WEEK 6
DIGITAL MARKETS

Question 1
a) What experiences have you had with shopping online?
i have had many experiences with shopping online and find it much cheaper and easier, due to to your door postage and internet transactions.

b) Describe a good experience.Well the experiences that i had with purchasing online were both good experiences. But good ones shopping with ebay

c) What did you like about the online store you used?it was simple and easy to use. and i like the fact that it is easy to search while having different products and choices or variety of products and very attractive online deals with amazing prices

d) Describe a bad experience. Once a seller on eBay swore he didn’t receive my payment. Luckily I had made the payment via paypal though, so it was all sorted out quite easily.

e) What problems did you have with the online store?The quality of the items cannot always be guaranteed. Buying electrical items from overseas can also be risky as they may not use the same configurations, or language as we do in Australia!

f) What features make an online store more appealing?Paypal, quick delivery, cheaper price than in store. Personally when looking at an online store I prefer to look at the items.

g) What features make an online store less appealing?
In my opinion online stores which have little information about what they selling. And many fake on the web because people can’t check goods online. Having to wait for the item, postage costs, can’t see the item hence can’t be sure of its quality. For some people personal contact might be a must (not for me though).

h) Should we expect to see the prices of goods and services rise or fall due to the migration of consumers online?yes prices will go down the more people migrate to online market since also more companies will adapt the online method and that means entering in more competition which will reduce prices.

Question 2
a) The dispersion of prices (that is, the spread between the lowest and highest price for a particular product) will narrow. the brand awareness and the fact that the products in general still have different value and quality so prices dispersion will be there unless we are talking about a product that have no point of differentiation such as plastic cups and then prices tend to be very near or exactly equal each other.

b) The importance of brand names will decrease. Brand name will not decrease as brand name is something established by consumerswhen they invest time and money in this brand which will establish loyalty however in the far future if the brands kept on producing the same products with similar quality then the brand loyalty might start decreasing.

c) Price competition will make all products cheaper. Price competition will make products cheaper as long as those products have no point of differentiation such as special feature and as long as they are doing the same purpose then prices suppose to go cheaper with more competition.

d) Digital markets will become dominated by a handful of mega-sites, like Amazon.com.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 buyer’s and seller’s will change?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.

h) Online prices are generally transparent (the extent to which prices for a given product or service are known by buyers in the marketplace.).As it is easier for a customer to search for a correct price, one would assume that prices are more ‘transparent’ online.

Question 3
a) What types of m-commerce services does your cell phone provider offer?Optus have the online news services, online payment, online browsing, online game, softwares, and multimedia download.

b) Which of these services do you use?i just use normal mobile function of calls and SMS

c) What types of transactions do you perform through your cell phone or other wireless device?I don’t actually use my phone to do transaction however i use it much for viewing.

d) What types of transactions would you like to perform, but are currently unable to?I think all transaction that can be done is doable now as mobile is acting as a computer in regards to internet however i don’t trust the security yet to perform transaction using mobile.

e) What is your opinion of wireless advertising/mobile marketing?
Wireless advertisement such as receiving SMS are very powerful and practical cheap way for advertising however it can be perceived as a preach of privacy so if we can avoid that i think it is very nice but should not be wasted on regular advertisement and should be used only for special occasion.?