How E commerce Helps Businesses to Reach International Markets

Salford Business School

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Assignment Title How E commerce helps businesses to reach international markets

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Abstract

These projects are going to investigate how E commerce has changed the business structure. Also it’s going to clarifies different method that unites quantitative and qualitative methods by taking a detailed study of two major British companies. Although we are going to exploring different undeveloped market which going to helps both company in their plans to expand internationally.

Furthermore this project will evaluate the E commerce market worldwide and how UK business can use this evaluation and comprising of the strategies that been use by big multinational companies such as John Lewis and Debenhams to expand in to different worldwide marketplace with the help of E commerce and E commerce application such as Mobile commerce and electronic bill payment.

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1

E commerce strategies to access international market…………………………………………… 3

What is the importance of this topic………………………………………………………………………………… 4

Research problem……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 4

Summary of literature review…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4

The Aim and Objectives…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5

Dissertation Structure…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 5

Literature review………………………………………………………………………………………… 6

E commerce overall…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 6

E commerce in the UK………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12

E commerce in the developing countries such as China and India……………………. 15

E commerce strategies………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 18

Advantage and disadvantage of E commerce…………………………………………………………….. 20

M commerce…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 22

E commerce Methods…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 24

Research methodology…………………………………………………………………………….. 29

Research Method…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 29

Literature Search Criteria…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 30

Keywords Used……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 30

Research Instrument……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 30

Data Collection method……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 33

Secondary Source………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 34

Participants……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 34

Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 37

Ethical Consideration………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 37

DATA COLLECTION AND DISCUSSION……………………………………………………….. 40

CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………………………… 51

References………………………………………………………………………………………………… 52

List of Figures

Figure 1: E commerce sales……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2

Figure 2: Source: E-Marketer (2014)…………………………………………………………………………………………… 7

Figure 3: Barriers to Adoption of E commerce……………………………………………………………………….. 11

Figure 4: Source: Office for National Statistics (2013)………………………………………………………….. 12

Figure 5: Source: Office for National Statistics (2013)………………………………………………………….. 13

Figure 6: Source: E-Marketer (2014)………………………………………………………………………………………… 17

Figure 7: Source: E-Marketer (2014)………………………………………………………………………………………… 18

Figure 8: Sours: Turban, E. (2010). Electronic commerce 2010…………………………………………. 21

Figure 9: Source: E-Marketer (2014)………………………………………………………………………………………… 23

Figure 10: E commerce site visits by device……………………………………………………………………………. 24

Figure 2: customers used all channels of John Lewis…………………………………………………………….. 42

Figure 1: John Lewis market share…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 43

Figure 2: Discount in the department store……………………………………………………………………………… 48

Figure 3: new product arriving online every month……………………………………………………………… 49

Figure 4: E commerce projections…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 50

List of Table

Table 1 : Source: Ecommerce Europe, 2014.. 27

Table 2: the different between John Lewis and Debenhams. 40

List of Abbreviations

ITU	International Telecommunication Union
CAGR	Compound Annual Growth Rate
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer
EFT	Electronic Funds Transfer
EDT	Electronic data interchange
WTO	World Trade Organization
B2B	Business to Business
B2C	Business to Consumers
C2B	Consumers to Business
TAM	Technology Acceptance Model
PEOU	Perceive Ease Of Use
PU	Perceived Usefulness
TOE	Technology Organization Environment
IT	Information Technology
HMG	Her Majesty’s Government
GDP	Gross Domestic Product
PERC	Pulmonary Embolism Rule-out Criteria
ICICI	Industrial Credit Investment Corporation India
SME	Small and Medium Enterprises
ICT	Information and Communications Technology
ROI	Return On Investment

Introduction

Over the last ten years internet technology has proved itself as one of the most important factors affect the economic development in the world. As it changed the way business conducted nowadays to what is known as E commerce. E commerce can be defined in general as buying and selling goods over the internet (Webopedia.com, 2015). But it’s also could be define as “the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the Internet” Turban, (2010). There are two reasons behind the successful use of internet technology in business; firstly, it eliminates the geographical limitations of the traditional business model as it lowers the communication costs which can make it easier to move towards international market. Secondly, by using technology such as electronic commerce, a wider range of products and services could be provided beside products and services would be available all the time which, as a result would attract more customers (Alison.com, 2014).

Electronic commerce is not just about ordering goods and products from an online catalogue. It includes all features of an organization’s electronic interactions with its stakeholders, the users who determine the future of the organization. Thus, electronic commerce contains activities such as creating a Web page to help investor relations or communicating electronically with other parties who are prospective bodies. In addition, Information technology is used in electronic commerce to improve communications and transactions with all of an organization’s stakeholders. Such as clients, suppliers, government bodies, financial institutes, managers, employees (Alison.com, 2014).

Nowadays Internet and online shopping has grown rapidly. With all new Internet technologies more and more company starting to adopt this new technology to maximise their profit. According to the ITU the Internet user in the UK is 82.5% this means that there are 51.4 million users in the UK which has seen 2.5% growth than the year before. Shopping in the internet has become handier because people can use their mobile phone and PC to shops when and where ever they are which put extreme pressure in this technology, although internet is good for the businesses it has some drawback (Credible, 2010).

On the other hand with the growing usage of mobile phone there is increases in sales by 20.1% this year but with seals reach $1.500 trillion worldwide according to E Marketer’s more company starting to use the online business as a new way of increasing their sales, especially with the new market been open for online shopping such as Asia-Pacific.

However the E Marketer’s estimated the Asia-Pacific Markets will spend more money online than North America with expected sales to go over $681.2 billion, which consider being one of the fast growing and large E Commerce market in the world (refers to the figure 1) (Emarketer.com, 2014)

Figure 1: E commerce sales

Moreover India consider to be one of the Asia pacific fastest E commerce growth with 35% growth in CAGR between the year of 2009 to 2013 which reach sales of 3.8 billion USD in 2009 and 12.6 billion USD in 2013 which consider to be around 1% of the India’s retail market, also Indian market expected to grow rabidly in the next a few years and reach sales around 20 billion USD by 2017-2020 (Rawat and Sharma, 2014).

E commerce strategies to access international market

Expanding internationally is a very difficult decision for companies to make as it will affect the future well-being of these companies, in order to make that decision companies need to take many things into consideration. Chaffey (2009), stated that, before going internationally companies need to address three important factors, firstly, languages differences, as in some developing countries or even the developed ones English language is not popular, therefore supporting local language is a good way to attract a wide range of customers; Secondly, cultural differences such as customers’ preferences; Thirdly, different product needs in the targeted country. Moreover, Mehra, (2012) argued that, things such as providing multiple pricing strategy, providing excellent customer service and accepting various payment methods are important to gain a competitive advantage in order to compete with competitors in the targeted country.

What is the importance of this topic

Nowadays E commerce has a competitive business market which why having an online business is really vital for business that need to grow their businesses as well as expanding their sales and their costumer by expanding their databases to target new customer. Although having an E commerce website going to allow businesses to target new market and new costumer without having to be physically present (Infigra.com, 2015).

Research problem

The UK market is one of the most competitive markets in the world which could be considered as one of the hardest market to penetrate. This is why UK companies have turn to E commerce for easy way of expansions. As a result of that there are different E commerce strategies that UK business can adapt and use to expand internationally and this research going to identify and detect these strategies.

