E-retailing and ecommerce is presently the most trending and developing business platform for the business organisation. No relevance with size, the large MNC, business corporations and small enterprises are indulging in the practice of e-retailing. Apple Inc. is one of the most renowned organisations that has highly extended and robust e-retaining business. Because of the strong e-commerce and e-retailing, Apple has gathered huge online presence because of its continuous growing e-retailing and online presence of the products. The report will present the various aspects of e-retailing of Apple such as the efficient purchasing process, extended catalogues, effective search engines, flexible shopping carts and various other mechanisms that support the e-shopping of the consumers (Kiu and Lee, 2017).
Purchasing Process of Apple.com
(Source: Unity Technologies, 2017)
The purchasing process of Apple is highly efficient and well-organised that offers a numerous competitive advantages to the company in comparison with the other online retailers. The purchasing process of Apple is extremely reliable as in the various events related to the application crashes or network outages, the purchases which is complete at the time when the application is offline will directly be sent to the application on the subsequent initialization. Even when the network outages, the customers do not have to select the products again, they will directly reach to site with the content when the application will work. This saves a lot of time of the consumers and thus, this competence of the purchasing process of Apple fetches the attention of the potential customers. Even when the application is uninstalled then also when it is re-install there is complete data and transaction information so that the customers do not undergoes the entire process once again (Unity Technologies, 2017). One of the key features of the purchasing process of Apple is that if there is some issue at the time of payment or transaction completion, the customers will get their money back in a very easy manner without any difficulty if the transaction is not processed. Thus, there is no risk from the consumers’ perspective while purchasing products through the e-retailing of Apple (Knoppen and Sáenz, 2015).
(Source: solutioncentre, 2017)
Catalogue marketing is one of the key aspects of the e-retailing of Apple group. It is one of the favoured ways of shopping of the large section of people. There has been developed a tendency of purchasing by the means of selection through the catalogue. The use of catalogue for developing e-retailing is a particular form of direct marketing which is used as a marketing tactic by the company (Pantano and Timmermans, 2014). People still take use of catalogues as one of the most preferred source of fetching information about the various services and products of the company. For reaching a wide section of audience or the potential customers, Apple take use of an efficient catalogue that comprises of the various innovative, pioneering attractive products of the company. The catalogue offers specific information about the several products which are high in demand as well as in trend. The customers perform a complete analysis of the products by the means of catalogues and purchase the products with higher conformity and confidence. These catalogues are available for the customers at various platforms such as the company’s website, online sites, emails as well as various other channels (Raki? and Raki?, 2014).
(Source: Shotland, 2016)
The most renowned aspect of Apple that supports its e-retailing is the newly developed search engine of Apple. Spotlight is the recognized search engine of Apple which gives a striving competition to Google, Bing, etc. Developing a search engine is one of the pioneering features that offer competitive advantages to the organisation as the competitors do not possess such search engine that can help in developing the e-retailing business of Apple. The most significant benefit of the search engine for Apple is that it helps the customers in finding the products of the company in one go without much availability of other option. The higher the online presence of the company and its products is, the greater are the chances of increased sales (Ramesh and Andrews, 2015). The search engine, Spotlight, helps Apple in promoting and developing the presence of the company’s website. The search engine is one of the best sources for generating increase traffic for the products and the services of the company. It is one of the most chosen marketing strategies for the online retailers to increase their online presence. Thus, the search engine i.e. Spotlight supports the long term sustainability and continuous growth of the e-retailing of Apple.
(Source: yalantis, 2017)
In the retailing and e-commerce, one of the most important factors that are needed to be considered and lay significant emphasis upon is the feasibility and efficiency of the shopping cart. The shopping cart of Apple is extremely effective in various aspects such as it offers the most key advantage of convenience and safety as the shopping cart makes the transactions and the payment process very easy and convenient as they can store their products in the cart and can see to them later (Yalantis, 2017). It also benefits the consumers by offering them an easy check out facility where they do not have to wait in a queue. All the items selected can be paid in a single transaction. The most significant feature of the shopping cart of Apple is that the customers can select as many products as they want and they do not have to pay for that until they purchase them in their final order. It also help the company in several aspects such as by the means of shopping cart, Apple can able to check the business performance, the demand for the products, the preferences of the customers and the provide adequate statistics and analytics of the total sales and the effectiveness of the e-retailing (Trevinal and Stenger, 2014).
