Aims and functions of Gims Cosmetics

As per the current structure Gims Cosmetics main task is to selling products to retailers. So Gims Cosmetics aim is to understand retailer’s requirement and supply the required items on efficient manner. Even though retailers are the company’s main stakeholder, “Gims Cosmetics” should have to have a good understanding of the consumer’s interest and current trends on the industry to gain the benefit for the business. Not only that, it necessary to analyze the other competitor’s marketing strategies and the way they are doing the business to survive in the industry.      
By considering the behavior and the size of the company we can put it in to Private limited companies (Ltd): structure which is fit in to small and medium sized enterprises. If the company groves we can change the structure in to Public limited companies (PLC) where shares are quoted publicly on stock exchanges (RDI, 2016) .

Companies take strategic moves to grow their business and increase market share. Implementing an E-commerce system is one of the best moves available. In traditional methods IT is difficult reach for new customer base. E-Commerce helps to expand new customer base by various methods like email marketing, online popup advertisement, video advertisement and effectively communicate with the existing customers with email, online forms in an efficient manner. It will be more efficient to do promotions on product than any other method. And also e-commerce site is successfully achieving physical location or access boundaries and increase sales of its product. (MacDonald, 2011). One of the key elements in sales is to identify the potential market, which means the size of the market for a given product for a given period. Sales team’s main aim is to capture (Do sales) the optimum amount from that potential market. From that approach company can increase their market share with respective to other competitor.

From stakeholders perspective it is easy to approach the wholesaler through online site. And they can procure things on their own without a human interaction electronically which will save measurable amount of time, not only for the stakeholder but also the wholesaler. People like to do online shopping due to time and money concern. From companies perspective they do not need to catalog printing because they can publish inline catalog through the web which will save amount of money which was spend for printing. On the other hand it saves the environment too. Online orders can be delivering through mail packet post or through pallet if the order is large.

 In general wholesaler like Gims Cosmetics might have following department

Finance
Human resources
Marketing
Production
Administration
Purchasing

With introduction of e-commerce system, new department like Operations will be introduced.IT operation will plays a major role on E-commerce system and links all departments together and increase efficiency by reducing the time consumed for relevant tasks. If we consider generic transaction it would be face to face, through check money order etc. in e-commerce transaction will happened through online through credit card, PayPal or any other similar secure media. In that point one more element; online security also comes in to the picture. For online transaction to happen, your e-commerce system should be a trusted and reputed for your customers. There are several ways to secure your site and trust it through CA (certificate authority) or for credit card; comply with the entity like PCI etc.

Impact of introducing an e-Commerce

Introducing an e-Commerce solution can have both negative and positive impact to business and consumers. In e-Commerce model physical boundary will be eliminated. Seller no needs to consider about the store location whether it is in the prime location or less trafficking area (MacDonald, 2011).the things need to do is to increase the visibility of the sites on the search engine. Existing customer base even will be remaining if it is easy to search the site by the name. And also Potential customers will also landed on your site if it is ranked properly or if the products are visible on their web search and sell it online. Online promotions will helps to spread the message about latest product and deals on your company. Gathering customer information is much easier than ever before in online forms and checkout process. So company will be able to send email messages about their special promotion to relevant address on the database. This practice helps to increase sales in a long run. Online shopping gives customer the ability to shop when they want (MacDonald, 2011). Which means costumer can do shopping 24×7 from home at their convenience. So the same will be negatively affected to the physical stores who do not have online solutions.                   

Customer empowerment is one on the important growth of an e-commerce system (RDI, 2016). Customers now have ability to check the best price over the web searches and locate the web store with the best lowest price. Not only that they can compare product and features on the product and get a good idea before the purchase process. After purchase customer can track the delivery and its current location and stages clearly online. And also customers have flexibility to set specific dates for like birthday gift or Christmas present to be delivered on the mentioned date. For some featured product customer can do pre-ordering and get the latest item first day of release.       

Once host a site online, it will be visible to everybody in the world so the company will be open to the global marketplace where it has more customers as well as more competitors who’s have lower prices than the local market. (Anon., 2013).  