Summary of literature review

To start we need to look at the UK market which is one of the most competitive markets, because of the investment that been made by the government and privet sector in the last 10 years to boost the Ecommerce in the UK for example introducing the fourth generation the 4G network in the UK last year (Tutt, 2014). After that we going to explain the problem that Businesses might face with E commerce, also the advantage and disadvantage of the E commerce. Moreover how can E commerce strategy affect the expansion of any businesses?

The Aim and Objectives

The Aims of this project is to evaluation and compare the different E commerce strategies that could be used to grow a company marketplace internationally.

The Objectives include:

Explaining the differences between E commerce in the world and E commerce in the UK
Investigate the strategy that’s been used by John Lewis and Debenhams to expand their marketplace worldwide.
Identify the problem that businesses might face when using E commerce to expand to the international market.
Evaluation of the business strategies.

Dissertation Structure

Chapter 1 is the introduction, which will include the aim and objectives

Chapter 2 is the Literature review, which will include a brief on E commerce as well as E commerce in the UK, then investigate the E commerce in the developing countries such as China and India. Then mobile commerce and how it’s important. After that we are going to investigate the E commerce strategies as well as Advantages and Disadvantages of E commerce.

Chapter 3 is the research methodology that will be adopted in this dissertation

Chapter 4 Data collection and analysis

Chapter 5 discussion and conclusion

Literature review

E commerce overall

With the commercialization of internet and high level participation of users in the World Wide Web (WWW) in the early 1990s, the term E commerce was whispered and its applications are extended rapidly (Turban et al., 2002). According to Kaynak, Tatoglu and Kula (2005) there are various electronic mediums used in E commerce like electronic funds transfer (EFT) and electronic data interchange (EDI), most of the E commerce activities are done over Internet. The definitions of E commerce are varied as World Trade Organization (WTO) defines E commerce as the production, distribution and marketing and selling of products and services through electronic means (Kaynak et al., 2005). Pavlou and Chai (2002) and Drew (2003) provided a notion that E commerce refers to the economic transaction, where buyer and seller communicate with each other via internet, form a contractual agreement regarding price and delivery of products or service, and complete process of transaction by delivery of payment and products or services as described in contract. Subba Rao, Metts and Mora Monge, (2003) stated that E commerce involves various activities, however in general the activities of E commerce are divided into two sub-categories:

Linking an organization to its forward as well as backward channel partners, such as retailers, distributors and suppliers, it means E commerce between business to business (B2B) forms.
Also the business activities between firms and consumer which means E commerce between businesses to consumers (B2C) forms.

Shin (2001) stated that E commerce has changed the economy and way of doing business. It forced companies to find new ways for the expansion of markets in which they compete, to increase customer loyalty by matching product and services to customer’s needs effectively and efficiently. E-Marketer (2014) has identified that B2C E commerce sales across the world are increasing (refers to the figure 3).

B2C E-COMMERCE Sales across the World

Figure 2: Source: E-Marketer (2014)

According to Oliveira and Martins (2011), there are various factors that influence companies to adopt E commerce technology. For instance, in relation to Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) perceive ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) are the two factors that encourage organizations to adopt E commerce to expand their operations in international markets (Gefen & Straub, 2000). Perceived characteristics of web, such as layout design and information content to increase interest of consumers plays a key role in adoption of E commerce. For instance, the features of website and easy process of transactions put positive effect on the consumers in relation to online activities (Johar & Awalluddin, 2011).

In relation to organizations perceived benefits, such as lower costs, improvement in coordination with trading partners as well as consumers, also high-level productivity encourage retailers to move to E commerce. Oliveira and Martins (2011) indicated that on the basis of Diffusion of Innovation at firm level, innovativeness relates to internal, external and structural characteristics of the organization.

In addition, in relation to Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) model, an organization’s decision to move to technology adoption like E commerce depends on the organization competencies and external environment along with characteristics of the technology. Gibbs and Kraemer (2004) corroborated that technology readiness also known as IT sophistication and resources encourage organizations to adopt E commerce to expand their operations to international markets. Moreover, capability, financial resources and policy of governments of countries also put positive influence on the organization to use E commerce as a strategy related to innovation (Wymer & Regan, 2005).

Gibbs and Kraemer (2004), Wymer and Regan (2005), Singh, Alhorr and Bartikowski (2010), and Kraemer, Gibbs and Dedrick (2005) pointed out one of the basic and important reason due to which organizations adopt technology such as E commerce. According to them, competitive pressure is a key driver of E commerce IT adoption. Pressure to go online and use of E commerce by competitors of an organization is one of the types of institutional pressure. With the increase in market pressure, organizations realize to make a decision to adopt E commerce extensively to achieve competitive edge.

Furthermore, another type of external pressure related to E commerce adoption is that coming from customer demands. For instance, branded organization influences their suppliers to adopt E commerce (Gibbs & Kraemer, 2004; Wymer & Regan, 2005).

Singh et al., (2010) and Kraemer et al., (2005) specified that global E commerce is expanding rapidly and organizations are investing trillion dollars on annual basis over the web. Thus, web has become a diverse global market place with business opportunities at global level. In order to take advantage of global E commerce, the organizations need to enter in international market by expanding online operations through E commerce. Kraemer et al., (2005) stated that the globalization has created new challenges as well as opportunities for organizations, including access to international markets that were closed due to hurdles regarding cost, regulation, and resources such as labour, capital and knowledge. In turn, globalization acted as a key driver of E commerce diffusion because highly global organizations are more inclined to employ E commerce in comparison to less global organizations (Steinfield, Mahler & Bauer, 1999). There are various reasons that inspire organizations to use E commerce to expand their markets, such as foreign competition (Kraemer et al., 2005).

Why business use E commerce

For many businesses having an E commerce strategy is going to assist and gave them the flexibility In relation to operating location and times. While it’s impotent for small businesses or retailers to have E commerce strategy because more and more costumer choose to use the Internet to shop online Which, going to help them to avoid dropping behind their competitors and lose new sources of income (L. Barkley, M. Markley and David Lamie, 2007).

Nevertheless businesses have been use the E commerce because of the new opportunity to grow their profit through higher sales or lower costs, also E commerce has the possibility to increase the efficiency considerably in each processes stages of the business supply chain such as “product design, supply, inventory management, production, marketing, sales and distribution, and customer service”(L. Barkley, M. Markley and David Lamie, 2007).

Since more customers rely on the Internet for information nowadays businesses might benefit form having a website. But using a website is expensive just to present the business information such as “products, hours, location, phone number, and sales”. Whereas using E commerce strategy would improved their website because an E commerce website is more then just information website due to additional components and services in the E commerce website for example a “shopping carts, fraud protection, SEO, EDI, analytics software” which may add more cost to the companies strategy than profit (L. Barkley, M. Markley and David Lamie, 2007).

This is why E commerce is not for every business because if the cost of implementing E commerce exceeds the growth in net profits there is no point of having an E commerce strategy especially small business due to the strong computation from the large cooperation and their ability of “volume buying and early listings on search sites”. However “small businesses are encouraged to find a niche market to minimize competition and increase market share”(L. Barkley, M. Markley and David Lamie, 2007).

