CHAPTER 10· BUSINESS-TO-CONSUMER INTERNET MARKETING
Electronic malls (e-malls) follow the format of fixed-location malls in the physical world, grouping together
an assortment of retailers in one virtual destination on the Internet. However, unlike their real-world coun-
terpart, this conventional approach to developing an online mall has had limited success as it offered few
advantages to potential customers who could view the product assortment of retailers located anywhere
in the world from their workstations and laptops without the need to travel, and so the advantages for the
consumer of retailers being grouped together in one destination were lost. Additionally, control of the e-
retailers by the management of the virtual mall is rather more complicated than in the physical world mall.
The online landlord has to build trusting relationships with the e-tenants and they in return must provide
reliable services (Dennis et al., 2004), a trust which is sometimes difficult to establish as individual retailers
were not willing to participate in an online mall that facilitated comparison shopping.
In Europe, Blackwell’s Bookshop and Victoria Wine were among the first retailers to give consumers
the opportunity to buy online via the Internet. Both of these companies were the original core tenantsin
one of the first e-malls to serve UK online customers Barclay’s electronic mall, called ‘BarclaySquare,’
was not particularly successful as the virtual landlord offered limited advantages to its core tenants over
operating their own destination web sites. However, there are many creative ways that e-retailers are
coming together in a virtual world.Portals
These are a gateway to many web sites. There are many examples of portal sites on the web which
adopt web-based solutions to the ‘mall’ concept and in doing so serve an array of different purposes:
Froogle.co.uk– directs online customers to product information in two ways. First, it uses product
information submitted electronically by merchants who take advantage of this free service. Second,
as Google’s spidering software crawls the Internet, Froogle automatically identifies web pages that
offer products for sale. Froogle’s search results are automatically generated by ranking software.
Google does not accept payment for inclusion of products in these search results. Nor do they offer
to place a merchant site higher in the results if they are an advertiser or offer to pay for that placement
(http://froogle.google.co.uk/froogle/intl/en_uk/about.html#how).
EBay.co.uk– auction site which brings together individuals around the globe who wish to trade with one
another. Although not a conventional e-retailer eBay’s success in the second-hand goods and collectors’
markets cannot be ignored as more and more shoppers buy from within the eBay trading environment.
Amazon.co.uk– a multiple category retailer which is not strictly a portal or a mall but the company
has brought together, through its affiliate scheme, the product portfolios of thousands of companies in
order to create a virtual shopping destination (Dennis et al., 2004), which serves the needs of millions
of online shoppers.
Kelkoo.com– a shopping search engine which helps online cutomers to find products and services
online. A search will produce a results page which facilitates price comparison and purchasing.
Mysimon.com– a comparison shopping service on the Internet for products and services. The site
searches thousands of online merchants and millions of products to provide online customers with
lists so they can compare selections before making a purchase.Shopping bots
Software programs that can help online shoppers search for and compare specific products across mul-
tiple web sites; also called bots or intelligent agents.
E-malls have been a means to enable retailers to explore the potential of the web in a ready-made
electronic trading environment. However, the key advantages of the real world shopping mall do not
easily translate to the Internet and as a result e-malls tend to serve highly specialised markets.
Notwithstanding this the core concept of a mall, bringing together goods and services from many suppli-
ers to facilitate customer convenience, has been used creatively by some of the world’s leading online
companies.Mini Case Study 10.3 E-malls