What is B2C E-commerce?
The term business-to – consumer (B2C) refers to the method of directly marketing goods and
services between a corporation and customers that are the end-users of its goods or services.
It is possible to refer to most businesses that market directly to customers as B2C businesses.
During the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s, B2C became immensely popular because it was
primarily used to refer to online merchants that offered goods and services over the Internet
to customers.
Introduction
The name of the selected B2C website is airasia.com. In Malaysia, AirAsia Berhad is a low-
cost carrier. It operates domestic and international scheduled flights and is the largest low
fare in Asia, no frills carrier. AirAsia is the first airline in the country to launch fully
ticketless flights and unassigned seats.
Dato ‘ Sri Anthony Francis Fernandes is AirAsia’s CEO and founder. It began with the
idea of making it possible for everyone to ride. It is one of the top airlines in Asia today. It
has rapidly shattered travel standards across the globe since 2001 and has soared to become
the best in the world. They have a network of routes in over 20 countries. By using their
creative ideas, well-organized procedures and their outstanding business strategy, they are
actively striving towards low-cost flights. AirAsia is now seeking to provide low-cost flights
with “Now Anyone Can Fly” by merging its related businesses, including AirAsia X, Thai
AirAsia and Indonesia AirAsia. Air-India Express, Goair, IndiGo, Spicejet, Mihin Lanka and
Tiger Airways are their main rivals.
The principal ideology of AirAsia is “Now Everybody Can Fly,” which is connected
to their view. Their goal is to be the best business by treating workers as a large family,
creating a internationally recognised ASEAN brand, achieving the lowest cost, retaining high
quality, introducing good technologies to minimise costs and enhance service.
Berhard of AirAsia is an aviation company that offers air transport services. AirAsia
is one of the biggest Malaysian B2C airlines that offers tickets for airlines, car rentals,
holiday packages and bookings for hotel rooms. On Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube
sites, AirAsia retains its presence.
Business-to – consumer (B2C) e-commerce involves the sale, from a company to the
general public or to the final consumer, of products and services. Online banking, stock
trading, and airline reservations are popular services offered by B2C companies.
For its logistics and strategic management, AirAsia is heavily dependent on Internet
technologies. They provide online travellers with online ticket booking services. Their home
page is currently being used as a key marketing and sales channel for businesses.
Customers can choose different channels such as call centre, sales office and airport
sales counter, authorised travel agents, mobile booking via mobile.airasia.com to book a
flight with AirAsia. In the meantime, by visiting their home page and following the 5
different steps, it can be done.
In their company, they have passed through five different levels of IT applications. At
level one, customer communications were managed by their travel agents, such as mobile
contacts, mailings and faxes. They became the first airline to go ticketless in Asia at level
two. Systems such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) data were developed in stage three
to improve performance and were developed to promote B2C operations. In level four, on 10
May 2002, they launched online booking via their website at ww.airasia.com. They became
the first airline in the world to practise booking air fares via short messaging (SMS) service at
level five.
Analysis
AirAsia.com has 6 web features. There are aspects of navigation, aspects of website content,
elements of user-generated content, aspects of protection, aspects of web design and aspects
of marketing.
AirAsia.com is a platform for e-tailing, where travellers can buy airline tickets, book
partner accommodation offers, and order tour packages from the website. Customers who
want to book hotel and car rental facilities will be guided to another website called
www.airasiago.com with a different website address. Via the respective connections, these
websites are available from AirAsis.com. The image below is taken from the website of Air
Asia, which highlights the following aspects.
The website has a page load timer feature and loading the homepage of their website takes an
average speed of 2.79 seconds. They do not have a breadcrumb trail strategy that might help
travellers appreciate the hierarchy of this website’s pages. Meanwhile, the top of each page
still has a headline. Often the new tab window opens when the user taps on a certain type of
services or the current offer.
To refine the destination which visitors would like to see, the website has a drop–
down menu. The website has several links to introduce the user to the various types of
services available on this website and to provide different categories of information. On the
top left corner of the page, the search bar is available, helping to easily retrieve it. The search
efficiency of this website seems to be fair, but the options for sorting search results are not
yet available.
The content of each page is found to accurately reflect the headline of that particular
page. Flight ticket prices are always displayed when customers select their preferred flight
details. To demonstrate the beauty of the destinations to which the customers fly, the website
shows related photos of destinations. The relevant critical information about the product,
however, is not present. In the meantime, the website mainly sells its flight services rather