However there are a few factors need to be considered before starting E commerce biasness such as the micro and macro environment which going to help the business to boost their traditional business process. According to Tassabehji, 2003 that ecommerce is more advance in the USA rather than Europe, Therefor it is essential to classify the factor of E commerce to allow us to compare between different countries with taking into account where are the businesses established. The measurement that can define the level of development of E commerce and can be classified as:

Technological factors: it can be measured by the level of development in the telecommunication infrastructure in the country that the baseness established in and the speed of the Internet as well as the access to new technology.
Political factors: this will include the government legislation and taxation, also the government strategy for the development of information technology and ecommerce as well as the government proposal of how they will find the finance to support this development.
Social factors: this can be measured by the level of the IT education and training in the countries which will empower both buyers and seller to understand and use the new technology.
Economic factors: which could be measured by the level of the GDP of the country as well as the general wealth of the people and if the market has strength to elements any problem it may face in the near future.

On the other hand there are a lot of challenges might face E commerce businesses which could be Internal Barriers or External Barriers. There is some internal Barrier such as the lake of managers’ knowledge about Technology as well as the shortage of times or resources that allow the businesses to complete their task (Kapurubandara and Lawson, 2006). But the external factors has a major problem that the business need to focus on which is having no control of the internet infrastructure which in some country is really poor and need a lot of development (refers to the figure 4) (Kapurubandara and Lawson, 2006).

According to Nanterme and Daugherty, 2014 “Every Business Is a Digital Business” this is why the UK market seeing a change in the companies that starting to use E commerce as a driving force especially among the large traditional companies which help their businesses to “grow strongly and effectively”. Because of this report going to investigate two UK companies. E commerce in the UK needed to be more clarified; this’s why the next part comes to explain the E commerce in the UK market in more depth.

E commerce in the UK

Office for National Statistics (2013) estimated the level of E commerce by conducting a survey of UK businesses. It is identified that E commerce sales in 2012 in relation to business turnover represented by 18%, whereas sales by EDI made up about 2/3 (67%) of total E commerce sales in 2012 with 33% share from website sales. Approximately 95% business used broadband Internet and 82% website. Moreover, 43% businesses in UK have used social networks in 2012 and 23% used social media to answer customer questions. It is also indicated by Office for National Statistics (2013) that the largest businesses in UK are continuously dominating with respect to E commerce sales. Figure 4 provides an overview about the total UK E commerce sales in five years (refers to figure 4).

Total E-Commerce Sales in UK

Figure 4: Source: Office for National Statistics (2013)

In addition, the dominance of E commerce in UK can be seen by the fact that wholesale and manufacturing sectors made highest levels of E commerce sales in 2012 with £ 172 billion and £ 157 billion respectively. The sectors, such as accommodation and food services made low E commerce sales, whereas the sector like Retail also made high E commerce sales in 2012 with an annual increase of 5% (refers to figure 5).

Value of Total E-Commerce Sales, by Industry Sector

Figure 5: Source: Office for National Statistics (2013)

Burn Callander (2014), has stated that UK businesses has sold more product in the international market through E commerce, this because UK businesses has more brands per capital which allows them to have a reputable customers than the USA businesses.

Although Kuchler (2012) stated that UK customer has contributed to boost the UK economy by making online purchases which helped to increase the UK market by 8.1%. The E commerce sector has contributed about £ 121 billion to the UK economy in 2010 and it is estimated that this amount will be raised to £ 225 billion by 2016. The main reason is that British consumers make 13.5 % of their purchases online, which is 7.1% higher than in Germany, 5% in the U.S. and 6.6% in South Korea. Growing E commerce trend in UK can be linked to the factor that UK’s consumers achieved benefits from Internet at approximately 3,753 dollars with their preferred services, including emails, search engine, online banking and investment. Small and medium enterprises in the UK use Internet for not only marketing but also sales and to communicate with the customers and suppliers. Consequently, the rate of usage of Internet has grown by 12%.

Nowadays the E commerce has advance system instead of 10 years ago and the new and old business have a well-defined method to follow of what they need to do to succeed in the market such as the use of one of the Ecommerce methods B2B or B2C etc.(Organization, 2013). Expanding to foreign market considering being a challenging process especially if the market is undeveloped because of the poor infrastructure this is why exploring such a market going to help the UK business to have an idea of what is the challenge and problem the might face. This’s why the next part going to look at both Chinese and Indian E commerce market. Additionally this market has been selected because both company that we going to investigate don’t operate in them.

E commerce in the developing countries such as China and India

Kshetri (2008) provided a notion that E commerce has a potential to increase profits and add value to businesses and consumers in developing countries. According to Tarafdar and Vaidya (2004) rapid globalization, economic deregulation and increased role of information technology (IT) regarding corporate strategy in developing countries have increased the use of E commerce.

For instance, in India adoption of E commerce is driven by factors, such as economic, political, technological and customer preferences with performance and organizational factors like urge to use innovation to achieve competitive advantage (Lal, 2004).

Kesharwani and Singh Bisht (2012) indicated that Internet banking in the context of E commerce has been emerged in 1990s and initiated by ICICI bank in India. In India, due to developments related to IT infrastructure various traditional banks have shifted to online banking. However, consumers in India are not willing to make transactions online with banks because of the security concerns, preference of offline transactions, lack of knowledge of online transactions and lack of facilities. Moreover, Lal (2002) stated that rate of adoption of E commerce by SMEs in India is growing due to its potential benefits, such as cost reduction and easy accessibility to efficient markets. Business Standard (2014) pointed out that the Indian E commerce industry has an annual growth rate of 35% and currently, it is valued at $ 17 billion. With continuous growth in 2014, it is estimated that there will an increase in annual spending on online purchases in 2015. It is also identified that due to the improvement in infrastructure like logistics, broadband as well as Internet devices, the India’s E commerce industry’s growth rate will be increased. The trend of online shopping and steady growth of online shoppers in India has helped E commerce industry to boom (Business Standard, 2014).

Nevertheless, still there are various barriers that have to be faced by developing countries like India to increase use of E commerce. Slow growth of E commerce in developing countries is associated with the market and infrastructural elements that control the availability of information communication technologies (ICTs). For example, unavailability of credit cards in the context of economic barriers is the major hurdle for B2C E commerce in India. Socio political barriers are also an impediment in the adoption of E commerce in developing countries. Consumers’ preference to face to face communications in comparison to email is another obstacle for E commerce along with the lack of laws that provide security or validity regarding electronic transactions to consumers and E retailers. Furthermore, cognitive barriers, such as inadequate knowledge, skills and top management’s priori evaluation related to E commerce contribute to cognitive bias to E commerce (Kshetri, 2008).

According to Li and Buhalis (2006) pure E commerce does not exists in China but the China’s E commerce. One stop online shop is not a trend in China as despite the fact that there are various commercial websites in China, they provide only products’ information. Consequently, Chinese online shoppers have to purchase by brick and mortar store. On the other hand, size of online shoppers is increasing than Japan and South Korea, as Chinese online shoppers are the main force of Internet expansion in Asia. Tan and Ouyang (2004) indicated that the disparity regarding infrastructure is the key factor of E commerce diffusion disparity in China because larger cities, educated people, and larger organizations of China are more able to enjoy online shopping than small cities and less educated people.

