Industry Trends

MGT 460

Instructor Stone

August 6, 2011

Industry Trends

In our business of custom consumer electronics sales and installation the internet can be seen as a double edged sword, offering both benefits to our industry and drawbacks. As the internet has grown and grown it has become used as a tool for many consumers around the world, specifically as a research tool for information gathering and comparative shopping. This can prove to be a good thing as it arms the consumer with enough information to asked educated questions about what they are buying from a company like mine that specializes in the sales and install of anything technology related. However, too much information has created huge challenges to overcome as more and more of our clients are getting their education online and performing self installs, it has taken a toll on our business.

We have found that people sometimes will ask us to conduct a site survey of their needs for a potential project only to take our advice and purchase all of the equipment online after we reinforced what they already knew through online research. This has been a dilemma that has been haunting the industry for about 7 yrs now since the boom of online shopping and has shown great difficulty in overcoming. “First of all, the internet offers diverse kinds of convenience to consumers for them to search information, evaluate, purchase, and use products more efficiently and effectively than other channels to satisfy their needs. The internet can enhance consumer efficiency by facilitating consumers’ access to consumption related information more quickly and save time, effort, and monetary cost for information collection” (Byeong-Joon, 2004). While all of these things sound great and are an incredible benefit to the consumer, it makes our job of