Week 6: Digital markets

Question 1
a) What experiences have you had with shopping online?
The only online experience I have had is looking for items online at the JB hifi store. JB hifi has an online store and a physical store. You can either order items online or just look at the items online and see prices which helps you make decisions to whether or not you want to purchase. I look at the JB hifi store to see if they have what music/TV shows or movies that I want. If they do not have it then I won’t go to the store until the website states that they have it.


b) Describe a good experience.
My experiences have been good. I have purchased a few items because of the online presence. I tend to look at the items and price to determine whether ill purchase the items or not. A good experience is when the consumer goes on the online store and purchases items which they want. The experience is good when you purchase the item and receive the item in the stated time.


c) What did you like about the online store you used?
The things I liked about the online store I used were that I could look at the items and see what for example special features that the DVD comes with. The last item I purchased from Jb was One Tree Hill season 5 which I looked at the online store before purchase. I looked at the price and to see when the DVD was coming out. The online store allows you to see different editions of movies such as Twilight I was looking at which DVD was better. To whether the special edition was better than the original version or not.


d) Describe a bad experience.
A bad experience of online shopping is that the site does not work properly. When trying to make a transaction if the site does not work properly you might not get the item which you want. I have yet to have a bad experience but I’m sure that a lot of people have.


e) What problems did you have with the online store?
There were no real problems which I have encountered when looking online or ordering. The only issue that I have come across is the store not having the item when I wanted it. For example the store did not have the movie which I wanted at the time and I decided not to purchase until I have the item.


f) What features make an online store more appealing?
Personally when looking at an online store I prefer to look at the items. The items have to say how much the item costs whether in stores have the items and what are on the item such as movies features.


g) What features make an online store less appealing?
In my opinion online stores which have little information about what they are seeing is very unappealing. I want to know exactly what I am purchasing. The appearance of the online store is very important. It has to look professional. If the website looks dodgy I won’t look or even order from it. Such websites as the banks have to have a professional feel since if they did not many people would not bank online.


h) Should we expect to see the prices of goods and services rise or fall due to the migration of consumers online?In my opinion I think it depends. There are a lot of consumers who still do not shop online. The introduction of eBay has increased people in using the internet to shop and purchase online. In my opinion it depends on the product or service. Such things as CD’s have significantly changed. Buying music online is cheaper than buying physical CD’s. Overall prices change depending on the product.


Question 2
a) The dispersion of prices (that is, the spread between the lowest and highest price for a particular product) will narrow.
In this case I agree. Consumers generally always look for products and compare the prices. Most of the time consumers look at products from different stores not necessarily just in store but online also and decide which to buy through the price. If an online store has a product cheaper than a physical store then the consumer will be more incline to buy from the online store to save money.


b) The importance of brand names will decrease.
The importance of brand names in my opinion will not decrease. A lot of consumers are very brand loyal. Some consumers will buy a certain product because of the brand no matter the cost. For example consumers will buy Ford cars even though there might be a cheaper car will the same features and just as good quality.


c) Price competition will make all products cheaper.
I agree that when stores compete on price that the product becomes cheaper. Such items as iPods when people purchase them they look around at the price since the product is the same in each store.


d) Digital markets will become dominated by a handful of mega-sites, like Amazon.com.
I agree that digital markets are dominated by mega sites. Sites such as Amazon, eBay and other sites dominate since are well known so consumers turn to them first.


e) How do you think the balance of power between buyers and sellers will change?
I think that the balance of power will change between buyers and sellers are that people will be looking online for things. The buyers have to make sure that their prices are competing with other stores. If other stores are cheaper than consumers are more incline to go elsewhere. Sellers have more opportunity now since they can go online and see where they can get a product for a cheaper price.


f) Prices are cluster online.
This statement I am unsure about. I believe that the prices online vary. If products can be purchased online this does not mean that the prices are all the same.


g) Online prices are elastic. (I.e. immune to change up and down with demand).
I think this depends. Most prices would most likely stay the same due to demand always varies. Such items go through waves of popularity. If the items continually change through demand then the prices will change throughout the seasons. The price for a product might reduce for a certain amount of time but I do not think that prices online are elastic.


h) Online prices are generally transparent (the extent to which prices for a given product or service are known by buyers in the marketplace.).
I agree that online prices are transparent. Online prices would be close to the marketplace prices. Certain products are known for their value so if the online price is more expensive than other prices then consumers would purchase elsewhere.