Moreover, other barriers regarding diffusion of E commerce in China include lack of security and system to monitor and provide assurance of credibility and ineffective delivery system. Dai and Palvi (2009) pointed out that mobile commerce’s growth opportunity is higher than E commerce in China because it has largest mobile communication network in the world for not only cellular but also paging operations. In 2006, China’s telecommunication market has reached about $182.4 billion with 800 million telecom subscribers. Conversely, current position of E commerce in China is outstanding.

According to Economist (2013) China’s E commerce market is booming and overtaking America. Alibaba has already become world’s largest E commerce company as in 2013 two of the portals of Alibaba handled about 1.1 trillion Yuan ($170 billion) in sales, which is more than the sales of eBay and Amazon together. E-Marketer (2014) identified that despite high rate of growth in several years, E commerce industry in China is still booming and increasing in size (refers to figure 6).

Retail E-Commerce Sales in China

Figure 6: Source: E-Marketer (2014)

The reason of high rate of growth of E commerce in China is that in other countries E commerce is a medium to shop, whereas in China it has become a lifestyle (refers to figure 7) (E-Marketer, 2014).

Digital Buyers in China (Preference to E-Commerce)

Figure 7: Source: E-Marketer (2014)

E commerce strategies

There are various E commerce strategies that can be used to achieve success in online retailing. One of the effective strategies is to know your customer, it is important for organization to know its customers’ expectations and needs and to design website in a way to target customers with specialized offerings (Korper & Ellis, 2000). According to Cranor (2004) E commerce personalization is a key to E commerce success. It helps websites to build and retain loyal customers. Moreover, personalization not only outlines various privacy risks but also help to reduce them in an effective manner. The risks related to privacy of consumers reduce in case personalization system design facilitate to pseudonymous interactions, client side data storage with task based personalization.

In turn, consumers shop online without any fear of privacy invasion and other security concerns (Cranor, 2004). Duffy (2005) and Gretzel and Yoo (2008) pointed out that providing effective content increases the value of websites because consumers take websites as a useful source of information and not only a way of shopping. Great content enhance an organization’s brand and consumers’ perceptions. It is due to the fact that information seeking is the main step of consumer decision-making process related to purchase (Bloch, Sherrell & Ridgway, 1986). Lai and Turban (2008) specified that blogging and social networks are effective strategies regarding E commerce. Blogging on the website is a possible way of sharing information with target customers to provide value to them that at the end help to bring additional audience to website and leads to high level of sales (Purkiss, 2013).

Moreover, social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter contribute to E commerce’s revenue generation. The main reason is that various people shares content and review with each other and inspire people to online shopping from E commerce sites. Moreover, social networking sties enable E retailers to engage with their customers and influence them to purchase product and services. Furthermore, Barnes and Scornavacca (2004) described that mobile commerce is an effective strategy in relation to E commerce because providing options to online consumers to pay via mobiles and make transactions boost E commerce sales. In addition, easy and various options to pay for products and services encourage online shoppers to shop online. For instance, options, such as setting up a merchant account or third part payment such as PayPal are considered effective strategies regarding E commerce to boost sales (Wind & Rangaswamy, 2001).

Advantage and disadvantage of E commerce

E commerce has offered a lot of advantages to businesses and consumers but it also offered some disadvantage especially with the new invention and faster internet. According to Ultimate, (2014), Thanasankit (2003), and Niranjanamurthy et al., (2013) that they have identified various benefits of E commerce, and one of the biggest advantages in E commerce is lowest cost of information delivery as well as transmission which has assisted business to have a better quality product and services. In addition, E commerce has helped the costumer to speed the shopping process; also it can be used as a marketing tool to promote their products and services. Other benefits of E commerce include allowing the businesses to be open 24 x 7 x 364, which mean that people could shop anywhere any time. Although the new technology has helped the customer to go online and find what they need from different sites and sellers, which has created a new competitive market so consumers can easily find what they looking for. Moreover E commerce has helped the businesses to access international markets, knowledge about target customers, improvement in customer involvement and customer service, strong and long term relationships with customers and suppliers, convenience, and competitive prices. In addition, it provides flexibility and ease of shopping benefits with high return on investment (ROI), personalization and customization (Bidgoli, 2002). Furthermore E commerce businesses are easy to set-ups and manage, also the have no theoretical geographic limitation which means having an electronic payments going to help them to monitor payments easily rather than cheques and cash.

However, E commerce also has disadvantages, such as technical issues, security issues, accessibility, acceptance and lack of understanding in relation to business strategy and goals (Bidgoli, 2002; Thanasankit (2003). Furthermore, E commerce has some area that needed to improve such as Internet security, security of money transaction and costumer information. According to Turban, (2010) Internet security is refer to the protection of data and information through network and computers as well as computer program against different kind of attacks such as fraud attacks and spam which consider to be a major issue that most E commerce company face. However sending money through the Internet is really unsecure if they don’t use the right program and method most online banking use secures system consist of the SSL encryption and different firewall to insure that the transaction is secure (refers to the figure 2) (Turban, 2010)

Figure 8: Sours: Turban, E. (2010). Electronic commerce 2010

According to Maple and Phillips, (2010) that the twentieth century is the new era where information is the vital pace for businesses to succeed which was not recognize previously as important as it should be. But because of the digitisation to more and more information most companies have started to loss control of their system and in some cases there are leakage of information by employment, also some stolen information.

However in the UK 84% of the business has experienced one data violation every 12 month period, which consider being high according to (Maple and Phillips, 2010). Another problem or issue is the costumer trust because of the spam or fake webpages, which consider being a challenge for the costumer to identify because some bad site has stolen their money with no guarantee for refund (Mehra, 2012).

M commerce

This part of the dissertation is going to explore the different between the E commerce and M commerce. The E commerce is the most used method to access the Internet by use of a desktop computer or laptop which considers being 63.1% in 2014 rather than 96.6 in the 2010 this because of that people starting to swatch to more easer way such as mobile phone and tablet to access the internet.

However the mobile commerce is more than mobile phone or tablet it could be anything that can be connected to the internet through wireless connection such as WIFI, 3G or 4G connection this could be “digital TV, mobile apps, planes, trains or automobiles” all these things can access the internet one way or another (Chaffey and Smith, 2013). But Wu and Wang (2005) indicated that continuous development of modern wireless communication technology has increased the penetration rate of M commerce. The emerging M commerce applications include mobile financial application (MFA), mobile advertising (MA), and mobile inventory management (MIM) (Varshney & Vetter, 2002). Butler (2014) specified that consumers in UK are more comfortable to shop through their tablets and smart phones and rate of M commerce in UK is continuously increasing. M commerce sales is increasing due to the easy interface because tablets provide more tactile interface regarding online shopping, this is the reason of high growth rate in tablet commerce in UK (refers to figure 8) (E-Marketer, 2014).

UK’s Retail M-Commerce Sales by Device, 2012-2018

Figure 9: Source: E-Marketer (2014)

On the other hand Shepherd, (2014) has stated that the use of mobile phone has increases from 3.4%in 2010 to 24.5% in 2014 and this increases is due to the way people start to adopt to use the mobile phone as well as intruding the 4G network in the late of 2013, also it has shown a big jump in the use of mobile phone between the year 2013 and 2014 (refers to figure 9) (Shepherd, 2014).

