Vendor Bulleted List
Preferences For Purchasing And Information Gathering
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- The preferences for users to gather and purchase information has not changed much in the past year. On a scale of 1 (Disagree) to 5 (Agree), users stated an average preference of 3.043 for purchasing products through Web vendors (2.9 Fourth) and 3.963 for gathering purchase related material though Web vendors (4.1 Fourth). Users still prefer making purchases though retail stores, with 89.6% of the users reporting having made at least one purchase in the past six months from a retail store. Nearly half (44.7%) report using offline catalog or mail order and only 19.06% report using an online mail order system.
Vendor Characteristics
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- This question asked users to rate the importance of vendor characteristics on a scale of unimportant (1) to important (5). Uses where then asked to compare Web vendors against traditional vendors on a scale where higher numbers indicate preference for Web vendors over traditional vendors.
- As far as importance, all characteristics were rated important, with security being the most important characteristic for users (4.646). This was followed by reliability (4.641), quality of information provided (4.600), timely delivery (4.456), and ease of contacting (4.04). Other issues like ease of ordering, refunds, and cancelations fell between 4.195 and 4.275. Surprisingly, the characteristics at the bottom of the ranking were lowest price (4.119) and ease of payment process (4.043). This profile suggest a very quality oriented customer who expects top quality service. The ranking within the profile has changed very little since the Fourth Survey over a year ago.
- Given that security was the number one issue, users reflected a preference for traditional vendors (2.305) over Web vendors. This was the weakest characteristic for Web vendors, followed by easy refunds (2.8733), reliability (2.809), ease of canceling orders (2.887), customer service (2.895), and ease of payment process (2.970). Web vendors showed strengths over traditional vendors in the areas of ease of contacting (3.709), lowest prices (3.709), easy to order (3.614), and quality of information (3.461).
- From these results it is clear that while security is important, it is currently viewed as Web vendor's biggest weakness. Other areas that could use considerable improvement include: ease of payments, reliability, and customer service.