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- Creators: Eaton, John
Description
E-commerce has rapidly become a mainstay in today's economy, and many websites have built themselves around providing a platform for independent sellers. Sites such as Etsy, Storenvy, Redbubble, and Society6 are increasingly popular options for anyone looking to open their own online store. With this project, I attempted to examine the effects of four different marketing techniques on sales in an online store. I opened a shop on Etsy and tracked sales in connection with promotion through social media, selling products in-person at a convention, holding a holiday tie-in sale, and using price anchoring. Social media accounts were opened on Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram to promote the shop over the course of the project period, and Etsy's web analytics were used to track which sites directed the most traffic to the shop. I attended a convention in mid-January 2016 where I sold my products and distributed business cards with a discount code to track sales resulting from being at the convention. A holiday sale was held in conjunction with Valentine's Day to look at whether holidays influenced purchases. Lastly, a significantly more expensive product was temporarily put in the shop to see whether it produced a price anchoring effect \u2014 that is, encouraged sales of the less expensive products by making them seem affordable in comparison. While the volume of sales data was too small to draw statistically significant conclusions, the project was a highly instructive experience in the process of opening a small online store. The decision-making steps outlined may be helpful to other students looking to open their own online shop.
ContributorsChen, Candice Elizabeth (Author) / Moore, James (Thesis director) / Sanford, Adriana (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In recent years, marketing has taken a large shift into the digital world. With the growing popularity of social media, many companies have been doing most of their advertising through platforms such as Instagram, and have been heavily using influencers, in order to drive their business. With the popularity of social media, small online businesses have been emerging. According to sources like eMarketer, e-commerce is the only trillion-dollar industry growing at a double-digit percentage each year (Moore). Among these small businesses, is the growing idea of dropshipping. Dropshipping is a system in which products can be chosen from a manufacturer, and sold via a website, with no need for inventory from the selling party. The goal of this research is to harness the power of social media, in order to drive a successful e-commerce business. The research entails creating a Shopify dropship store, and using social media platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to effectively advertise and drive the online business. The first steps were to create social media pages for the business, in order to establish credibility. All the products will be sourced from AliExpress, and then sold via the website created on Shopify. Consumers will order from the website, and process their payment that way as well, but will be receiving the package from AliExpress, which removes the necessity to have inventory, and minimizes shipping costs. The products sold were chosen based on survey results, for what consumers would most likely purchase from an online store. The store's name is “Urban Angel”, and primarily sells accessories, such as phone cases, jewelry, hair accessories, and purses. These are all priced at a neutral pricing strategy, and can compete with other online retailers. This is necessary, because there are so many e-commerce businesses emerging every day, it is important to make sure that it can stand out in some way.
ContributorsMcMillan, Angela Sophia (Author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / Olsen, Doug (Committee member) / Watts College of Public Service & Community Solut (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
To begin our creative project/thesis we sought out a project that would allow us to combine our interests in Supply Chain and Marketing. We chose to develop a drop-shipping business and analyze the effects that marketing had on our product sales. After reading and researching multiple potential products, we chose to begin by selling Sea Turtle Charm Bracelets. After selecting our product we created a webpage where we would be able sell it. Once we established a platform, we began to test different marketing tactics to observe the impact that they had on sales. The primary objective of this thesis was to test and analyze different marketing strategies and see which one would have the largest positive impact on sales. We researched different social media platforms and discussed how to best market the website so that we could increase traffic to our webpage and generate higher sales. We implemented different marketing strategies and sent out two surveys, through Qualtrics and Google Forms to understand the relationship between social media marketing and a consumer's likelihood to purchase. This thesis presents the development of a fully functional drop-shipping business, our approaches to marketing, the methodology behind the survey creation, obstacles and challenges we faced along the way, and the overall sales results that concluded our product was not suitable for consistent, long term sales. Through this project we have gained invaluable insight on how a drop-shipping business functions and the impacts that marketing has on it; looking towards the future we have decided to shut down our current business and utilize our knowledge on drop-shipping and marketing to create a new business which will sell items catered towards a broader customer base.
ContributorsDhillon, Marcus Singh (Co-author) / Bath, Beerjas (Co-author) / Eaton, John (Thesis director) / Vitikas, Stanley (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05