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ONLINE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE IN GHANA: CHALLENGES AND

PROSPECTS

PREPARED BY

KOFI OTABIL

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Graham( 1999) suggest that businesses are facing increased demands for shorter
transaction times, highly customised services, and solutions tailored to meet the needs
of sophisticated customers who expect more control in the business process. Thus Liu
and Arnett (2000) goes ahead to indicate that in order to encourage customers' repeat
patronage, the firm must be able to offer its customers an experience that is beyond
convenience; it has to provide an enjoyable experience. This paper critically evaluates
the operations of Ghana Mall Online Shopping Centre an organisation which provides
a one stop online shopping experience to its target customers. This piece of work
takes into consideration the firm’s current relationship marketing strategies in relation
to their marketing environment and make appropriate recommendations by applying
relationship marketing theories and its practical application of e-marketing tools to
relationship marketing problems.

In today's increasingly competitive markets, greater emphasis is being placed on


customer service as a means of achieving competitive advantage. Ghana Mall Online
Shopping Centre (GMOSC) believes that building long term relationships with their
customers can provide opportunities to improve customer service operations by
enabling them to get closer to the customer and enhance the organization-to-customer
contact experience.GMOSC attracts customers through offering a convenient way of
shopping by providing a one stop shopping experience which involves having a wide
range of products and services. This also provides a means to cut shopping cost to its
customers. However, use of the Internet fundamentally changes the nature of the
customer contact experience such as face-to-face interactions.

Schneider and Bowen (1999) suggests that treating customers as if you have a
personal stake in them may lead to long-term customer loyalty, increased positive
word-of-mouth and increased profitability. Relationships also provide an opportunity
for marketing additional products and services to a more receptive customer base.
Relationships may be particularly useful to firms because the advantages may be
sustainable. Relationships are often unique to a particular organization and it would
take time for a competitor to build trust and commitment in an attempt to steal away
customers. Additionally, relationships may lead to consumer delight, a phenomenon
stronger than satisfaction, which may keep them from defecting. A firm can also use
relationship marketing to develop competitive advantage (Day, 2000).

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There are critical relationships marketing issues associated with GMOSC’s operations.
The organisation’s online site has not been endorsed with a trust mark and does not
also have a privacy statement to assure its customers that it is safe to transact business
on their website as well as their privacy guaranteed. Security and privacy are of
serious concern to e-service customers (Rust and Kannan, 2002). Security concerns
the risk of third parties obtaining critical information about the customer (e.g. access
to credit card or bank account details), whereas privacy relates to the concern about
the potential misuse of personal information by marketers (Milne and Rohm, 2000).
Privacy exists when customers can restrict the use of personal information. However,
many customers are not aware of what information e-tailers collect, or where to look
for opt-in or opt-out options.

Portz et al. (2000) suggests that establishing an e-commerce website for small
businesses is not complicated, but convincing a potential customer that the business is
trustworthy can be difficult because Internet consumers will probably not recognise
the company's name. Such trust-mark brands therefore represent a universally
recognised third-party brand which serves to endorse small business Web-sites for
their owner managers, while simultaneously communicating to the consumer the
efficacy of the site as a secure platform for doing business. In order for GMOSC’s on
line transactions to become viable, it needs to formulate strategies such as having its
site endorsed with the trust mark to minimise customer to effectively engender trust
on line.

Personalisation is critical to building relationship with customers yet GMOSC lacks


this fundamental requirement.GMOSC would have benefited by using the database as
an opportunity to capture information on customers in a useful and accessible fashion,
enabling it to identify individual customers, monitor their buying behaviour and to
communicate with them on an individual basis, often with personalised offers. Rust
and Kannan (2002) suggest that an often-cited benefit of online technologies is that
the web site can be personalized to the user's needs, although this may be a
challenging task, because of the lack of a human touch.E-tailers should strive to
customize their services to users' individual needs (Srinivasan et al., 2002).
Information provided by loyal customers can be a valuable source for service
improvements but companies often ignore such information (Finkelstein, 2003). As in

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a traditional service context, customers expect quick feedback on requests and when
they suggest improvements. Though responsiveness in general has a positive
influence on e-satisfaction, it should be noted that it may impact quality perceptions
negatively if customers feel that they are bombarded with company e-mails (Zeithaml
et al., 2000).

Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to navigate your way to purchasing an item on


GMOSC’s website. The links does not function. This affects its overall service quality
system. Morris and Turner (2001) recommend that ease of use is an essential element
of consumer usage of computer technologies (Morris and Turner, 2001; Venkatesh,
2000; Venkatesh and Davis,2000), and is of particular importance for new users
(Gefen and Straub, 2000). Ease of use is a determinant of service quality (Dabholkar,
1996) and is decisive for customer satisfaction, since it enhances the efficiency of
using the service (Xue and Harker, 2002). In an e-tailing context, ease of use includes
aspects such as functionality, accessibility of information, ease of ordering and
navigation (Reibstein, 2002).The process of ordering is not properly defined and there
is also the problem of malfunction of navigation links (Zeithaml et al., 2000).

GMOSC’s website design needs to be improved. A well designed website gives


customers confidence and the perception of quality to the organisation’s image and
service delivery. Wolfinbarger and Gilly, (2003) agrees that another quality
dimension directly related to the user interface is web site design. GMOSC is able to
attract customers because it offers a wide range of products and services in addition to
offering value for money products and services. This serves as a one stop shopping
experience to its target customers. According to Novak et al., (2000) the type of
shopping convenience and experience are likely to have an impact in online markets.

GMOSC may not exhibit tendencies of being able to retain most of its existing
customers. This is in relation to their existing customer service experience level
because customers are less satisfied with their offerings. Creating and enhancing
customer satisfaction leads to long-term relationships. This requires continuous
quality improvement. Eriksson and Löfmarck Vaghult (2000) suggest that satisfaction
increases customer retention, and customer retention depends on the substance of the
relationship between parties.

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Customers to GMOSC who are dissatisfied with their services refrain from using their
medium to make purchases. This is as a result of non- improvement of service quality
and value. In the context of service recovery, McCollough et al., (2000) report a
positive relationship between recovery performance and post recovery satisfaction,
yet, Andreassen (2001) show that even excellent recovery might not be enough to
restore consumer attitudes and behavioural intentions to a pre-failure level.

Electronic marketing will enable GMOSC to build long-term partnerships with its
customers and also meet the core marketing activities. It can use promotional tools to
assist in different stages of its customer relationship management from customer
acquisition to retention by gaining initial visitors to the site and gaining repeat visits
through offering customer value communications techniques. The ability to deliver
interactivity and more detailed information through the Internet is key to enhancing
the extended product offering online.

Through the Internet GMOSC can get closer to its the customers by gathering
customer information to establish customers' buying patterns and to keep them
updated on coming events, this can assist GMOSC in its relationship marketing effort
and also to understand customer needs and desires, and thus allow the firm to send
timely information on new offerings that suit the individual customer, and to cross-
sell related products and services. In these cases, the value to the customer depends
upon the information being relevant and the timing being right.

Research has repeatedly showed that customer retention is much more profitable than
customer acquisition. For GMOSC to retain its customers it has to hold on to every
customer, and thus should be proactive in soliciting and managing customer
relationship. To develop personal relationships with its customers, the firm should
therefore complement e-communication with other forms of customer interaction - for
example via personalised e-mails, telephone calls, and so on. A mix of both "high-
touch" and "high-tech" service will improve customers' perception of service quality
and relationships with the firm, and will ultimately lead to higher customer retention.

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Establishing and maintaining personalised communication with customers can be
used to gather important customer feedback and to measure customer satisfaction. At
the same time, such information enables the firm to take corrective action if service
failures occur. Moreover, soliciting customer feedback also assists in identifying any
failure-prone areas in the firm's service design and technology, and thus improves
service quality.

To build customer relationships and enhance customer loyalty, GMOSC should


attempt to know its customers as individuals. To encourage customers to provide
personal information, it should offer tangible incentives as well as assurance of
customer privacy. Based on this, it can build up comprehensive individual profiles
every time its customers use the service. Management can thus rely on technology to
assess the economic value of each customer, and can identify those who are worth
further investment. In addition, collecting feedback from non-buyers can help the firm
to assess the latent demand beneath its offerings. This increases customer convenience
and, at the same time, creates a sense of belonging and familiarity that prevents
customers from switching.

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