Product Service and Evaluation
After the product or service is delivered, a buyer then evaluates the entire purchasing experience. This experience can be communicated to the merchant in the form of a compliment or complaint–or no comment at all. The buyer can relate his or her experience to consumer-oriented organizations such as BizRate, other shoppers on community bulletin boards, or can file a complaint with one of the complaint services on the Net.
iShip Puts the Consumer in Control
iShip (http://home.iship.com/) lets consumers price, compare, track, and manage shipments over the Internet. Consumers can see what kind of deal they received on shipping or do their research ahead of time to make sure they're charged a reasonable shipping rate by the e-tailer.
For when an e-tailer has failed to satisfy its customers, a number of complaint services have sprung up on the Net where not only can consumers air their grievance, but the service will actually take up their cause and seek to resolve the customer complaint with the merchant. Companies such as Digisolve (http://www.calib.co.za/digisolve/) provide free complaint resolution services and statistical information on e-tailers such as the number of complaints logged against a company along with the average time of resolution.
The question is where can your e-business fit in the Customer Buying Cycle? Do you need to become one or all these information companies to succeed?
The answer is no.
By understanding that valuable information can be collected on customers and potential customers, and seeing the importance of this collected information in developing a company in the New Economy, you can add an infomediary component to any e-business and position it to sell anything, anywhere, anyway, anytime and at any price to a targeted niche of buyers.
And buyers are not just consumers. They can be other businesses as well.