How can E-commerce help organizations to build a competitive advantage over its competitors

Vahe Ttuyan

Master's thesis

Abstract:

In our reality it is crucial for businesses to develop and implement an e-commerce service which will provide a competitive strategy that will meet the business logic and match best market trends. The general popularization of the internet networks increases the role of the company’s activities in the network and creates competitive area to define the market share. Recent challenging situation relating to COVID–19 pandemic has even more noticeably put forward the importance of e–commerce. Well–structured e–business combined with good online strategies will give an opportunity not only to achieve significant results in sales, but also will provide a unique competitive advantage that will differentiate the business from other competitors and help to build strong customer relationships. Based on information from open sources, reports, available previous research, customer surveys and company interviews, this work aims to study e-commerce as part of the competitive advantage of retailers, highlights its importance to business and identifies the importance of competitive strategies in this concept. This work develops specific recommendations through examinations and empirical analysis, for the retail organizations to develop e-commerce omnichannel marketing strategies focused on customer approach to create prerequisites for competitive advantages over the competitors. To meet the goal of the research, online customer behavior survey and company interviews were conducted having concentration on retail sector in Russia, more precisely, the retail sector of Kaliningrad city. The results showed that according to competitive market and online customers preferences, companies should focus on providing personalized offers, implement well–structured online stores and customer service (omnichannel approach). The implementation of e-commerce addressed customers’ choices and builds loyalty. In its turn, leads to competitive advantage over other participants of the market. The research results can be used in the development of a new competitive retail strategy and in the decision to implement e–commerce.

Abstract:

In our reality it is crucial for businesses to develop and implement an e-commerce service which will provide a competitive strategy that will meet the business logic and match best market trends. The general popularization of the internet networks increases the role of the company’s activities in the network and creates competitive area to define the market share. Recent challenging situation relating to COVID–19 pandemic has even more noticeably put forward the importance of e–commerce. Well–structured e–business combined with good online strategies will give an opportunity not only to achieve significant results in sales, but also will provide a unique competitive advantage that will differentiate the business from other competitors and help to build strong customer relationships. Based on information from open sources, reports, available previous research, customer surveys and company interviews, this work aims to study e-commerce as part of the competitive advantage of retailers, highlights its importance to business and identifies the importance of competitive strategies in this concept. This work develops specific recommendations through examinations and empirical analysis, for the retail organizations to develop e-commerce omnichannel marketing strategies focused on customer approach to create prerequisites for competitive advantages over the competitors. To meet the goal of the research, online customer behavior survey and company interviews were conducted having concentration on retail sector in Russia, more precisely, the retail sector of Kaliningrad city. The results showed that according to competitive market and online customers preferences, companies should focus on providing personalized offers, implement well–structured online stores and customer service (omnichannel approach). The implementation of e-commerce addressed customers’ choices and builds loyalty. In its turn, leads to competitive advantage over other participants of the market. The research results can be used in the development of a new competitive retail strategy and in the decision to implement e–commerce.

Keywords

Competitive advantage, customers&apos, behavior, e-commerce, online retail sector in Russia, omnichannel marketing approach

Keywords

customers&apos, behavior, e-commerce, omnichannel marketing strategy, online retail sector of Russia, competitive advantage

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 6. 12. 2021

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 31. 1. 2022
• Supervisor: Jiří Sedláček
• Reader: Zdeněk Smutný

Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze

Master programme / field:
Aplikovaná informatika / Information Systems Management