M commerce provides various benefits to online shoppers and E retailers, such as flexible accessibility, easy connection, personalization, and time efficiency. However, its disadvantages include technology constraints, limited bandwidth and graphics (Niranjanamurthy & Kavyashree, 2013).

E commerce Methods

For many company having trading website is going to take a lot of time and effort. There are plenty of things goes into having an operating website such as “ set up and maintain the website, Effective e-mail marketing, site optimization, content generation, template creation and shopping cart installation” (Alison.com, 2014). While international companies are hiring people that have good knowledge in the methods to gaining costumer attention and confidence (Alison.com, 2014). The mean challenge is to keep the efficiency of the website with the awareness of what is the problem they could seeing them as chances for improvement.

However with the fast pace of E commerce keeping up with the new technology and costumer demand is an ongoing progress of improvement (Alison.com, 2014).

Therefor according to Khurana, (2014), Sqa.org.uk, (2009) and smith, (2014) there are around 10 Ecommerce methods however the four most fundamental methods are (B2B, B2C, C2B, and C2C):

Business to Business or B2B:

B2B is one of the most significant and extensively E commerce method used this because almost 94% of all the transaction that been done in any business is happen between two businesses according to Rai University (2009) for example for a factory or a manufacturers to create any product they need to source their materials from other online businesses and this consider to be a B2B transaction.

Although this method vastly used in the ecommerce the main principal of B2B is volume selling where the price is flexible such as when manufacturers are able to sale their product to suppliers and the suppliers to traders or to retailers where is the main plan of the sale is magnitude or the volume of the product that they can shift this primarily used to describe B2B transaction between businesses.

On the other hand business to business transaction could not be define as simple transaction between to businesses because of “B2B is also used to define the activities, such as B2B marketing, or B2B sales, that take place between businesses” (Sqa.org.uk, 2009).

Business to Consumer or B2C:

The B2C E commerce method is simply the transaction between the business and costumers. This kind of transaction started by the costumer making order in the seller website this included any kind of information such as price, online quotes, or online newspapers (Rai University 2009).

However B2C transaction consider to be a popular in the E commerce services to costumer which deliver first hand costumer service that most of retail outlet deliver such as John Lewis and Debenhams. This sort of business usually has a slow increases in the profit this because of the exhaustive knowledge needed in the business structure to manage online business without the physical stores by using shopping cart software rather than actually stores (Khurana, 2014, Sqa.org.uk, 2009 and smith, 2014). This kind of method consider by most company as the basis of E commerce because of the direct connection with the costumer as well as the most used by costumer (Khurana, 2014, Sqa.org.uk, 2009 and smith, 2014).

On the other hand there is an increases in the B2C sales throughout Europe as example the UK has made 11.4% increases in 2013 and expected to do 18.8% increase in 2014 this show that B2C is one of the most important method that company should faces in their market strategy which shown in the table 2 below (Nagelvoort et al., 2014).

Table 1 : Source: Ecommerce Europe, 2014

Countries	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Russia	29.7%	29.2%	32.7%	50.5%	16.1%
Ukraine	88.1%	45.3%	47.1%	48.0%	21.6%
Turkey	N/A	57.4 %	35.9%	35.0%	12.3%
Romania	30.7%	41.2%	33.3%	30.0%	15.4%
Germany	17.3%	16.7%	21.7%	26.8%	20.6%
Greece	50.0%	50.0%	42.2%	25.0%	18.8%
Poland	24.2%	33.3%	24.9%	24.9%	19.0%
Baltic States	32.1%	36.1%	26.1%	23.3%	13.4%
Ireland	24.6%	25.1%	25.0%	21.1%	15.0%
CZ Republic	27.8%	15.3%	19.6%	20.0%	13.4%
Hungary	30.9%	9.9%	35.5%	20.0%	17.3%
Sweden	13.6%	12.0%	12.5%	19.4%	8.1%
Italy	17.4%	19.2%	18.4%	17.8%	18.2%
Belgium	13.0%	25.0%	38.3%	16.5%	15.0%
Denmark	25.0%	15.0%	18.9%	14.0%	10.9%
France	24.0%	21.6%	19.4%	13.6%	12.5%
Portugal	13.3%	17.7%	15.0%	13.0%	13.0%
Switzerland	23.8%	14.5%	15.5%	12.1%	10.8%
Austria	30.0%	29.2%	16.6%	11.9%	8.2%
United Kingdom	18.0%	15.9%	14.3%	11.4%	18.8%
Spain	17.4%	19.8%	18.8%	11.1%	16.8%
Norway	18.4%	9.4%	8.6%	8.5%	9.4%
Netherlands	10.7%	9.3%	8.6%	8.5%	9.5%
Finland	10.1%	17.5%	2.2%	5.9%	6.1%

Consumer to Business or C2B:

This method consider to be new to the E commerce model, the C2B is a transaction between a costumer and a business usually come in form of costumer request for a specific job from the business such as Elance which give the costumer the power to put their project and business to try to give them the best deal which will accomplish the costumer requirement. This sort of transaction become possible because of the drop in the cost of the technology and most people could access this kind of technology such as “powerful computer systems” which previously was limited to large corporations (Khurana, 2014, Sqa.org.uk, 2009 and smith, 2014).

Consumer to Consumer or C2C:

This E commerce method has limited use because of the costumer has to use third party website to sell their product such as eBay and Gumtree which could be called C2B2C ecommerce. However since PayPal started in 1998 and online payment was intrudes costumer were able to use auctions and forums site where person to person transaction happen (Khurana, 2014, Sqa.org.uk, 2009 and smith, 2014).

Additional the customer to customer transactions is predicted to rise in the near future and this because of this kind of transaction could minimise the cost of using a third party website such as eBay, amazon or Gumtree. Nevertheless, this kind of transaction has some problems, for example “lack of quality control or payment guarantees” because of the difficulties for some of the costumer in making credit card payments (Sqa.org.uk, 2009).

Research Methodology

According to Kombo and Tromp, 2006 that the research methodology is a control way explain the proposed questions. Also research methodology a method which analysing the result of the researcher scientifically as well as find the answer for the main thesis question. Research methodology is referred to conducting a study in a systematic manner. There are mainly two types of methods: qualitative method and quantitative method. This research will focus on qualitative research method. According to different authors qualitative research method involves gathering and obtaining information in numeric form and also analyses of numeric data (Bowen, 2009). This research method is focused on objectivity instead of subjectivity and will be helpful to identify the factors that deal with the strategies that the UK businesses can adapt to use E commerce to expand to international market. Research design is all about a systemic collection and collaboration of professional thoughts and ideas to assist in formulating the strategies of adopting the E commerce that can help the UK businesses in their expansion in the global market. The results of the research design may be facilitating enough for having a proper opinion about increasing influential concerns and several other factors of the business in the global market by using the E commerce.

The foundation for the qualitative research design comprises of multiple reasons that are to be formed and developed over time (Bowen, 2009). The research problem statement and purpose statement gave a substantial amount of information about differences between E commerce and E business, the strategy that has been used by John Lewis and Debenhams to expand in the global market. It also aims to identify the problem that businesses might face while using E commerce to expand to the international market and to evaluate the business strategies in this context.