http://moodle.ballarat.edu.au/file.php/24/Digital_Markets/MIT_price_paper.pdf

Question 3
a) What types of m-commerce services does your cell phone provider offer?
My mobile provider which is Optus provides such m-commerce as:
· paying bills online,
· emailing
· Bluetooth
· Games
· Internet


b) Which of these services do you use?
The only service that I use when it comes to my mobile phone is games and entertainment. I tend to use Bluetooth to send photos to my laptop and send files but I do not bank through my phone and generally do not use the internet on my phone.


c) What types of transactions do you perform through your cell phone or other wireless device? I generally do not make transactions on my phone. I send messages and call people but apart from that I hardly use it for much else. Many people I know use their phone to do many things. Some people use their phone to go onto the internet such as facebook and bank using their phone to know their bank balance.


d) What types of transactions would you like to perform, but are currently unable to?
Personally I don’t really want to make transactions on my phone since I have the internet at home which allows me to check things which need to be checked. On my phone I can go on the internet and download ringtones and download games.


e) What is your opinion of wireless advertising/mobile marketing?
In my opinion wireless advertising is a smart idea such as more people has a mobile then has the internet at their home. With people always on their phones it makes sense that marketers would tap into this trend. By making it easier for people to make transactions using their phone this helps people do things faster. With the introduction of iphones people have seen this as the latest craze since it allows consumers to go onto the internet to do normal things they would do on their computer. The iphone is bigger and easier to take anywhere.

Week 5: models

How does Australia rate?The Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009 was released at the world economic forum in the past few days (March 2009). See http://www.weforum.org/en/index.htm A countries 'Technology readiness' is an important part of its eBusiness readiness.Spend some time looking at the Technology report, particularly the country profiles and rankings. Use some of the tools to answer the following -


1) What is the Mobile phone use /100 population - compare Australia, USA, China, India
· Australia: 102.5
· USA: 83.5
· China: 41.2
· India: 20.0


2) Internet use population - compare Australia, USA, China, India
· Australia: 54.2
· USA: 71.9
· China: 15.8
· India: 6.9

3) Compare main strengths and weaknesses of Australia in the survey.
Strengths:
· Political regulory environment
· Infrastructure environment
· Individual readiness
Weakeness
· Market environment
· Business readiness
· Government readiness
By looking at the survey Australia was not ranked completely low. There was afew areas which Australia needs to improve on to become ranked higher.

4) What does the survey suggest to you about the Information Technology readiness of Australian business compared to Australian consumers?
This survey suggests that Australian business readiness is ranked 22 compared to individual Australian consumer which is ranked 13. This shows that the Australian consumer is ranked higher than Australian businesses.


All information is sourced through this website:
World Economic forum.(2009). The global information technology report. Retrieved April 25, 2009 from: http://www.insead.edu/v1/gitr/wef/main/fullreport/index.html

Week 4 questions: Analytics

1) Looking at the site useage, what does the terms visits, page views and pages/visit mean? What does the bounce rate mean and does it vary much from day to day? By looking at the Analytical website the term visit means how many people have visited the website. There were 348 people who visited the OZRURAL site. The page views mean how many times the page has been viewed. In this case the page had been viewed 571 times. ( As from April 2, 2009) This will vary. Bounce rate is generally when the user/viewer goes to a different page or site from that site. The bounce rate does vary from day to day such as the average rate was 70.69%. On Monday the 2nd of March the bounce rate was 53.85% where as on Wednesday the 1st of April the bounce rate of OZRURAL was 83.33% according to the Google Analytic website. (Google, 2009).


Google.(2009). Google Analytics. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from:https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/bounce_rate?id=2683968&pdr=20090302-20090401&cmp=average&trows=10&gdfmt=nth_day&lp=%2Fanalytics%2Freporting%2Fvisitors#lts=1238648578739


2) Now look at the traffic sources report. What are the three sources of traffic and where has most of the traffic come from? The three sources of traffic are direct traffic, referring sites and Search engines. Most of the traffic comes from Search engines which consist of 75.86%. Direct traffic is 20.40% and referring sites is 3.74%. The main search engine which gives most traffic to the OZRURAL site is Google. (Google, 2009).