One of the disadvantages is customer will not be able to try the product before buying it as they practicing on the generic stores and also if the product malfunctions replacement and refund approach will be complex than go to the sore and replace it. Another issue is, if the product damages during arrival, it makes bad experience for the customer and sell will not take the liability of that damage. Then ultimately customer will not be purchase form the same online site again and sell will lose the customer, future busses and will be badly affected to the reputation.        

With e-Commerce new job opportunities for IT people such as web developers, web designers, network and security engineers I will be raise. On the other hand for back office, sales, phone operators, store employee can have unemployment problems.   

Objectives and market analysis

It is essential to have marketing objectives for any organization that need to raise and gain awareness on the organization, its products and services. (Mckinney, 2016) Marketing objectives are targets set by companies while promoting their goods and services to potential customers which need to achieve within an agreed time frame (Mckinney, 2016).  

 Role of objectives and market analysis

 Market Research: Market research is to know the size of the market of a particular product and find out the relevant information and nature of the market and its potential consumers. It also coves, social opinions, sales analysis, media and advertising (Chand, 2015).  
Target markets: is an explicit group of consumers at which a company aims its products and services (Entrepreneur Media, 2016)
Market potential: Market potential is the total size of the market for a product at a given a time frame  (Grimsley, 2016) it will be measured based on the sales value or sales volume.it also signifies the upper margin of the market for the particular product.

 E-Commerce systems of competitor site As a specimen www.wholesale-cosmetics.co.uk was taken in to consideration.it is a dynamic website which has real time shopping carts with online ordering facility.is has a good visibility which means it will appear within first 5 on the google web search. As explain the site promotes its new arrival and featured products on the site as highlighted items it also use good advertisement practice by providing zooming feature of its items. Site also does promotion by providing “Buy One Get One Free Offers” on the main page. It calcified items by brand and also product wise on the site which makes customer to select it easy based on the requirement (user friendly). It also tried to gain the trust of the customer respect the transaction perspective by mentioning “Secure Online Credit Card Payments” and providing reputed card entities like VISA, PayPal etc. It also has good domain reputation tested on “TrendMicro Site Safety Center” which gains customer trust as well. From the delivery perspective it provides the number of delivery options with the pricing on the delivery page. Finally it is gathering customer’s information in Checkout page and can be used for e-mail marketing and future promotions. Risks and financial implications of introducing the e-commerce solution
 e-commerce solution can be introduced to the business with minimum cost but it required working capital at least to pay wages, energy cost etc. (RDI, 2016). While growing it need more money for the infrastructure upgrade like software and hardware purchasing required for the business.
E commerce risk can be arising for flowing elements (Hughes, 2016)
•    the identity and nature of relationships with e-commerce trading partners;
•    the integrity of transactions;
•    electronic processing of transactions;
•    systems’ reliability;
•    privacy issues;
•    return of goods and product warranties;
•    Taxation and regulatory issues.
The entire above element has its own risk factor. If we consider electronic transaction both the parties need to be trusted to carried out a financial transaction and massages of the particular transaction shroud be communicated to the both the parties. Another issue is on the transaction are the internet security issues which can be intruding in between the transaction. For this kind of issues new method like secure channels, two factor authentications are introduced.       

High level design for the e-Commerce solution

a.1) Technology requirements

To form e commerce solution internet and network facility is the mandatory requirement. Since the entire channel need to communicated through electronically. Then company need to host a web site through the internet and it requires a web server. Then for product details need to be feed in to the database servers and it need to link to the front end webservers.to link servers or any channels network infrastructure which includes routers, switches, and firewall need to be installed as appeared on (fig 4.1). To operate the system IT users need to have PC. For transaction to fulfill company need to have secure channel with the bank or similar entity through VPN. 