The literature review gave a quality explanation about validation of the statistical input from the concepts and historical overview of the importance of E-commerce for the businesses in UK as well as the strategies that can be adopted for the expansion in the international market. The data collection procedure therefore provided such secondary research measures to obtain answers and suitable learning points from the research participants and it was made sure that the information was up to the mark and deliberates to the interview requirement. Several necessary adjustments were made along the research to improve the questions and therefore the data collection process.

In this chapter of the dissertation there are some processes and steps going to be undertaken to collect the data that needed for this research, and they are research design, literature search criteria, keywords used, data collection method, research instrument, research approach, secondary sources of data, advantages of secondary data analysis and review, type of data to be collected, evaluating the quality of different sources, data analysis, and ethical consideration.

Research Design

Research design is “deals with a logical problem and not a logistical problem” (Yin, 1994). However according to Babbie, 1992 that the research design is the way that the structure of the research is been conducted which made by a frameworks that included the collection of the data and the measurement of the data which most important to the research as well as the data analysing methods. On the other hand this research we going to use secondary data collection because this research categories as descriptive research.

Literature Search Criteria

The search criteria chosen for this research revolves around two factors. One is relevance that would provide the fulfilment of compliance and also to dedicate efforts into one direction. The other factor that would provide for searching the literature is the time of publication, which would assist the researcher to skim through the latest trends and developments in the area of E commerce and its success in the global market.

Keywords Used

The keywords that would be used to suffice and cover the research include E commerce, E commerce strategies, E commerce trading, advantage of E commerce, example of E commerce companies in UK, problems of E commerce, E commerce strategies to access international markets, E marketing indict.

Data Collection Method

This dissertation outlines the strategies of how E commerce helps businesses to reach international markets. On this dissertation the data collection was based on extensive review of the recent literatures the related to the Ecommerce topic. There were additional reading done on the E commerce and the Secondary data that was collected on the Ecommerce theory was collected and scrutinized to ensure that all inspect of the Ecommerce theory was examining.

However this dissertation was needed more information and due to the short time the limited recourses the secondary data collection was used because of this method is cost effective and easy to use than gathering data form the start which going to help the researcher to cover wider range of data on the E commerce theory as well as the E business theory.

Moreover there is more the on method in the secondary data collection which why in this research it was suitable for two main way of collecting data the qualitative and the quantitative. Also this study has used the most resent database to finding the existing articles and topics on the E commerce theory.

Research Instrument

Secondary research is used as a research instrument where the information or the data is collected in numeric form. The secondary research is used by the researcher for collecting data, which is qualitative in nature. A secondary research is usually designed based on previous information available and contextualising with the subject or topic to be studied (Creswell, 2003). Usually, secondary research is designed keeping clarity and conciseness into consideration.

Qualitative research technique, which is used for most of the structural formation of things rather than having an unstructured form of association, is effective enough for this research. This is often referred as a term of collective intelligence because there are so many people thinking when it comes to talking about the research responses and they can be formed in a collective manner with the help of qualitative design system. It is a mode for interactive decision making when a number of different consequences and circumstances with conditional responses are involved. The key characteristic of the qualitative design, which is to be updated in the current study, is the flow of information, which is collected in a methodological manner for the feasibility of different decision-making officials (Bowen, 2009).

Secondary research that is being used is one of the major things, which bring about the comments and thoughts against the certain topic. The qualitative design assures the progress of the panel as a whole (Caelli, 2002).

The secondary research material which is to be used by the researcher is available online because this is a greater way through which a support can be made for the answers the research question about the topic. Using conventional qualitative technique, this is going to be facilitative and cost-effective because almost everyone these days acquires Internet for the matter of carrying out routine tasks and applications. Due to the use of secondary data from different sources, the decomposition and linking can be made by applying the practical approach. The qualitative design was initially subjected to have all the necessary information about the technologies and things that are effective enough and that is what it is extremely useful for. It is said to be improving a whole lot of different dimensions about a particular concept and in this case, it can motivate the development and reformation of the strategies that assist the companies of the United Kingdom to adopt the E commerce and enjoy its advantages for expanding in the worldwide market.

Qualitative technique for this study was implied and considered for a multiple different reasons and to begin with, it was available online for the Internet technology. Online information and content, which was available through the clients and professionals, is easily transmitted and transferred and it is something, which is important enough to create a difference. The electronic data which is then available is easy to comply, customize, store distribute and analyse (Johnson, Onwuegbuzie & Turner, 2007).

Any particular social search engine website can be implemented for the research technique to be logged on to and fill out the information on because it is something effective enough to get the responses recorded and to have an approach which is skilful. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and other useful applications were used to compile data, to code a substantial amount of information and to summarize the analyses and everything, which is associated with the research and their affiliating considerations. The secondary research components will rule out the details, which will signify the advantages of converting a traditional business into an E business.

Research Approach

According to Moore, 2007 using the secondary data method mean that the information that been collected was done by someone other than the author of the thesis. Despite the fact that the author didn’t collected the data using secondary data or existing data has it advantage because this mean that the author didn’t spent time gathering data that been collected by someone else and used their time to analyses and examined the data which mean secondary data collection is more cost effective and efficient.

Furthermore primary data collection mostly takes long time to gathering and collect that would be considered as a time consuming task which may result to some delay that going to effect the data collection as well as the dissertation result. So using the present literatures that been proving is convenient such as the qualitative and quantitative data that been tested by others. On the other hand the large number of qualitative and quantitative data could help the author to find and confirmed new result because of this type of data is more efficient.

Secondary Sources of Data

The use of data that obtained from existing sources on the E commerce was collected from textbooks and published and unpublished article, journal as well as case studies. However most of the information that been used in this dissertation was collected from the background of both company that used E commerce in their system. On the other hand all information that been used in this dissertation was re-examined and re-used of the existing information on this topic and this support to validity the research as well as make it more reliable (Moore, 2007).

According to Crouch and Housden (2003), “the quality of the analysis and the interpretation of the data are depending on the individual who undertakes the conduct of the research and the data produced”. This why the researcher has to take the full benefit of the secondary data by using the Qualitative data which been collected by anther authors in different literature due to the significant of the results and how this could effect the research, Bear in mind that not all result could affect our research because using secondary data mean using different literature and some of them are not relating to our topic. Finally, “the use of the qualitative data from secondary data will involve re-contextualization and data re-construction within the topic area” (Moore, 2007).

Advantages Of Secondary Data Analysis And Review

Secondary data analysis is less time consuming and less costly than the gathering of the primary data. By using the secondary data, the repetition of efforts can be saved. It is a simple way to observe the modification-taking place in a particular area of study over the time. It is an attempt to complement the collection of primary data by saving the resources and the time that can be otherwise utilized in the primary data collection. It is also beneficial for those who have limited exploratory training and practical proficiency in conducting the research.

Type Of Data To Be Collected

The particular type of data or the information that is required to conduct a research on the basis of secondary analysis is dependent on the focal point of the research study. For this study, the data analysis will be conducted to increase the insight about the importance of E commerce for the businesses in UK as well as the strategies that can be adopted for the expansion in the international market. For this purpose, different types of scholarly journal, literature review articles, technical reports, trade journals and reference books related to the main topic of the research will be reviewed and analysed.

