Abdulalah Al-Jobore
Unit 33 – The impact of Communication Technology on Business
M2
M2 Explain how two selected, contrasting business organisations have responded to
competitive pressures to develop their use of e-business
In this task, I will be explaining how two selected, contrasting business organisation have responded
to competitive pressures to develop their use of e-business. I will be using eBay and Apple as
examples, as well as comparing them to one another to explain and comparing how both of them
have responded to competitive pressures.
EBay is an American multinational e-commerce which you can sell and buy items through their
websites to millions of customers around the world. EBay that facilitates a consumer-to-consumer
(C2C) and business-to consumer (B2C) sales through its web, which means the transactions of
products or service between consumers as well as well as selling and providing products/service to
private consumers. On the other hand, Apple is one of the largest American multinational
technology companies which designs, develops and sells consumers electronic and computer
software as well as online service. Apple is a commercial business that seeks to make a profit as they
designed their websites for online sales. Therefore, the consumers can go and visit Apple’s website
to purchase their products online and to find more information on the company’s products, as well
as the online service where the consumers can contact the company (online communications).
Multimedia
In term of multimedia, one of the biggest competitor that eBay have is Amazon which both of them
are e-commerce business, which use multimedia to promote and advertise for their businesses,
products and services to gain more customers. For eBay to, they use multimedia such as Instagram
Twitter alongside to their web site to advertise and promote for the different products they are
offering. Therefore, customer will be able to see them and aim to purchase them. In addition, on
their website they have good advertising features known as ‘’ Mouse over image to zoom’’ which
enable customer to see the product with more depth as you can move that area you want to zoom
in more detail. This help customer to decide whether to buy the product. EBay also provide their
customers (sellers) with a unique feature known as ‘’eBay Promoted Listing’’ comparing to their
competitive Amazon methods. This features enable the seller choose which items to promote and
what percentage of the sales (usually 5-10%) on top of the final value fee. Therefore, it boots their
listing higher in search results as it will be appear on the top first research results.
However, on the other side, Apple do use multimedia to respond to their competitor’s pressure and
to compete with their main competitor, which is Samsung where it in the same market industry.
They have use these multimedia platforms such Instagram and Twitter to promote their products
and service as they have a very professional designers who design and promote their unique
advertising campaigns. In fact, their unique style and appears of their website help them to promote
their products and services as it makes the reader feels that apple is a great place with unique
products to purchase online.
Shipping/delivery
Both eBay and Apple provide their customer with a free delivery/and tracking options, as once a
customer purchase a product whether from eBay or Apple it will be delivered next day if their order
by a certain time or they can deliver the product with free delivery on specifics dates. Comparing
eBay to Amazon, eBay could still be a better options when busying imported goods, as eBay could
offer more seller choices with cheap prices in term of delivery comparing to amazon where they
have higher charge for delivery options such Amazon Prime.
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