Analysis of the Consumer Behavior

Analysis of the consumer profile of LeShop.ch and Coop.ch

Dimitri Likholetov

University IFM

Fall 2007

The contents

Introduction

Actual trends

The facts

The actual situation in the online shopping industry in Switzerland

The global consumer profile

LeShop.ch

Advantages

Disadvantages

Coop.ch

Advantages

Disadvantages

The consumer profile

LeShop.ch

Coopch

Conclusions and recommendations

Introduction

Actual trends

Nowadays, we are living in a changing world of consumption, where new trends are appearing, especially in Western societies. The most important of them are the growth of the service economy, the changes in purchasing methods, and the evolution of technology. The latter is quite important, because it involves the opening of new markets and niches for organizations, and especially in the food retailers and wholesalers industries.

For customers, this evolution implies new methods for acquiring things. According to the purchase model decision, the consumers will have to choose, among others things: the product category and the channel purchase decision. The recent evolution in the field of technology allowed the appearance of a new purchasing channel, namely the online shopping.

The goal of this report is to analyze the marketing strategy and the customer profile of the two main actors in the Swiss industry of online shopping, namely LeShop.ch and Coo.ch. Then, from the information gathered, conclusions and recommendations will be drawn. The reflections will mainly focus on the advantages and drawbacks of the strategies of the two leaders in order to determine a potential market or niche in the Swiss market for Bina.ch.

The facts

The actual situation in the online shopping industry in Switzerland

The Swiss market of online shopping is actually experiencing a fierce competition. In fact, six major actors are dominating the industry. However, two of them are clearly outstanding as the leaders: LeShop.ch and Coop.ch. The first of them has the biggest share of the market.

For a new business to enter in this market, it must be perceived by the customers as having a substantial differentiation in comparison with the competition. For this reason, I will try during this report to show you the major advantages and drawbacks of the two leaders. According to me, it is clearly possible to fulfil even more the expectations and needs of potential consumers by providing services than the competition do not, and to acquire a niche by creating customer loyalty and devotion.

The global consumer profile

A global consumer profile may already be drawn from logical reasoning, the people who are willing to go shopping online have usually the following characteristics: they are willing to discover new ways of purchasing, they are open to changes and to the introduction of new technologies, they also accept the principle of the anticipated consumption involved by shopping online, and finally they are willing to adapt themselves through experiencing and adopting new services.

LeShop.ch