The aim of this assignment is to enable you to understand how businesses and organisations develop

E-commerce strategies to remain competitive in the global market.

For this assignment, you will need to carry out research into the key underlying principles, concepts and techniques for planning, developing and managing an e-commerce strategy for a business.

Mr Sharp is the owner of a shoe retail business, “Shoes-R-Us” located in a busy high street in Bradford. He sells shoes for all ages and both male and female customers. His customers are predominantly women. The opening hours are Mondays–Fridays 9.00am -5.00pm and Saturdays 9.00am-6.00pm and Sundays 11.00-4.00pm. Customers have provided Mr Sharp feedback that it would be really helpful if he could extend the opening hours to 8.00pm weekdays and Saturdays and if they could “click and collect”. In response to customer verbal feedback, Mr Sharp has approached you to advise him on how he should expand his shoe business by going online.

Your role is to advise Mr Sharp on how he should create an ecommerce strategy to increase his revenue and profitability that would allow him to take it further to the next stage of developing and implementing an ecommerce website for his shoe business.

You are to research consumer online shopping behaviour. Produce a short report for Mr Sharp with your results and recommendations. This report should include customer expectations, online shopping behaviour, common applications for example, payment systems, and shopping cart applications.

Plan and develop an e-commerce strategic plan for “Shoes-R-Us”. Use the necessary strategic tools to aid your understanding and analysis of the shoe business.

You can use the template provided on Moodle to help you structure your strategic plan for the business. Your strategic plan should include an internet strategy, a marketing strategy, a brief supply chain strategy and an electronic payment strategy.

Create a report that would inform Mr Sharp about what he must be aware of when he has to manage an ecommerce website for his shoe business. The report should assess the risks and benefits of going online; protecting the intellectual property of the organisation, the security measures and privacy issues.

Create a report that critically evaluates current e-commerce developments and assess their incorporation into an ecommerce strategy.