medium it is often the customer who is being active in seeking information through researching information on a website or known as pull mechanism.

In term of the product review, every store has its own reviews from customers who bought their stuff. The store owners can also be contacted easily.

2. Intelligence

According to an article in Forbes, Etsy has invested a lot in machine learning. On September 2015, Etsy acquired Blackbird Technologies (a team massively into Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence) to provide a more relevant search result for individual buyers (Forbes, 2015).

We can see from my profile home page here:

3. Individualisation

Individualisation is based on the intelligence collected about site visitors in the database that will be used to target and personalised communications to achieve relevance in all media (Chafley et al., 2016).

4. Integration

Etsy’s integration with multichannel marketing shows in the homepage.

5. Independence of Location

Etsy has a lot of stores which located worldwide, but buyers also can specifically looking for kinds of stuff from stores that are found in their area. This feature is available on the search page.

Blog 1B — The 5 I’s of Etsy Website was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the first week of the Internet Marketing PG unit, Irfan (our lecturer) was teaching us about internet marketing, one of which was Business and Revenue Model. We have to talk further about it in our blog, and I chose Etsy to analyse!

Markides and Charitou (2004) concluded that the business model represented a potential source of competitive advantage. Furthermore, Afuah and Tucci (2001) defined a business model as “the method by which a firm builds and uses its resources to offer its customer better value and to make money in doing so.”

Etsy is the e-commerce platform for all unique and creative goods. What makes Etsy is a bit different from other E-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon is the products that they sell. Etsy products are well known as crafty, DIY and handmade products, which where Etsy puts its competitive advantage.

Etsy Business Model

In Digital Marketing book by Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2016), Timmers (1999) identified 11 different types of business model. Using Timmers’ types as guidance, Etsy can be classified as an E-Shop because sellers can create a shop on Etsy. It can also be classified as third-party marketplaces, specifically for handmade items (Businessnewsdaily, 2012).

Etsy also declared itself as “a peer-to-peer (P2P) e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and supplies, as well as unique factory-manufactured items” (Etsy, 2012). Besides, Etsy also applies C2C (customer to customer) basis in every store and item in the Etsy shop by providing feedback from customers.

Etsy Revenue Model

Etsy’s revenue streams come from charging its sellers with:

1. Listing fee 0.20 USD per item
2. A transaction fee of 5% when making a sale
3. Subscription fee 20 USD for Etsy plus
4. Advertising and Promotional Fees

Etsy revenue model comes from two revenue categories, Marketplace and Services revenue. Marketplace revenue represents:

1. The fees Etsy charges sellers to list their items in the marketplace,
2. The fees Etsy charges for transactions between buyers and sellers,
3. The revenue from Etsy payments,
4. The use of Etsy payments by Etsy’s sellers to process payments.

Services revenue is derived from the optional services we provide to Etsy’s sellers, which include Promoted Listings, Etsy shipping labels, and Pattern by Etsy.

Etsy is one of the online stores that I visited a lot because of its unique content, especially in journaling stuff (which is one of my interest!).

Have you heard or bought anything from Etsy before?

Reference:

Afuah, A., & Tucci, C., L. (2001). Internet business models and strategies: Text and cases. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2016). Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. United Kingdom: Pearson.

Daniel, R. (2012, December 6). eBay, Amazon, or Etsy: How to sell on third-party marketplaces. Business News Daily. Retrieved from: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3530-how-to-sell-on-third-party-marketplaces.html

Etsy. (2012). About Etsy. Retrieved from: https://www.etsy.com/au/about

Markides, C., & Charitau, C., D. (2004). Competing with dual business models: A contingency approach. Academy of Management Executive, 18: 22–36.

Blog 1A — Business and Revenue Model of Etsy was originally published in Nurul Rika Laksmi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.