Google.(2009). Traffic source overview. Retrieved from:https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/sources?id=2683968&pdr=20090302-20090401&cmp=average&trows=10&gdfmt=nth_day&lp=%2Fanalytics%2Freporting%2Fvisitors#lts=1238648950048


3) What was the most popular web browser used to access the site?The most popular web browser is Internet explorer. 240 people used Internet Explorer, 75 used Fire Fox, 19 Safari, 13 used Chrome and 1 used Mozilla. Internet explorer is the most popular web browser because it is the most used and common. (Google, 2009).

Google.(2009). Visitors Overview. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from: https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/visitors?id=2683968&pdr=20090302-20090401&cmp=average&lp=%2Fanalytics%2Freporting%2F&trows=10&gdfmt=nth_day&rpt=VisitorsOverviewReport&tab=0&tchcol=0&tst=0&tscol=v0&tsdir=0&mdet=WORLD&midx=0&gidx=0&glcnt=1#lts=1238648521170


4) How many countries did visitors to OZRURAL come from and what were the top three countries?
On the 1st of April 2009 the website states that there were 20 different countries which visited OZRURAL. The top 3 countries which visited the OZRURAL website was Australia with 238, The United States which had 52 and Canada which had 16. (Google, 2009).

Google.(2009). Map overlay. Retrieved on April 2, 2009 from: https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/maps?id=2683968&pdr=20090302-20090401&trows=10&gdfmt=nth_day&lp=%2Fanalytics%2Freporting%2Fbenchmark#lts=1238649361499


5) Having clicked every possible link on my analytics, make a few comments on
(a) What you can track, On the website you can track:
· Visits
· Page views
· Time on site
· Bounce rate
· Traffic source
· List of countries that the user comes from
· User overview

(b) What you can track over time
· Number of visits
· Number of times pages have been visited
· How long people spend on a page
· Number of countries which visit the website
· Bounce rate
(c) What you can’t track.
· The gender of the user
· The direct location of the user
· Age of the user

6) What do the following terms mean? These are just a few, you may like to add some more and perhaps include them on the Moodle glossary

.high bounce rate:High bounce rate means how many times a user/person left the website after entering. Generally this means the website isn’t relevant and the user might not return to the website.

Google.(2009). What does Bounce Rate mean? Retrieved April 2, 2009 from:https://adwords.google.com.au/support/bin/answer.py?answer=81986&hl=en-uk&ctx=rosetta

key words: In the context of the internet keywords are when searching for a website keywords allow the user to find a relevant website that contains the keywords which the user is looking for.

Average Page Depth:Average page depth means on average the user visits pages on a site.

Google.(2009). Average page depth. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from:http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=32974

click through rate:Click through rate is when a user clicks “on an ad then divided by the number of times the ad is shown” (google, 2009).

Google.(2009). Click through rate. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from:http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6305


click:Click means pressing a button on a mouse.

Cookie:Cookies are stored data such as small text files which is data about websites visited. (Keane, 2003).

Keane, T., Lawson, J., Kitchen, T. & Stortell, A.(2003). Information processing and management. Southbank, Vic, Australia:Nelson Australia

Impression:Impression is viewing a website or looking at an advertisement.

Encyclo.(2009). Impression. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from http://www.encyclo.co.uk/define/impression


Hyperlink:A Hyperlink is a text or image that when a user/person clicks onto it the hyperlink takes then user directing to the website. (Encyclo, 2009).

Encyclo.(2009). Hyperlink. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from: http://www.encyclo.co.uk/search.php

Navigation:Navigation is when a person goes to a website through an internet browser. (Everland, 2009).

Everlands.(2009). Web design and hosting. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from: http://www.everlands.co.uk/glossary.htm


Pageview:Is when the internet page is viewed.

Session:A session is how long the user is on the website for.

Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors):Unique visitor is when the website identifies the user using an IP address (Encyclo, 2009).

Encyclo.(2009). Unique visitors. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from: http://www.encyclo.co.uk/search.php

URL:This stands for Universal Resource Locator. This “identifies a file is on the internet” (Everlands, 2009).

Everlands.(2009). Web design and hosting. Retrieved April 2, 2009 from: http://www.everlands.co.uk/glossary.htm


Visitor:A visitor is a user/person who visits a website.

Visitor Session:A visitor session is the amount of time a user/person spends on a website.


https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/?reset=1&id=2683968&pdr=20090302-20090401