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.