Mkt 552 - the Challenges of E-Commerce

The Challenges of e-Commerce

Melissa G Tindall

University of Phoenix

MKT/552

Spring Semester

Today's business managers face many challenges when migrating a traditional 'brick and mortar' company. Instead, change the word "brick" to "click". Considering this, important factors such as copyright infringement, regulatory compliance, and policy and procedure guidelines must be considered in order to ensure safe business practices while endorsing and protecting a company's brand, reputation, and intellectual property. This paper will discuss the challenges of an e-commerce site and how the four infrastructures work within the company.

Today's networked economy presents a variety of business challenges that are unique to e-commerce. Therefore, it's necessary for managers to become very familiar both with the opportunities and risks associated with web-based business, understanding how social media helps to expand into new markets, grow consumer curiosity. The company chosen for this paper is ViSalus Sciences, a company that makes a protein weight-loss shake as well as other weight loss products (ViSalus.com/2013). It is a MLM business, in which people can sell the product as they work from home, and potentially make a profit if sold correctly. An examination of traditional e-commerce business models show how ViSalus would work in each.

* Business-to-Business (B2B) - ViSalus could easily work with gyms across the United States to help sell their product. Gyms could use the percentage of sales they would receive to either purchase more product, or to help purchase additional gym equipment (which would equal more gym memberships)

* Business-to-Consumer (B2C) - ViSalus has a website where consumers can purchase the product. It can also be bought via personal websites, as well as Amazon.com.

* Peer-to-Peer (P2P) - the P2P model is important to ViSalus and watched. A valid seller of the Body by Vi product can sell on Ebay, however they have to abide by the rules that ViSalus sets (ie: you cannot sell the product for a lower cost, no competition, equal playing field or your account will be suspended).

* Consumer-to-Business (C2B) - This is the online forum method, where Vi is shared with promoters via their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest page. A photo of someone that lost 40 pounds on the product can get someone interested in trying the protein drink.

Regardless of the type of model desired in establishing an e-Commerce operational platform, several key factors must be considered by managers in order to align web-based operations with business or corporate strategy.

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