INTRODUCTION
1.1
BACKGROUND OF STUDY
In
the current business around the world, most of organizations tend to expand
their market channels towards online market, aiming for increasing income,
awareness and reliability. With
capability of worldwide connection and convenient access, Internet is the most
preferred media used by companies to serve this purpose.
At present, the growth rate of
E-commerce is high due to the expansion of businesses towards online market.
Electronic
Commerce or e-commerce is the exchange of goods and
services by means of the Internet or other computer networks.
E-commerce offers buyers convenience. They can visit the World Wide
Web sites of multiple vendors 24 hours a day and seven days a week to compare
prices and make purchases, without having to leave their homes or offices. In
some
cases, consumers can immediately obtain a product or service, such as an
electronic book, a music file, or computer software, by downloading it over the
Internet.
Building
an online supermarket, one needs an auto responder because it’s very essential
in Internet Marketing. Successful marketers, for example, would find it
difficult to achieve many marketing tasks without them and, indeed, consider
them a big part of their marketing strategy. This is a system that helps you
deliver sales messages to customers on your opt-in list. You can send out
reminders, follow-ups, or deliver newsletters. Auto-responders inspire many
creative ways to increase sales and build relationships.
Technology
helps make our life, jobs and day-to-day tasks easier. Calculators help
automate our mathematical tasks, computers help automate our organizational
tasks, and email auto-responders help automate our communication tasks. Can
technology and automation ever do business harm? Absolutely when misused, email
auto-responder technology can wreak havoc on your business. But this cannot be
compared to the numerous benefits we derive from using an auto-responder in our
online supermarket and we cannot afford the task of sending an email to our
customers manually. There is a common adage in e-commerce that says “the money
is in the list” The reason behind this is that with your list you can target
customers that are interested in your product or service and it is the work of
an auto-responder to respond to email from these customers and keep them in
contact.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
There
are potentially many problems that can hinder electronic business without an
automated system. Most experts say that customers must be exposed to a product an average
of 7 times before they buy, and if you don’t have a way to contact a
visitor after their first visit to your site, how do you remind them about your
product six more times?. More so you spend countless hours sending out
individual e-mails to your potential customers manually in an effort to remind
them about a new development in your business or reply to their emails hence there
is absolutely no doubt that you will lose potential customers and
therefore, revenue because you don’t have a system in place which could capture
a visitors name and e-mail address and have a way to contact them
automatically. It is wide belief that a potential customer must hear your
message several times before they will get commit and make a purchase. This is
made possible with an auto responder and most probably unachievable without
one.
1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
Advertising,
Buying and selling are today done effectively by means of computer and
communication with the internet as the main force for online supermarket. The
good thing about doing business on the Internet is that there are software,
tools and resources available that will allow you to put your online business
on auto-pilot. The auto responder is one of these tools. Thus, the following
are the significant of attributing auto responder to your online supermarket.
Ø Auto
responders enable you to get your messages out quickly and efficiently. Thereby
maintaining contact with past customers and develop relationships with new
ones.
Ø General information dissemination is one of the vital reasons where an auto responder
should be used. Anybody that has information they want to be
instantly available to anyone else might well use an auto-responder. It could
be information about a product you are interested in. It could be instructions
on how to use or repair a product that you have. Anything that can be put into
text (and with HTML email, pictures or drawings also) can be sent by auto
responder.
Ø You
achieve optimum sales with an auto responder. Studied have shown that you need
to present your product before a potential customer several times to increase
the likelihood of making a sale. To do that, you want to give the potential
customer a good reason to send his/her e-mail address. Since he/she may not
have enough interest simply to ask for more information about your product, you
will want to offer some incentive, like a free gift or service. Whatever the
method, you want to get the potential customer into your auto responder message
sequence, then, in those messages, send your customer to your web site to make
the sale.
Ø An auto responder has an automated message scheduler
that disseminates information to customers at a set time.
1.4 AIM/OBJECTIVES
Sales and purchases are done manually over so many
years and some supermarkets are known only in the area where they are situated.
Reply to emails are done manual in years back. And therefore the sole aim of
this seminar work is to reveal the importance of incorporating auto responder
in our online supermarket. This will go a long way in;
Ø
Making sales and purchases online for interested buyers and suppliers
easier.
Ø
Keep buyers in close arm with update information about your products.
Ø
Achieve optimum sale in your online business by disseminating the
necessary information about your sales and keep in-touch with them in answering
to their emails immediately.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
In a view of wide area of online supermarket, this
seminar work covers areas of advertisement, sales/purchase, marketing and
shopping in Nigeria. Sales and purchases involve buying and selling of goods
and services, which will in turn help any business establishment to keep track
of the business trend.