ICT and e-Business Impact in the Retail Industry - empirica

e-Business in the Retail SectorAbility to concentrate on core business activitiesSelling equipment and accessories is the core business activities at 4fitness. Thisincludes e-marketing activities. The strong relationship with the technology providerenables the owner of 4fitness to concentrate his efforts on the selling and marketingactivities as the partner firm provides adequate technology support for the online shopand ample advice regarding e-marketing. The owner even goes as far as commentingthat he has no worries about technical issues because the partner firm is ‘always there’.Furthermore, 4fitness uses a specialised logistics provider, a globally-operating Germanlogistics firm, to ship its products; and it uses a dedicated third-party service provider,assembling equipment sold by 4fitness at customer premises. These partnerships givethe owner space and time to concentrate his efforts on core business activities.5.6.4 Lessons learned from studying online sales and e-marketingactivities at 4fitnessThe owner of 4fitness set-up and established a small retail business trading fitnessequipment and accessories in the rural town of Rohrdorf in Germany. The two main saleschannels for the firm are a bricks-and-mortar store and an internet shop. From theexperiences of 4fitness, the following lessons about e-marketing and selling online can belearned:e-Marketing is a complex issue, especially for micro firmsThe experiences of 4fitness show that engaging in e-marketing is a complex issue: microfirms need to make choices about the extent, type and scope of e-marketing. Without thesupport from an experienced e-marketing partner firm (the technology provider), theowner reckons, it would have been very difficult for him to make adequate choices andgrasp the potential of e-marketing. In terms of e-marketing processes, a trial-and-errorapproach was, and continues to be, a suitable strategy for approaching e-marketingactivities at 4fitness. The owner however notes that these activities are bounded byresource capacity such as financial resources available to carry out e-marketingcampaigns and time available for spending on activities.The effects of e-marketing are difficult to measureWhen the owner of 4fitness explored the impact that e-marketing was having on his firm,he found that effects on actual sales made over the internet are measurable from placingads on Google and optimising Google search engine results. Banner advertising andregistering with internet price comparison sites did not produce measurable effects.Indirectly though, these actions have intangible effects such as creating awareness aboutthe company. Apart from direct effects on the company’s online sales and indirect effectson the company’s publicity, 4fitness reports that e-marketing influences the company’soverall marketing budget and the owner’s schedule in terms of time spent engaging in e-marketing activities. While a monetary value can be assigned to the marketing budget,and time can be measured in minutes, these tend to be ad-hoc measures. The owner’stime is particularly difficult to put into numbers. Hence, overall, it is difficult to measure theeffects of e-marketing.160