Webbutiker : Hur hanteras frånvaron av det fysiska rummet för kommunikation?

• Main Authors: Eriksson, Sofia, Hedinge, Camilla
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Högskolan i Borås, Institutionen Textilhögskolan 2009
• Subjects: marketing; market communication; web shop; internet; online shopping; product presentation; customer communication; kotler’s levels of product; Economics and Business; Ekonomi och näringsliv
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-19608

Online shopping is growing and its turnover increases each year. Internet hastherefore become an important retail location for companies. Web shops lack thephysical room for marketing as well as face-to-face interaction between customer andsalesperson. Therefore there is a need to develop marketing and customercommunication methods for this way of shopping. In physical shops the customer hasthe ability to try on the garments and be pampered by the staff. All in all, the wholevisit can be seen as an experience. For the fashion web shops, this is not possible andhence, they have to find other ways.Our purpose with this study is to describe how web shops replace the physical roomfor communication. We will do that by identify and describe the different functionsoffered to the fashion web shops' customers. Further we aim to find out whichfunctions can be regarded as standard, and which are extra and hence could be seen ascompetitive advantages. Based on these descriptions we will be able to present anormative model for best practice for the fashion web shop industry.Our literature review begins with a general introduction to marketing, marketcommunication and how Internet has affected these two areas. This is followed by amore focused review on the literature of web shops and the various functions relatedto them, for example product presentation and different kinds of services. Theprimary aim of our literature review was to formulate our research questions but it hasalso provided us with concepts and models for the structuring of our findings.We started our study by mapping the field of web shops by making observations onthe Internet. Then we divided our material in categories so that we could limit ourfurther part of the study. We chose H&M, Nelly and Acne as study cases for our indepthstudy, and we chose another seven web shops for comparisons. The functionsthat were observed more thorough were product presentation, purchase related andrelation oriented functions. Our empirical material was then analysed according toKotler’s levels of product. By doing this we also present the normative model for bestpractice.We have found that web shops use several different methods to replace the physicalfunctions. Both virtual dressing rooms and video clips of catwalks will probably be apart of best practice in the future. The loss of the physical functions makes it difficultII Ifor web shops to fully compete with physical shops. There are however severalbenefits of web shops that customers can’t get from a physical shop, for example thelarge range of products, and the 24-hours availability. In conclusion, physical andvirtual shops convey different kinds of experiences for the customer. Web shops canbe a complement to physical shops, but they will probably not be able to fully replacethem.This Bachelor thesis will follow in Swedish. === Program: Textilekonomutbildningen