| Abstract [eng] |
Electronic commerce has evolved to a phenomenon which provides the end users the ability to purchase products or services remotely. Due to many benefits the industry sees continuous growth. Due to the nature of ecommerce, global leading companies can attract customers from different parts of the world. Lithuania has exceptionally large numbers of people who tend to make purchases from non-local providers. Such information creates an assumption that global providers threaten the existence of Lithuanian ecommerce. The research is focused on providing in-depth view on how Lithuanian ecommerce can create competitive advantages through added-value structure refinement. Study aim is to provide insights on competitive advantage creation opportunities for local e-commerce provider. Added-value structure in e-commerce was defined by five main dimensions – User Experience, Reliability, Security, Privacy and Customer Relationship. Correlations between these dimensions were discussed, priority level was set by evaluating product types and by analyzing similar research. Empirical subjects were chosen as Pigu.lt and Aliexpress.com. The decision was made by taking in account the attendances statistics and assuming that the biggest providers can best represent the local versus global rivalry. The empirical study was carried out in two parts: 1) a 7-point Likert scale survey, which was focused on measurable added-value indicators in the given structure 2) a secondary data analysis, which mainly consisted of a comparison of technically measurable parameters. The data for this analysis was extracted from several third-party software providers or in some cases, measured by the author. Empirical study provided insights on how Lithuanian customers perceive Pigu.lt and Aliexpress.com in the added-value structure context. It was found that the majority of survey-measured indicators are in favor of Pigu.lt (18/20). However, the survey provided knowledge about areas in which Pigu.lt lacks behind and in which areas the difference between Aliexpress.com is not statistically significant. The presented technical – oriented parameters allowed to understand that Pigu.lt does not have consistent measurements in the mobile version of the site. The following main competitive advantage creation opportunities were discovered and prioritized: 1.Pigu.lt should start encouraging customers to leave feedback about products and their experience, that way aggregating a higher quantity of reviews. 2.Pigu.lt should re-evaluate their website design, focus more on user convenience, which includes buying process flow, button placement and mobile version of the site. 3.Pigu.lt should focus on product related information, making it more complete and easier to find. The research showed that Aliexpress.com focuses on the most important and impactful added value dimensions but lacks good evaluations in Privacy and Customer Relationship dimensions. These weak points can be exploited and used by local ecommerce providers. Technical analysis showed that Aliexpress.com has consistent technical evaluations in all the measured dimensions, only several individual indicators were below average. |