a.2) Payment systems 

Payment system is one of the key elements of the e business. All the payment should land on the payment gateway securely to perform a truncation. Ultimately payment gateway also has a secure connectivity the bank, card authority like VISA, MasterCard etc. there are multiple methods available to do a payments credit card is the most famous method in electronic transaction. To facilitate for credit card transaction wholesaler need to have a valid merchant account from a bank and transaction fees will be applicable. Electronic cheque is an electronic copy of real cheque but only deference is it is digitally signed by using sender’s private key.
NoChex has an integrated online merchant account which allows traders to accept credit or debit card payments. It is not required to have a separate payment service provider to sign up (RDI, 2016). Pay pal is one of the payment methods which integrate shopping cart functions with a payment gateway and merchant account (RDI, 2016). It is more famous for small and medium business.  

a.3) Security

Security is the key element of today’s business due to various kinds of illegal activities like hacking and identity theft and SPAM. Like previous days firewall itself cannot defend network itself it require anti malware protection and deep packet inspection mechanism and sandboxing to identify the intrusion behaviors.it also required to have virus protection software and endpoint protection software since now the attack can comes not only from outside but from the inside too. Especially for transaction site must be trusted and certified through trusted CA to gain the customers trust. It is better to use SSL for communication which will protect communication and prevent from the intruders. Now a days most of the sites uses secure HTTP for their site which have facility to encrypt the data and middle person not able to clearly see it as normal http.it is always recommend to use strong pass work which is hard to guess. It is now encourage using at least 13 characters which includes numbers, capital letters, simple letters and symbol on it. Most of the banks and trading sites now provide two factor authentication facility which is it should have to have two password or Code to approve and second password or cord generate and forward through e-mail or via SMS at the time of transaction. Site performance can be degraded in case of DDos attack kind of behavior. So big sites take outside DDos protection for their sites and some ISP also now provide DDos protection by charging extra.                      

a.4) Legislation

Legislation comes in to the picture to protect consumer’s money, rights and to stop misuse fraud behaviors. Data Protection Act 1998 defines UK law mainly to protect people’s personal data (legislation.gov.uk, n.d.).  ”Computer Misuse Act 1990 is to control the use of information available via the internet in order to maintain confidentiality and prevent inappropriate use of information” (RDI, 2016) .online information is easily available for anyone and can be misused. Consumer Credit Act states that businesses which offer goods and services in the UK on credit, or lend money to borrowers must be licensed to the Office of Fair Trading (RDI, 2016) so that outside entity “Office of Fair Trading “is there to be libel for the act of the licensed services. Trading standers are to educate people to make their moves intelligently by checking the background information available. Freedom of Information Act 2000 leads public information to be transparent to the people (RDI, 2016).      

b) Produce an evaluation of your proposed design.

 Proposed design will meet the customer requirement and uplifting his sales by promoting advertisement and reducing the printing cost currently spending for the outside printing firm. It also reduce call center or phone operator staff by automation the ordering task through shopping cart and online customer registration. So it is possible to involve and train those staff for other back office and purchasing operations. Online marketing can be perform through e mail and expand customer base effectively.  

Reference:

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Entrepreneur Media, I., 2016. entrepreneur.com. [Online]
Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/target-market
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Grimsley, S., 2016. Market Potential of a Product. [Online]
Available at: http://study.com/academy/lesson/market-potential-of-a-product-definition-analysis-example-quiz.html
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Hughes, D. A., 2016. E-commerce: what’s the risk?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cchdaily.co.uk/e-commerce-whats-risk
[Accessed 10 August 2016].

legislation.gov.uk, n.d. Data Protection Act 1998. [Online]
Available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents
[Accessed 10 August 2016].

MacDonald, B., 2011. 4 Reasons Your Store Needs an eCommerce Website to Grow. [Online]
Available at: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/8388/4-Reasons-Your-Store-Needs-an-eCommerce-Website-to-Grow.aspx#sm.01rtsvtk16uwfbo10m620u522i9vp
[Accessed 20 Jun 2016].

Mckinney, P., 2016. Marketing Objectives Overview. [Online]
Available at: http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-are-marketing-objectives-examples-lesson-quiz.html
[Accessed 9 Aug 2016].

RDI, O. C., 2016. Business Skills for e-Commerce. In: s.l.:s.n., p. 3.