ARTEMIS DESIGNER JEWELLERY AND GIFTS ASPIRATION TO BE FULLY ONLINE - Essay Example

? A BRIEFING PAPER ON ARTEMIS DESIGNER JEWELLERY AND GIFTS’ ASPIRATION TO BE FULLY ONLINE By: Presented Due Artemis Designer Jewellery and Gifts Artemis Designer Jewellery and Gifts is a jewellery and gift shop that is based on the Gloucester Road, one of Bristol’s Independent Shopping Streets. The business is family-owned and it is run by a mother and daughter team named Catherine Amesbury and Carrie Mullan. Artemis has a supply of various collections of gifts and jewellery for various occasions. Products available in the shop range from fashion handbags to hand crafted pottery to decorative lights to small token gifts to decorations and stylized soaps. Other supplies available in the business are silver jewellery, which customers choose and can customize to meet their taste. Also known as, the home of Catherine Amesbury Contemporary Jewellery, the business is a mixed model of both the traditional form of business and e-commerce. This means that the customer can either visit the shop physically or access the services of the business online. The customer can browse, request for modifications and buy products through an internet-enabled system on their website or visit their physical store and ask for the same services. Advantages of E-commerce over Traditional Business An E-commerce form of business can offer numerous advantages both to a business and to its customers1. The first advantage is that the costs involved in opening and running a fully online business are lower than the costs involved in starting and managing a traditional business. According to Goel (2012), compared to a traditional business, distribution, phone, marketing, personnel, and printing costs among other costs will reduce in a virtual business. Goel maintains that the extra funds in use to open up a physical store are useful for other concerns, for example, promoting and marketing of the products. The second advantage of an online business is its presence on a 24/7 basis which makes it an all-time business. E-businesses help overcome the challenges of barriers relating to time, which are a common issue with traditional business. With a well functioning website, a business can run throughout the day and night as customers can access the products of the business anytime and from anywhere in the world. According to Goel (2012), one can sell his/her products at any time of the day with a single click of the mouse. As a result, more customers are likely to visit the website and make their purchases at the convenience of their time without having time constraint2. The other advantage of an online business over a traditional business is that the enterprise will command a larger market share because of being able to have a worldwide market. As Goel (2012) asserts, because of the internet, a business will have global visibility, which makes it network with other businesses and consumers of their products. This will increase its market share, in addition to augmented economies of scale3. A larger market share will mean more sales hence more profits to a business compared to the ones realized in a traditional business set up. According to Botha, Bothma, and Geldenhuys (2004), an online business is not limited by geographic barriers, which characterize brick and mortar businesses. Customers from any part of the world can access the products that a business has unlike in traditional businesses where only the customers at a given geographical zone can access it. Therefore, customers from all over the world will be able to see the company’s products increasing the customer base of the business. This will increase the overall sales made by the enterprise leading to larger profits. All that a customer needs to do is to search for companies that have a given product, and with proper use of Search Engine Optimization, the business will have many visitors adding unto the list of potential buyers from across the globe4. The cost and time used to process orders is significantly reduced with e-commerce because manual entry of data is lessened. According to Rajaraman (2009), when a seller receives a purchase order, he or she does not need to reinsert the data for processing as data processing is instant. The selling procedure is also made easier as documents concerning a purchase order are shared instantaneously across the networks. Rajaraman maintains that transaction costs are lower in e-business than in traditional business, and they can be less than a fifth of the traditional transactional costs. This in return will reduce the overall cost of running the business leading to higher returns on investment. The company can easily develop and maintain an online catalogue and a price list, which give the potential customers information about the products that the company has in stock and its selling price. The advantage of an online catalogue over the printed catalogue according to Rajaraman (2009) is that an electronic catalogue is easier and less costly to update than a printed catalogue. The salesperson can easily add and/or delete items from the e-catalogue without incurring much cost as would be with a paper-based catalogue. The cost of printing and distributing manual catalogues is high, and it is not easy to make changes, as one need to reprint the catalogues. The other advantage of an online business is that the organizational hierarchy that is a common feature with traditional business is eliminated. According to Heneman, and Greenberger (2002), one derives his or her leadership power from the level of work that he or she performs in a bureaucratic organization without being concerned of their ability to deliver better business results. However, in an online business, there are fewer levels of hierarchy with proficiency, competencies, and capacity to influence core business processes as the motivating force behind the getting hold of power5. This means that only the high performing employees are maintained in an online business, which reduces the cost of hiring workers while maintaining high levels of competencies. The last advantage of online business is that intermediaries are eliminated for some goods and services. According to Rajaraman (2009), the business owners can make to order and sell some of their goods directly to the clients without involving intermediaries, which leads to an improved supply chain management6. According to the author, the business owners could regulate the inventory levels by basing it on the orders that customers have already given, and information about the customers’ predilection collected over time. This will ensure that the business realizes maximum profits as it sells goods at a retail price avoiding discounts given to intermediaries. Disadvantages of E-commerce in Comparison to Traditional Business Even though, e-commerce has a number of advantages, like the traditional business, it has its disadvantages too. The major problem with this mode of business is the security concerns that it posses as it vulnerable to the hackers, viruses, espionage and other forms of internet security threats7. Hackers can attack shopping portals, in addition to misappropriating credit card numbers of customers and their orders. This calls for exceptional security systems to be acquired and put in place in order to curb the menace, making the business owner incur an additional cost (Rajaraman, 2009). Failure to invest in the security system will lead to a large number of manipulated orders and denied access of customers making them lose faith in the business. Although the internet gives a business competitive edge, it can work against the business because it opens up the business to the competitors. The advantage of confidentiality about the business’ price list and catalogues that the traditional method of business offers is lost. This will also lead to duplication of successful online business. This is because it is easier to duplicate an e-commerce than to duplicate a brick and mortar kind of business (Rajaraman, 2009). This will require consistent renewal and upgrading in order to maintain the competitive advantage that the business enjoys. In addition to the advantages discussed above, availability of internet connection to all customers is a crucial challenge to take into account. Not all potential and actual customers of the business are connected to the internet which makes them be shunned from accessing the products that the business stocks. Recommendations From the above discussion, it is clear that the advantages of a fully online business outweigh its disadvantages. However, these advantages can turn out to be cons of the business if care is not taken as they pose new challenges that the management of any business needs to address before embarking on it. Although the business owner can curb a considerable number of these issues, there are issues that are beyond the reach of the organization. For instance, there is nothing that the vendor can do for all the customers to access the internet. To curb such issues, Artemis Designer Jewellery and Gifts enterprise should adopt a blend of both the traditional and online form of business. According to Bidgoli (2011), such style of business could be more successful than either the traditional and fully e-commerce as it relies on the advantages that a physical store can offer such as the ability of a customer to visit the store for takings8. Bibliography Bidgoli, H MIS 2010. Mason, Ohio, South-Western. Botha, J. A. R., Bothma, C. H., And Geldenhuys, P 2004, Managing e-commerce. Lansdowne: Juta. Goel, R 2012, E-commerce. New Delhi: New Age International. Greenberger, D. B., & Heneman, R. L 2002, Human resource management in virtual organizations. Greenwich, Conn, IAP: Information Age Publ. Rajaraman, V 2009, Essentials of E-commerce Technology. New Delhi: PHI Learning Pvt Ltd. Read More