Think before you click – customers’ challenges in the e-commerce ----- Its title in Hungarian: Gondolkodj, mielőtt klikkelsz - fogyasztói kihívások az elektronikus kereskedelmben

Absztrakt (kivonat)

E-commerce is the buying and selling of products, information and services over the Internet. The Internet is a public and global communication network that provides direct connectivity to anyone since the access is not restricted for anyone. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the e-commerce environment from the decision making point of view and reflect the findings to the situation, reporting the important differences, similarities and opportunities in a few key areas. The comparison is based on the differences in cultural settings and technological advancement, the nature of product offered and focused on the role of off-line activities in the online business. Analysing the customers’ behaviour, preferences and choices I choose the Eastern Reflective Approach as a frame to compare it to the Western Expedient Approach (Jehn – Weigelt, 2001) represented by Japan and Europe as typical examples. To conduct my research I identified benchmarking as the most appropriate technique to find the similarities, differences and point out the key learnings. The target however was not a simple company, but a specific sector of the industry. ----------------------------- In the 1940’s, Thomas Watson, at that time chairman of the IBM Corporation, estimated the global aggregate demand of computers to be five! He simply could not foresee the explosive developments that the information technology has had over the second half of the last century, and especially not its implications. Today there are more than 300 million computers worldwide and this number is increasing exponentially. Hardly any business today can operate without computers. More and more customers have bought their home PCs already or they simply use the PCs in the office when they need information or do their on-line shopping. This development has taken place over the last few decades and many, if not most, organizations have difficulties coping with the drastically rapid changes. People are often frightened by technological change. Yet, the world would be more frightening without continuous innovation. Change causes confusion. The Internet is one breakthrough that took place as late as in 1995 worldwide and today more than 25,000 people gain Internet access every hour! Naturally, this constitutes great opportunities as well as great challenges for existing businesses, but also for potential customers.