Keeping pace with technological change
Nowadays technology is used almost in every aspect of modern social, working and business life. The speed of technological development is so rapid and so significant in the society today that businesses are required to respond to the new ways of working if they want to continue competing effectively. Technology is always developing and transforming to work more effectively, or to be more appealing visually, to be easier to use, to captivate more users. Nowadays, one person’s opinion or an opinion of a certain influential group of people tends to be important to others and, online marketing helps to accomplish this by creating special forums and social networks where anyone can express their points of view. Argos offers its customers an opportunity to discuss their purchases on Argos website: any customer can leave a review and create ratings under the product information, which is visible for all registered and not registered customers. Moreover, consumers these days want to have a voice when it comes to shopping choices and Argos satisfies this need by having an all-inclusive range of customer feedback, ranging from product summary (which includes rating and recommendations) and a facility to share this product on other websites such as Twitter and Facebook, to individual reviews of every customer. Argos found it relatively easy to keep up with the technological change by offering rapid ordering of goods online via technological applications on mobile phones which ensure that iPhone, iPod touch and Android users keep using Argos services instead of turning to its competitors. All these facilities prove that the company operates in accordance with the technological progress and allow Argos to successfully compete in the online market.
Overload of market feedback
Online businesses need to be aware that information they receive or gain via research is not knowledge, and that the found data has to be interpreted in a sensible, coherent way. Since Argos is a company that has based its online shopping with the availability of customer feedback, it receives a lot of negative and positive reviews which can be both helpful and harmful. From the positive perspective, feedback is a beneficial marketing method because it informs the business about customer’s actual opinion so that Argos can improve its operations. On the other hand, many inconveniencies and complications can occur when allowing customer feedback, such as the issue of coping with the amount of customers’ profiles or responding to the customers that contacted Argos online and made a compliant. In the long term, to avoid such problems, the company needs to pay attention to customers’ feedback by responding to them.
Channel conflict
Argos is a business that uses internet to offer its products and keeps its traditional distribution channel (high-street stores) both simultaneously, which threatens relationships with businesses and suppliers working in existing channel. It is important to evaluate the level of conflict risk because it aids in the decision-making process: if the risk of conflict is high and the significance of the threatened channel is also high, it makes sense to take care of the issue and to adjust the two channels via differentiating the two channels with contrasting offerings. In case if the risk of conflict is high and the emphasis of the threatened channel is low, the business may attempt adaptation of the decline of that channel.
Argos has entered online market space to increase its sales and strengthen brand image taking the risk of suffering from channel conflict because various channels compete with each other for the same customer since modern multi channel shoppers change their channels on a regular basis. For the business that uses both traditional channel and online channel, it is of high importance to take into account the revenue and expenditures of its traditional channel while acknowledging its importance: sometimes the revenue produced by one channel is converted into the expense of the other channel, which induces no additional advantage to the organisation and in some cases may only result in losses.
Overall, it is necessary to preserve the balance between contrasting channels in order to operate the business smoothly and generate income.