I read an article about C2C websites as I am curious how C2C websites works in the business world. Prior to the reading, it seemed to me C2C website is not going to be popular as it is merely a platform which enables customers to resell their used goods to another customers, however I could be wrong, since later I find out C2C could be a place being transformed to a B2C business in a later stage, enabling people who have minimal amount of capital to start their business online. According to the article, “C2C can be categorized as a part of e-commerce if the visit of the website could generate a later trade activity or attract potential buyers (Isaac et al, 2008)”, a blog can also be a place for C2C to start with, and I am interested to know how did the C2C websites attract someone to view its site contents. Suppose I am a blogger who post regular blogs about my experience as well as posting resale product ads to the blog and discussion. I try to apply my learning from this article to start my C2C business. In this article, the researchers have defined two important factors which affect the website visit: 1. e-service quality, 2. Personal and situation factors.
E-service quality refers to the ease of use, reliability, system availability and responsiveness, and also trust. For a blog, what I can work on is the reliability is to post reliable source of information, provide referencing source, and post lots of photos of the products I would like to resell to my target audience. For the system availability and ease of use, I think I have already made the correct move as I have started my blog in the UBC blog site, which is a reliable service provider and have created a simple interface. For the responsiveness, what I can work on is to provide a link of a chat room so that the web viewers can chat with me interactively if they have questions. Also starting a post in a forum can enable different people who have used the same product give comments and exchange their ideas about it. Back to the basics, I will need reply to every blog comment in a timely manner. And lastly, with all the elements mentioned above being executed properly, I will gain the trust from my blog regular visitors.
Personal and situational factors are not controllable as different individuals have different life experience. i.e. Men and women have different perceptions about web risk. Something I can work on to increase the relevance of my postings to my target audiences could be posting news of some current trends, new innovations/products, or posting reviews about recent newspaper articles.
The researcher of this article explored the perception of the internet users on viewing the websites by measuring the netnography and conduct semi-structured interviews. (The term “Netnography” is new to me, and it is a term which explains the internet user behavior, culture and lifestyle.) After conducting the above mentioned research process, the researchers figured out that the internet users choose the website to read not only because of the website design, it is also related to some “offline” factors. The offline factors were explained in 3 stages of the web visit experience. First, prior to a web visit, the person may receive comments from their peers or family members about a website, which arouse their interest on making the first visit. Next, during the web visit, the real time service quality determines the viewer’s perception about the quality of the website. Last but not least, the revisiting activity is being affected by the impression the visitor got during the visit of website, and post-visit factors where the web visitor will seek more information offline, to verify the reliability of the information provided in the website, and also if a trade is done, the purchase atmosphere, bargaining power and the transaction speediness will be considered
There are some more interesting findings about why customers like to look into C2C website. Customers find it is easier to remember the domain name of the C2C website because it largely reflects the website content. And the C2C websites are more searchable than the B2C websites (Higher accessibility). Also the internet users likes to see C2C websites because there are information, photos, user reviews of the products being posted to it. The information is easy to understand, unlike the ones the viewers seen in the B2C website which has lots of confusing technical terms of the products. They would consider those real user comments are valuable and trustable for them on making a purchase decision of a product. C2C websites also attracts the internet users because it posts information of a diversity of products, where people could be able to find the information of different products they may use written by a “consumer seller”. The layout and the way information being presented in the C2C website plays an important role on attracting viewers, the internet users responded that they like to see more photos, rich content and the informal language used in those C2C websites. It gives them a “friendlier” feeling where they can feel free to surf and post any questions about a product they are interested in an informal way, and the interactivity (replies from the product owner) are usually very fast. Flexibility on choosing a place to conduct trades and a final bargaining can be made before the trade also plays an important role in customers’ mind.
My takeaways from this article is that although C2C websites seemed to be less secure for some buyers as it is about buying goods from a stranger and the goods being sold are without warranty, still there are a lot of internet users find the “beauty” of it as it has rich information about products written in an informal language which is more easy to understand, diversity of products, simple interface, flexible, and both buyers and sellers can interact with each other in a timely and friendly manner.
I have mentioned earlier that I think C2C website can be eventually transform to a B2C website, and my meaning to this is that after running a C2C platform and built good reputation and gained trust from the internet users, the C2C website owner can seek opportunity to build their own product brands or cooperate with some corporations which sells some products the C2C website owner has been mentioned in his/her C2C site for a certain period of time, to help promoting and selling the company’s product. The value of friendliness and interactivity of the C2C website will be brought forward to the new B2C business and the spread of word of mouth will continue if the service quality is good. A successful example I see in Hong Kong is that an artist (Erica Yuen) started her personal blog (http://ericayuen.blogspot.ca/) on sharing her experience about her career in the entertainment industry, and also reviews of some beauty products she loves, which are effective and can be bought with a reasonable price. With the word of mouth and increase popularity of her blog, her “blog followers” started to request her for purchasing and reselling those beauty products as they want a reliable source of quality products. The business volume expands quickly and Erica cooperates with Elle (HK) online magazine and started her own virtual store (Mi Ming Mart, http://www.mimingmart.com/) under Elle (HK) website. The business was transformed from a C2C website to a B2B website and continue to grow, now Mi Ming Mart now only holds the virtual store, it has further expanded to 3 physical stores.
I believe continue to seek new knowledge and being innovative can lead me to a success on promoting some other forms of business (and also promoting myself), like the way Erica has gone through before, being recognized by the public and being rewarded with business opportunities.
(1,325 words, Reference of article: Zoghlami, A. T., & Touzani, M. (2012). An Examination of the Factors Influencing Consumers’ Visit of C2C Websites. International Journal of Online Marketing (IJOM), 2(3), 52-69. doi:10.4018/ijom.2012070104)