凌紫泪2012电子商务毕业论文外文翻译
offline world. That influence is becoming an integral part of e-commerce.
To start with, the internet is profoundly changing consumer behaviour. One in five customers walking into a Sears department store in America to buy an electrical appliance will have researched their purchase online—and most will know down to a dime what they intend to pay. More surprisingly, three out of four Americans start shopping for new cars online, even though most end up buying them from traditional dealers. The difference is that these customers come to the showroom armed with information about the car and the best available deals. Sometimes they even have computer print-outs identifying the particular vehicle from the dealer’s stock that they want to buy.
Half of the 60m consumers in Europe who have an internet connection bought products offline after having investigated prices and details online, according to a study by Forrester, a research consultancy (see chart 1). Different countries have different habits. In Italy and Spain, for instance, people are twice as likely to buy offline as online after researching on the internet. But in Britain and Germany, the two most developed internet markets, the numbers are evenly split. Forrester says that people begin to shop online for simple, predictable products, such as DVDs, and then graduate to more complex items. Used-car sales are now one of the biggest online growth areas in America.
People seem to enjoy shopping on the internet, if high customer-satisfaction scores are any guide. Websites are doing ever more and cleverer things to serve and entertain their customers, and seem set to take a much bigger share of people’s overall spending in the future.
This has enormous implications for business. A company that neglects its website may be committing commercial suicide. A website is increasingly becoming the gateway to a company’s brand, products and services—even if the firm does not sell online. A useless website suggests a useless company, and a rival is only a mouse-click away. But even the coolest website will be lost in cyberspace if people cannot find it, so companies have to ensure that they appear high up in internet search results.
For many users, a search site is now their point of entry to the internet. The best-known search engine has already entered the lexicon: people say they have “Googled” a company, a product or their plumber. The search business has also developed one of the most effective forms of advertising on the internet. And it is
