NEWS: Online sales still not widespread

THE battle for the skies has taken place in cyberspace again:
AirAsia and Malaysia Airlines offered discounted tickets online over
the weekend. For them, the Internet has become an effective medium to
help boost ticket sales, judging from the way the discounted tickets
were snapped up in record time.

While
the airlines are thriving online, other businesses seem to have not
fully taken advantage of the Internet medium to attract customers and
make sales. Even though most businesses such as hotels and bus
companies have an online sales mechanism, hardly any offer huge
discounts in the magnitude of the airlines, which are able to make
sales up front for the next one year.



AirAsia, for example, in its latest online promotion, is offering
hugely discounted seats for travel up to January next year. This means
that it is selling seats almost a year in advance. This strategy will
make sure that the airline meets its sales target and keeps its
aircraft to full seat capacity.



Promoting what you have online and advertising it in the paper will
alert consumers of your offerings. Don’t expect them to search the
Internet for discounts because only a few do; others prefer to be told.



It only needs one company to start this trend, and the rest will follow suit because of intense competition.



The market for this type of sales strategy, also known as
business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce, is actually big in Malaysia.
Locals are already used to online banking and have put their trust in
e-commerce, but sadly, we still lack companies or businesses that
really sell online.



Express bus companies, for example, can emulate their counterparts in
the airline business to offer discounted tickets online. If they can
sell their seats months in advance at cheaper rates or offer other
incentives, they could get more passengers on board a particular trip.
Then we will no longer see buses plying the highways half-empty.



For the bus companies, it shouldn’t be a problem to secure sales in
advance because the nation enjoys quite a number of festivals and
school breaks where dates are set early. Almost all the ingredients for
a successful B2C business model are there. We just need more companies
to jump onto the bandwagon.



According to research company IDC, the B2C market is expected to see a
compound annual growth rate of 24 per cent from 2005 to 2010 and that
the growth will be dependent on PC and broadband penetration, which has
been growing steadily.



Hopefully, more businesses will take on the online medium more aggressively and also let consumers know about their intention.