Where are the Opportunities?
| Category: Net Business Start ups | Date: 2001-07-23 |
The web is no longer an open frontier. Chances are if you have a good business idea, someone else had it sooner. How does a business succeed as a latecomer to an already-crowded market? The key is solving problems, not
selling products.
Too many businesses attempt to make the jump online by scrambling for an "Internet strategy". Instead, businesses should try to identify a problem and then try to solve it. "What businesses are doing is taking an old problem and trying to solve it by putting it online," "Its not necessarily working because most businesses have processes that are in the way of making a new distribution channel or new retailing channel work."
According to Forrester Research, local retailers on the Internet will capture just 6% of the market in 2003, a decline from their present 9%. In contrast, Forrester notes, small and medium-sized retailers have a 50% share of offline retail revenues. The large, national onli ne retailing establishments will continue their present dominance of e-commerce. This gloomy prediction is spelled out in Forresters report: "Local Commerce Goes National." The report argues that the web superstores, such as Amazon, CDNow and eToys, will take advantage of scale while small, local enterprises run up against numerous barriers; foremost among them, maintaining full service e-commerce sites that can cost $1 million.
Moreover, smaller establishments will be hard pressed to compete in terms of online ordering tools, inventory management and promotions. Online Only e-tailors are not prepared to deal with the general consumer who are used to a certain type of treatment from companies they buy from in the traditional world. Because it can cost upwards of $100 for online merchants to acquire a single customer, many e-tailers are beginning to make quality customer service a top priority. Others arent. A study by Net Effect Systems of 25 top e-commerce sites found that 90% have no immediate plans to hire a full-time customer service manager -- 75% dont even have a toll-free phone number listed on their site. Sounds like an opportunity!
About the Author.
:To contact see details below.
DBMarkets@aol.com
http://www.msdbm.com
selling products.
Too many businesses attempt to make the jump online by scrambling for an "Internet strategy". Instead, businesses should try to identify a problem and then try to solve it. "What businesses are doing is taking an old problem and trying to solve it by putting it online," "Its not necessarily working because most businesses have processes that are in the way of making a new distribution channel or new retailing channel work."
According to Forrester Research, local retailers on the Internet will capture just 6% of the market in 2003, a decline from their present 9%. In contrast, Forrester notes, small and medium-sized retailers have a 50% share of offline retail revenues. The large, national onli ne retailing establishments will continue their present dominance of e-commerce. This gloomy prediction is spelled out in Forresters report: "Local Commerce Goes National." The report argues that the web superstores, such as Amazon, CDNow and eToys, will take advantage of scale while small, local enterprises run up against numerous barriers; foremost among them, maintaining full service e-commerce sites that can cost $1 million.
Moreover, smaller establishments will be hard pressed to compete in terms of online ordering tools, inventory management and promotions. Online Only e-tailors are not prepared to deal with the general consumer who are used to a certain type of treatment from companies they buy from in the traditional world. Because it can cost upwards of $100 for online merchants to acquire a single customer, many e-tailers are beginning to make quality customer service a top priority. Others arent. A study by Net Effect Systems of 25 top e-commerce sites found that 90% have no immediate plans to hire a full-time customer service manager -- 75% dont even have a toll-free phone number listed on their site. Sounds like an opportunity!
About the Author.
:To contact see details below.
DBMarkets@aol.com
http://www.msdbm.com
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