E-marketing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6000 words

E-marketing - Research Paper Example In this survey, the viewers were required to answer a number of questions that would provide key information on what the average user was provided with in terms of service quality by each of these two sites. Other important reasons for choosing these companies are due to the fact that they continue to operate in similar ways. Moreover, they are in direct competition in the quest for gaining more shares in the online auction market. For the ease of conducting the survey, a group of around 30 people were chosen for the survey after having established that each of them had had no prior experience in all the site operations such as placing bids, searching, monitoring bids, buying them using credit cards etc. These people were then given a time frame of 10 days within which, they had to get familiarized with the operations of both the sites. As such, these set of 30 customers got ample time to explore the site and were encourage to do things such as placing bids, bidding for other objects, buying some of the products that had been posted on these sites etc. Thereafter, these customers were asked to answer a questionnaire that had a set of 15 simple questions. The questions were simply aimed at assessing different parameters of site quality such a the time required to get acclimatized to the site, the level of security visible, the range of products offered, the ease with which a customer could place a bid/compete/buy a product, the level of transparency in the site etc. in addition, questions that were asked as part of the questionnaire also aimed at assessing the site features such as the appeal, quality of site content, ease of navigation, ease of operation etc. thus, the parameters assessed by way of these questions would ensure that both these sites were thoroughly assessed for the extent of service quality gap present in these sites.The results of the analysis for each of these questions are presented in the form of a table. The table shows the average of the points given by the test customers on a scale of 1 to 4. INDEX QUESTION EBay Amazon Average rating Average rating 1 Ease of finding a product on the site 3.24 3.28 2 Ease of navigating through the site 3.40 3.55 3 The site makes you come back again and again 3.35 3.41 4 The appearance of the site 3.21 3.35 5 The level of competition among customers 2.95 3.12 6 Range of products 3.32 3.60 7 The ease of financial transactions 3.25 3.30 8 Security of private information 3.50 3.52 9 Ease of communication with the other party 3.15 3.26 10 Pace of sale of products 2.87 3.00 11 Product is verified thoroughly 3.40 3.35 12 Better for bargaining 3.26 3.17 13 Reputation 3.10 3.45 14 Speed with which products are delivered 2.95 3.15 15 Allows for resolving queries 2.90 3.04 The purpose of the evaluation was more directed towards using the actual and existing situation for evaluating the service quality rather than conduct the survey in a test environment. Therefore, it was useful in this regard to have customers who were fresh from having interacted actively with the site just prior to the survey. It so happened that in addition to registering and using the various features of the sites actively, many had in fact been buying and selling products and had thus gained good experience with