Successful E-tailing : A qualitative study of how asmall scale web shop can market itself

Abstract: Online shopping becomes more and more popular, and the number of web shops isincreasing rapidly. However, the competition is hard and many cannot survive for long.A friend of ours, Linda, is planning to open a web shop selling hosieries like stockingsand leggings. She has identified her target group, but feels insecure how to attract hercustomers. In order to help her, we denote our study in the aim to help her develop adecent market plan for her company. Based on that purpose we formed our researchquestion: how can a small scale web shop market itself?Plenty of researches have been made over the last few years regarding online consumerbehavior and web shop marketing. We have summarized the relevant research in theliterature review, but there are differences in consumer behavior and marketingstrategies due to what products e-tailers sell and who they sell it to. Therefore, wecouldn’t create efficient marketing strategies for Linda’s company based on literatureonly.We conducted a qualitative study including six interviews with respondents that matchLinda’s target group description. The empirical data were structured into five categoriesin the Web experience model developed by Constantinides (2004) (usability,interactivity, trust, aesthetics, marketing mix), in order to outline the most crucialaspects for efficient e-tailing. Through the analysis of the interviews an underlyingphenomenon was identified, saying that in order for a web shop to attract customers itneeds to signal professionalism and trust worthiness towards its customers, in all of thecategories. Based on our findings we made recommendations for how Linda shouldmarket her company XY.