For example, with indiemerchstore.com, users who have looked at merchandise from a particular band will more than likely be offered merchandise from similar bands within the website, this is a form of cross selling and makes the shopping experience more personal to you by focusing on the things that an individual customer might be interested in, rather than a broad range of items.

There are other examples of personalisation online, the website bigcartel, which focuses on smaller artists and bands selling their merchandise has options for customising user homepages with HMTL and CSS creating a more personalised selling experience, therefore giving the user a bigger chance of selling their product because there is a more attractive outlet for it.

Another example of personalisation is in online bookshops like Amazon, they specifically tailor the products that they show to you based on your previous purchases and items of interest. I agree with the idea as it can make the user feel like the retailer personally cares about the customer buying the product from them rather than a competitor, this may or may not be true but can be crucial in retaining customers and attracting new ones.

For example, with indiemerchstore.com there could be several keywords associated with it. Examples of this could be; Metal clothing, extreme music merch or more generically, band merchandise. There are also specific keywords that could be used such as a particular band or type of merchandise such as a tshirt, hat or CD’s.

There are tools online that can generate keywords for your website to make searching easier for potential customers, one example of this is Google Keywords. It scans your website for specific keywords that can be used to locate your website in a search engine, below is an example of how it creates keywords for specific websites, in the example, the website it is referring to is indiemerchstore.com.

The above image shows particular keywords that could be used, and probably are used to search for indiemerchstore.com. What is particularly interesting is that the term “black dahlia murder” seems to be the most popular keyword in relation to indiemerchstore. and a Google search of that keyword shows the indiemerchstore link 4th on the list, behind the bands official myspace, an article about the muder of a famous actress and a wikipedia article about the band. This is because indiemerchstore.com is the official merchandise retailer of that particular band. This is useful for attracting fans of that particular band, below is a screen shot of that particular Google search.

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Now playing: Alexisonfire – Sons Of Privilege
via FoxyTunes

A Google search of indiemerchstore shows that there is a lot of competitors online but indiemerchstore seems to be the market leader for extreme metal merchandise. When searching for the website, I found I had to use very specific search terms and this might not be very beneficial for indiemerchstore because there are so many competitors online and it would be extremely easy for a customer to find another website thus affecting indiemerchstore’s sales and share of the market.

The website has tried to increase it’s online presence by registering with social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter, this can help with building a rapport with customers and keeping them updated with any new information regarding stock or promotions that indiemerchstore is offering. This would also help with making indiemerchstore easier to find online because the Facebook and Twitter pages will have links to the store, which is a suggestie type of marketing between the customers and indiemerchstore.

Overall, it is fairly easy to find indiemerchstore.com online and it’s significant online presence has led it to be one of the market leaders in extreme metal merchandise.

These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). In e-commerce, Cloud Computing is extremely useful as it allows business to be conducted anywhere in the world from any device with an internet connection, rather than the confines of an office environment.

There are several advantages and disadvantages to cloud computing, one advantage of cloud computing is that it is completely accessible from anywhere with internet connection, this includes mobile devices such as iPhones and Blackberry’s, this makes significant cuts on costs such as having to maintain software and having a dedicated server with a specific location. One other advantage is that cloud computing enables users to store, edit and create files that users can manipulate, edit ,save and then access it in a later time whenever or whereever they want.

Despite this, there are several disadvantages to Cloud Computing, because so much data is held online, it’s very possible that any information on their could be used by online criminals and is very succesptible to attack by viruses or spyware. Another disadvantage is that in areas with limited or no internet access can damage any e-commerce opportunities in that area, however this is becoming increasingly less common because of the more widespread use of the internet.

A push – pull system in  business describes the movement of products, services or information between two people or businesses. The customers usually “pull” the goods of information they demand for their needs, while the suppliers “pushes” them towards the customers. Indiemerchstore.com, in my opinion is a pull system because it displays its products to it’s customers and they take what they want from the website and add them to their basket for checkout.

Vertical integration is where one particular part of the business controls all stages of production and distribution of goods and services. Disintegration is where the particular company has many different networks of suppliers and can choose from which ones suit their particular needs at the time. Virtual integration is where the majority of supply chain activities are undertaken and controlled outside the organisation by third parties.

Indiemerchstore.com, I think, is a business that uses virtual integration because aside from the website itself, indiemerchstore does not take part in the distribution and delivery of the product to the customer. This is handled by couriers and outside parties.

A Value Network is a set of social and technical resources that businesses can use. This value takes the form of knowledge and other intangibles or financial value. They also account for the overall worth of products and services that the business supplies. The majority of companies have both internal and external value networks. External facing networks include customers or recipients, stakeholders and suppliers. Whereas, internal value networks focus on key activities, processes and relationships that cut across the internal boundaries of the business.

Since indiemerchstore has been established, there has been much growth for the business in the form of sales and this is because they have established a strong online presence for themselves and networked with suppliers in order to give the best deal they can to customers.

Indiemerchstore.com purchase their products from suppliers before the customer purchases the product, they’re acting as an intermediary. This helps improve how quickly customers receive their products as they can be sent out as soon as a payment has been received. Stock can be checked online and this can encourage more people to purchase from indiemerchstore.com and have the desired product as soon as possible.

