Chapter 5: Electronic Commerce Project |
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Using Internet Newsgroups for Online Market Research |
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You
are producing hiking boots that you are selling through a few stores
at this time. You think your boots are more comfortable than those
of your competition. You believe you can undersell many of your
competitors if you can significantly increase your production and
sales. You would like to use the Internet discussion groups interested
in hiking, climbing, and camping to both sell your boots and to
make them well known. Visit Google’s Usenet archives (http://groups.google.com),
which stores discussion postings from many thousands of newsgroups.
Through this site you can locate all relevant newsgroups and search
them by keyword, author’s name, forum, date, and subject. Review
recent postings, choose a message, and examine it carefully, noting
all the information you can obtain, including information about
the author.
1. |
How could you use these newsgroups
to market your boots? |
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2. |
What ethical principles might you be violating
if you use these messages to sell your boots? Do you think there
are ethical problems in this type of use of the newsgroups?
Explain your answer. |
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3. |
Decide whether you want to use the newsgroups
to locate Web sites on the topic being searched for the hiking
boots industry. Examine the various sites to determine whether
there are other ways to draw potential buyers to the Web site
you may decide to establish. |
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4. |
Next go to Yahoo.com to search for the hiking
boots industry and locate sites that will help you develop other
new ideas for contacting potential customers. |
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5. |
Given what you have learned in this and previous
chapters, prepare a plan to use newsgroups and other alternative
methods to begin attracting visitors to your site. |
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