(Source: Li, 2013)
There are several other mechanisms which can help in improving the e-shopping or e-retailing from both the consumers as well as the company’s perspectives. The first and the key mechanism is the online product review. The reviews posted by the customers are one of the key sources from where the other potential consumers search for the information rea.ted to the products. Thus, it is essential that for improving and developing the e-retailing of Apple, the company must take care of these reviews. If there will be good review, there are increased chances of higher online sales. It is a kind of word of mouth publicity which can raise or decline the sales of the products on online platforms (Li, 2013). The second key mechanism is increasing presence on the shopping comparison sites. The customers have a tendency to check the products by comparing to with other substitutes or product s of similar range and feature. If they found it comparatively good then the consumers opt for that particular product. Therefore, it is a key aspect or mechanism to improve the e-retailing business of the companies. Another important mechanism for supporting the e-commerce or e-retailing is the presence on the social networking sites, coupon site, retailer emails, etc. It is essential that Apple must have recognized presence on these sites for increasing the traffic and customer base for the products at online platforms (Rao, et al., 2016).
There are various other factors that support the valuable and globally renowned e-retailing of Apple such as the design, site usability and the multiple services offered by the company. There is a 24*7 online support system, for answering the queries of the customers as well as for resolving the issues of the customers related to the products. Such after sales support is one of the key factors in improving the visibility of the site. The manner in which the website and the online portal is designed is the attraction point as the customers can easily get the desired product in a single click without much difficulties and various pop-ups. Thus, the sites can be said as the user-friendly that support boosting the e-retailing of Apple.
Conclusion
In present scenario, the companies are required to have extended and increase online visibility as the customers now prefer buying online instead of purchasing from the physical stores. The report helps in understanding the various factors that supports the strong global presence of Apple by the means of e-retailing. It can be concluded that there are numerous factors that plays a vital role in this aspect such as the search engine, shopping cart, online purchasing process, the use of catalogues for marketing, etc. From this report, it can be stated that if Apple will have few more mechanism to improve its e-retailing business, then it will be soon developed as the leader in the e-retailing business. Thus, it is analysed that the companies must work on their online processes, their online visibility and also continuously improve the search engine availability and purchasing process for fetching the attention of more number of customers. Therefore, it is also concluded that in the rapid success of the brand, there is a vital role of e-retailing (Laudon and Traver, 2013).
References
Kiu, C.C. and Lee, C.S., 2017. E-commerce market trends: a case study in leveraging Web 2.0 technologies to gain and improve competitive advantage. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 25(3), pp.373-392.
Knoppen, D. and Sáenz, M.J., 2015. Purchasing: Can we bridge the gap between strategy and daily reality?. Business Horizons, 58(1), pp.123-133.
Laudon, K.C. and Traver, C.G., 2013. E-commerce. Pearson.
Li, J. 2013. Study: Online Shopping Behavior in the Digital Era. Accessed on: 10th July, 2017. Accessed from: https://www.iacquire.com/blog/study-online-shopping-behavior-in-the-digital-era
Pantano, E. and Timmermans, H., 2014. What is smart for retailing?. Procedia Environmental Sciences, 22, pp.101-107.
Raki?, B. and Raki?, M., 2014. Integrated marketing communications paradigm in digital environment: The five pillars of integration. Megatrend revija, 11(1), pp.187-204.
Ramesh, N. and Andrews, J., 2015. Personalized search engine using social networking activity. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 8(4), pp.301-306.
Rao, K.R.M., Patro, C.S., Nkechi, E.E., Ewomaoghene, E.E., Egenti, N., Saha, P., Mukherjee, S., Das, T., Shaw, D., Saikia, A. and Balogun, O.E., 2016. A study on Consumer Perception towards E-Shopping. RAY: International Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 1(2), pp.26-35.
Shotland, A., 2016. Search Different Understanding Apple’s New Search Engine State of Search 2016. Accessed on: 10th July, 2017. Accessed from: https://www.slideshare.net/andrewsho/search-different-understanding-apples-new-search-engine-state-of-search-2016
Solutioncentre, 2017. APPLE PRODUCT CATALOGUE. Accessed on: 10th July, 2017. Accessed from: https://www.solutioncentre.co.zw/brands/apple/
Trevinal, A.M. and Stenger, T., 2014. Toward a conceptualization of the online shopping experience. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 21(3), pp.314-326.
Tutorialspoint, 2016. E-Commerce – Quick Guide. Accessed on: 10th July, 2017. Accessed from: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/e_commerce/e_commerce_quick_guide.htm
Unity Technologies, 2017. Processing Purchases. Accessed on: 10th July, 2017. Accessed from: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UnityIAPProcessingPurchases.html
Yalantis, 2017. How Do You Integrate Apple Pay Using Stripe For Your Shopping App? Accessed on: 10th July, 2017. Accessed from: https://yalantis.com/blog/how-do-you-integrate-apple-pay-using-stripe-for-your-shopping-app/
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