The threat of substitute products in relation to indiemerchstore, there are hundreds of music merchandise related websites, including those who sell directly from independant artists, however this is usually smaller operations only with a small range of delivery. Online there are a lot more competitors than the high street, especially for a niché market, it is a lot more convenient for a company to operate online because  it less overheads such as rent for premises, council rates, electricity and a lot less employees, apart from the costs associated with running a server. the reduction of overheads allows companies to reduce the price of their stock, therefore directly competing with most of the high street stores that are traditionally more expensive. With regards to indiemerchstore, it is possible for them to secure deals with individual, independant artists and brands to have exclusive ranges of merchandise that their competitors may not .

Force Two: The Threat of the Entry of New Competitors

The threat of entry of new competitors in to the music merchandise market is a large concern for indiemerchstore.com due to it being so easy for companies to be competitive online, due to the sheer vastness of the internet. There is an intensley fierce market for band merchandise because of the amount of bands trying to make a name for themselves. There is a low demand, however, for female music merch especially with extreme music which indiemerchstore caters for and indiemerchstore caters for this which fills a big gap in the market.

Force Three: The Intensity of Competitive Rivalry

There is no real competition in extreme music merchandise, most bands on the website have their merch readily available on several different websites and stores. For a company to sell a product cheap it is easier done if they manufacture the goods themselves. As indiemerchstore is selling other brands and artists designs, a significant part of getting ahead of the competition is based on how companies market themselves to other people and they have a significant online presence so they have the edge in that respect.

Force Four: The Bargaining Power of Customers

With being a clothes store, there is very little scope for bargaining on the customers part. With indiemerchstore being an intermediary between designers and customers, the business can only offer minimal discounts to customers and this is considered normal for clothes retail stores and websites. Because clothing retailers are so competitive, it would also be uncommon for retailers, like indiemerchstore, to offer any sort of reduction even with the threat of a customer taking their business elsewhere.

Force Five: The Bargaining Power of Suppliers

The suppliers for indiemerchstore are generally independant brands and bands and this gives the business more scope to arrange prices with the suppliers. The cost that the suppliers give to indiemerchstore directly affects the prices that indiemerchstore can offer to their customers however there is scope for the business to build a rapport with suppliers and lower their prices, either that or imply that they will switch suppliers unless they get a better deal.

For each visitor to their Web page, a Web server automatically recognizes the consumer’s domain name.

Indiemerchstore collect only the domain name of visitors to their Web pages, the email addresses of those who communicate with them via email, user-specific information on what pages consumers access or visit, and information volunteered by the consumer, such as survey information and/or site registrations.

The information they collect is used to improve the content of their Web pages and to notify consumers about updates to our Web site, but is never shared with other organizations for commercial purposes.

If you do not want to receive email from them in the future there is an email address that can be used to unsubscribe from their service.

This the industry standard in terms and conditions very similar to most of it’s competitors such as thirddegreemerch.com and there isn’t much room for maneuver with that.

Cookies are is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by a web browser to monitor web usage. With respect to cookies, they use them to store visitors preferences, record session information, such as items that consumers add to their shopping cart, record user-specific information on what pages users access or visit.

This shows the website has significant traffic and this can be compared with one of their direct competitors Third Degree Merch which estimated 53,200 visits in the previous 30 days and Google Insights could not find any data on traffic, which suggests that my website does a  lot more busines. Indiemerchstore is much more of a niché than Third Degree which also suggests the website has higher customer and browsing traffic than one of it’s direct competitors.

The above graph shows the amount of regular visitors to indiemerchstore over a year. The data seems to peak, predictabley, around Christmas time and return to normal around May time. There doesn’t appear to be much growth for the site but there is steady trade throughout the year.

When purchasing from indiemerchstore, it is fairly simple. The user selects the item they want and adds it to their cart and whenever they have finished shopping they go to the checkout and enter their credit/debit card details. Because the website is based in America it takes around two weeks for an order to arrive. Most domestic orders, however, ship within 24 business hours of being placed. For orders shipped with UPS you can look at your tracking and see an expected delivery date online.

Because there are now different channels for online commerce it is now possible to use mobile devices to access the internet, the website is iPhone compatible and this can assist in people ordering their merch online and on the move. This has a positive impact on the business because there is now scope for impulse buys online for indiemerchstore.com.

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Now playing: The Black Dahlia Murder – Unhallowed
via FoxyTunes

No information was available online for the website in terms of turnover, profit and number of employees. This data may possibly only be obtainable by direct contact with the organisation.

The website is not the only one of its kind as there are several other prominent music merchandise websites on the internet covering every possible niche market. I chose indiemerchstore.com because I had used it before and found it easy to use with interesting products.

For some items on the website, the internet is not the only way to purchase them. Often, bands will sell merchandise through their own website or stores through other websites such as bigcartel. Another channel would be face to face at a performance. With the internet, it is likely that web based channels sell more merchandise as they are easy to reach by anybody with an internet connection, whereas a face to face sale at a concert or other shop is likely to generate less sales, especially in niche bands such as the ones that can be seen on indiemerchstore.