Evaluating The Quality Of Different Sources

The secondary research analysis and review is beneficial to the individuals that have partial research guidance or practical expertise. They can be taught to perform this kind of analysis. However the key to this procedure is the capability to evaluate the quality and excellence of the information or data that is gathered for the analysis. Therefore, to judge the quality or the worth of data, following guidelines will be helpful.

Effort to establish the Credentials of the Authors and the Sources of the data.
The Date of Publication will be verified.
The Intended Audience will be identified.
The exposure of the Document or Report will be explored.
Significantly, the report or the Document is referenced well or not.

Data, which is available, also needs to be gathered to make sure that there are quality assortments of different parameters. In the end, there should be a suitable check and balance plan made available for the monitoring and evaluation of the model.

Both qualitative and quantitative measurements can be implied considering different situations to make sure that the use of information is properly channelled and sought through consistently.

Data Analysis

The information gathered through a secondary research will be analysed by identifying the common themes in it and a detailed discussion will be provided in this regard.

Ethical Consideration

There are a number of ethical and moral considerations that needs to be followed by the researchers while conducting their study. For this study, the researcher has relied upon the secondary data only and it is usually assumed that there are few ethical considerations in conducting a research based on the secondary data. However the ethical committees have a dispute in this regard and they are of the view that the ethical consideration while conducting a research

DATA COLLECTION AND DISCUSSION

This chapter will focus on evaluating and discussing the findings of the different approaches and strategy that E commerce business needs to be considered as an international expansion. However, there are some limits to what information could be found about E commerce strategy in the internet. This is why investigating the two major British companies John Lewis and Debenhams would not be straightforward work especially since this is a secondary data research. There are a lot of resources that could be used to collect information such as the annual report, company website and books. Since most companies don’t publish their strategies, this’s because strategy is considered as being sensitive information, therefore most of the resources do not have adequate information on the subject. Before starting to examine both companies we need to look briefly at the verities between them (refers to table 2) (John Lewis, 2015, Debenhams, 2015).

Table 2: the different between John Lewis and Debenhams

John Lewis	Debenhams
Operating in the UK only	Operating in 28 contrary worldwide
Delivering to 34 contrary around the world	Delivering to 66 contrary around the world
Have 84 store in the UK	Have 245 store worldwide
Have 38,100 employees in 2014	Have 28,233 employees in 2014
Has Made 9,027.8 (£m) in revenue in 2014	Has Made 2,312.7 (£m) in revenue in 2014
Has grown online sales by 19% in 2014	Has grown online sales by 11% in 2014

On the other hand, most companies consider starting their website is the most difficult process of the E commerce Business because some companies such as john Lewis and Debenhams have different varieties of products. Although some of their products are tangible and others are intangible, this made it harder for both companies to develop their website. However, both companies have tried to develop a way for consumers to identify whether these products will suit them or not, especially furnishers that could be considered as an intangible product, therefore john Lewis and Debenhams intrudes product dimensions in their website (LIU, 2011, John Lewis, 2014, Debenhams, 2014).

However E commerce expansion have become more difficult and competitive especially in developing and emerging market such as India and china because of their underdeveloped infrastructure in the telecomm sector .

This is why both companies have adopted various strategies to maximize their sales for example; john Lewis has introduced the implementation of Omni-Channel strategy which has increased online sales of John Lewis. According to Lewis (2015) the new distribution centre in Milton Keynes is going to help the company to expand internationally, since this centre is going to help the company to increase their E commerce online ordering and delivering system to reach more customers. Furthermore, this is going to help john lewis to grow their Omni channel further. Additionally this centre has been introduced to the costumer in the late 2013 to boost John Lewis sales in the international market in all platforms such as the Johnlewis.com and the john Lewis mobile app. Although this move has its advantages such as productivity, availability and customer service, thus this new centre is not going to be ready before 2016 which going to strengthen the john Lewis’s distribution and strategy plans (Lewis, 2015).

However the most successful channel that boosted online sales is Click & Collect service. As a result of costumer using more than one way to shop online this shows the growth of using click and collect. which costumer could check the product in their smartphone then pay for it on their laptop or in the shops this connectivity has given the costumer more than one way of shopping which is really valuable to increase their sales (refers to figure 11) (Lewis, 2015).

Figure 2: customers used all channels of John Lewis

This strategy of expansion was tested in the black Friday last year, according to Andy Stree managing director of John Lewis he stated that the last five weeks up to Christmas there was an increase on the online sales by 19% and an increase with 56% On the Click-and-collect service this have challenged the logistic department to deliver all products on time, which was a difficult task to conduct (BBC News, 2015).

In addition, john Lewis have used mobile strategy successfully which can be proved by the fact that half of the traffic to johnlewis.com comes from mobile phones. Also the website’s content is well designated with constant top navigation and search bar (John Lewis, 2015).

Furthermore, according to John Lewis (2015), the company has adopted various payment methods to make shopping more convenient for costumers, such as partnership cards, Visa card, MasterCard, and PayPal, including John Lewis Account Cards. In addition, this develops strong relationship with consumers and suppliers through social network websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Although John Lewis has broadcasted increasing on their sales for the next 5 years (refers to figure 10).

Figure 1: John Lewis market share

According to Paul Coby, John Lewis’s IT director, John Lewis has launched a new £40m project to renovate their website and E commerce infrastructure. However, he has mentioned that he understood the complexity of the project and the scales of expectations is very high and he has a realistic view of how long it might take to finish this big project. However identify this project as a business change was one of the best John Lewis decisions “It’s not about IT. It’s changing the business. And that is the core thing” as he said (Weekly, 2014).

On the other hand, Debenhams also adopt multichannel strategy to increase online sales, such as offline store, mobile shopping and online selling, so that consumer can shop easily globally and sales can be maximized. In addition, they have designed their website in a way that online shoppers can browse conveniently and search for information with strategies like easy checkout process, PPC, easy navigation, and social media usage (Debenhams, 2013). While Debenhams has started their new social strategy that led the customer to be co-buying and assist the company by introducing reward and vouchers that valued by hundreds of pounds. This has encouraged people to make more sales and referrals to Debenhams store and online (Bold, 2014). Also it has used mobile website to gain consumers’ information with online products and services sales and for this it has introduced Voucher Cloud and My voucher Codes apps to drive sales into stores (Debenhams, 2014). In addition, to that they accept payments through Debenhams Gold Account Card, Debenhams Gift Card, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Maestro, PayPal (Debenhams, 2015).

Furthermore according to Ross Clemmow, Debenhams’ director of E commerce, that Debenhams are continually looking to the newest ways to engage with their customers online and this “Co-buying method has strengthen the customer experience and further drive sales” (Bold, 2014). On the other hand according to sharp that Debenhams has not shifted off “their strategy by building an international and multichannel brand” (gazette, 2013). Additionally Debenhams has announced a major rethink of their strategy according to sharp that they plan to open 10 new store overseas epically in Middle East and Asia pacific and they have long term target to open 150 store this well included china but he don’t think that they going to the USA now.

Also while costumer confidence might be improved, he still think that people will find it really hard to deal with their incomes with a lot of pressure put on the inflation of growing wages. This is why Debenhams think that the recovery in the coming years well be slow because of the high computation in the marketplace (Rigby, 2013, Craik, 2013, Different, 2014).

However According Neville, (2013) Debenhams has announce a plan to expand and open 70 new store adding to their current 155 stores, With 17 store planned to open in 2017 there were some concern in the Debenhams management because of the lost that Debenhams suffer in 2013 which was the first decline in their profits for the first time in the last five years (Neville, 2013). Even though the overall sales has decline 5.4% to £120.3m on sales of £1.28bn but online sales has increased by 46% to £194.4m in the last six months of 2013, this is because of sales from “smartphones and tablet jumped 265%” in that period, which meant online sales has “overtook stores sales for the first time”, besides online sales consider to be 12.7% of total sales (Neville, 2013). According to sharp that Debenhams has a long way to reach their online target sales of £600m because of the high competition in the online market especially from its bigger rival John Lewis (Neville, 2013).

On the other hand According to F. Quinn, Emmanuel Biondi and Penmetcha, (2014) there are 4 key methods or strategies that should be consider by most businesses to expand internationally.

First “A shift in purchasing from brick-and-mortar stores to online” this can be identify by Debenhams case although they kept opening new stores every year, they still couldn’t manage to grow their sales. This is why they had sales fallen around 25% in 2013. On the other hand john Lewis has focus on the online sales, which made them grow their sales in the same year by around 9.3%. This why some companies has seeing an increased in their sales in the last couple of years because of internet in the mobile phone which starting to change the way people use and shop in the internet. Although in 2014 online sales account for about 30% of all sales worldwide retailers need to relies that online sales going to affect their overall sales in a positive or negative way (F. Quinn, Emmanuel Biondi and Penmetcha, 2014).

Second “A rise in demand for global products from emerging markets” this could be because of the increases in the number of countries that use international retailers to shop online for example there are 81% of costumer order online in brazil, 69 % in china, 77% Indonesia and 74% in Thailand according to F. Quinn, Emmanuel Biondi and Penmetcha,( 2014). Since john Lewis considers being one of the top online stores in the UK and Customers form the emerging economies are always looking for the international brands because of their quality, secure online payment, and better retail experience, This is why john Lewis has invested £40m to improve their E commerce infrastructure (F. Quinn, Emmanuel Biondi and Penmetcha, 2014) (Weekly, 2014).

Their “A rise in international shipping” because of the high demand in the international brands, also most companies barely covering their order, also since Debenhams delivering to 66 countries they always outsource their severs, this because of the huge investment needed to build a global infrastructure to cover their order and businesses.

However this why john Lewis has to open a new distributional central but with an increases in online sales by 19% in 2014 this meant that they had to fulfil their order by using serves such as DHL or UPS this help companies to reach new market with low cost and low risk (F. Quinn, Emmanuel Biondi and Penmetcha, 2014) (Debenhams, 2015) (BBC News, 2015).

Forth “A surge in mobile purchases” since the high increase in the use of the smartphone and tablet in the different countries worldwide plus 40% of E commerce online traffic from smartphone as well as around 46% of the mobile in china and 40% of the mobile user in India use their mobile phone to shop online. This could be why both companies has announce in 2014 that they are going to improve their mobile application and add the ability for costumer to buy through the application or click and collect from their nest store or make order to deliver to their home which going to make shopping more convent to the costumer and this going to assist them to drive company sales and use their E commerce infrastructure to grow their online sale (F. Quinn, Emmanuel Biondi and Penmetcha, 2014).

Yet there are some strategies that has been used by john Lewis and Debenhams to expand to the international market for example john Lewis has 3 core strategies that they adopt to expand to international market first one was opening new distributing central in Milton this was to reduce the delivery time as well as productivity, availability of the products to more market around the world.

Secondly they have invested around £40m pound to develop their E commerce infrastructure which going to help them to have the latest website and mobile app technology to compete for the best costumer serves experience.

Thirdly was the Omni channel which has helped the costumer to have effortless way of shopping and this have increases their sales by 19.2% according to john Lewis annual report. With these 3 strategy john Lewis consider being number on in the UK.

However Debenhams has adopt different strategy such as the promotion strategy, according to EDITD that Debenhams has around 40% of their product in promotion but john Lewis has just around 22% of their product in promotion (refers to figure 13).

Figure 2: Discount in the department store

This could be why Debenhams has a drop in the profit in 2013; according to EDITD customers enjoy promotion but too much promotion reduce the value of the product (EDITD, 2014). Although Debenhams has adopt the Co buying strategy which work by making the costumer advertising your product and give them money or voucher in return this has helped Debenhams to have a strong present in the social media marketing.

Moreover Debenhams is an international store with a present in 28 countries and this has required them to build their own multichannel brand strategy, which uses their website as a platform to connect all their stores and franchises and helped them to trace the costumer order in all platform that they have. Also there are different strategy between both company in the number of product they allow in their website (refers to figure 14) (EDITD, 2014).

Figure 3: new product arriving online every month

Both companies have different approach that they used to inter the international market and to expand their E commerce sales. Yet E commerce is estimated to rise 14% from 2012 – 2016 and reach $1.4 trillion by 2016. Even though the main progress going to be from developing market because of their faster rising rates (refers to figure 15) (F. Quinn, Emmanuel Biondi and Penmetcha, 2014).

Figure 4: E commerce projections

Furthermore the companies, such as John Lewis and Debenhams may face significant challenge in future in relation to E commerce. The competition level for John Lewis is increasing as Fletcher (2012) identified that U.S. online retailers are targeting online clothing industry in UK. It means John Lewis would have to take steps to implement more effective E commerce strategies to retain and attract customers. Moreover, the biggest challenge of Debenhams is to integrate multi-channels to boost online sales, expand its operations globally and fulfil online shopper’s needs and requirements. Integration of different channels is a key to success for Debenhams and to achieve competitive edge (Debenhams, 2014).

CONCLUSION

This dissertation was a suitable way of understanding how E commerce is operating in the UK. Even though it has summarised how businesses should expand this has helped the researcher to reach to a point that there is no right or wrong answer. Additionally both companies that have been investigated in this project had different strategy approach.

From this study the researcher has extrapolate that the right strategy to use to go internationally is what john Lewis has been doing, this is because they have a stronger strategy approach that made them one of the best E commerce company in the UK.

There are two way of expanding to international market using E commerce expanding or physical expanding. However there is only one that has been discussed in this assignment so for the future assignment we could be investigates the cost of expanding through E commerce, as well as what is the different between using E commerce or physical approach for expanding.

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How E commerce Helps Businesses to Reach International Markets

Introduction

E commerce strategies to access international market

What is the importance of this topic

Research problem

Summary of literature review

The Aim and Objectives

Dissertation Structure

Literature review

E commerce overall

Why business use E commerce

E commerce in the UK

E commerce in the developing countries such as China and India

E commerce strategies

Advantage and disadvantage of E commerce

M commerce

E commerce Methods

Research Methodology

Research Design

Literature Search Criteria

Keywords Used

Data Collection Method

Research Instrument

Research Approach

Secondary Sources of Data

Advantages Of Secondary Data Analysis And Review

Type Of Data To Be Collected

Evaluating The Quality Of Different Sources

Data Analysis

Ethical Consideration

DATA COLLECTION AND DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION

References

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