This report highlights the lessons learnt from establishing an online E-commerce site and training online marketers (E-marketers) to promote sales of products made by rural women cooperatives and NGOs by utilizing online promotion and customer service methodologies that were researched under this project.

It has been observed that rural women cooperatives and NGOs that producing indigenous products are at present working in isolation within a market that is restricted to their local area. Their limitation in promoting the sales of products has often been exploited by middlemen. Internet E-commerce, however, holds a promising future for such enterprises that can utilize it to market and sell their products on the local as well as global market.

Towards this end the project established an online E-commerce site and explored the possibilities through various research methodologies to identify and adopt cost-effective strategies and software to train online marketers (E-marketers) to promote sales and offer online customer service for products made by rural women cooperatives and NGOs.

The objectives of the project were to explore the possibilities of promoting sales of products made by rural women co-operatives and NGOs in rural areas through e-commerce by utilizing E-marketers; to explore the possibilities of E-marketers promoting the indigenous products online by offering them with 24 hours online Internet access, without paying hourly telephone bills, using wireless routers; and to research and utilize innovative online customer service methodologies for the E-commerce site.

The activities undertaken by the project team included short-listing women cooperatives and NGOs producing indigenous products, collecting information on products manufactured by them, orienting the short-listed organizations on e-commerce, designing & hosting the e-commerce store, setting up Internet access and related infrastructure, researching online promotion and customer relations strategies, training the e-marketers in online promotion and customer relations, monitoring and evaluating the performance of the e-commerce store as well as e-marketers.

Based on the methodologies outlined in this report and the annexure we have trained the E-marketers in online promotion and customer service for products made by the women cooperatives and NGOs.

The India Shop E-commerce store is online at http://www.xlweb.com/indiashop/

During the past 6 months that the E-marketers have been actively promoting India Shop there have been an average of 1000 visitors to the site every month and the women cooperatives and NGOs have earned a profit of approximately Rs 75,000 through sales of their products on the online store. This is a good start and the E-commerce site will continue to be promoted even after the project duration.

We are happy to inform that the project has been demonstrated and accepted by Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART), a division of the Government of India, who have evinced interest in up-scaling the project to benefit women cooperatives and rural industries from other parts of India.

RESEARCH PROBLEM

It has been observed by FOOD’s researchers that rural women cooperatives and NGOs that are producing indigenous products are at present working in isolation within a market that is restricted to their local area. Their limitation in promoting the sales of products has often been exploited by middlemen. Internet E-commerce, however, holds a promising future for such small enterprises that can utilize it to market and sell their products on the local as well as global market.

In order to explore the possibilities of leveraging E-commerce for a non-profit cause, FOOD established an experimental Internet E-commerce web site for sales of products made by rural artisans and women co-operatives. Running a live E-commerce web site has enabled us to experiment with the various components that go into an E-commerce store like designing of site, incorporation of secure technologies for shopping, credit card authorization, delivery of products, supplies etc.

From the above experiences we found that the success of an E-commerce site largely depends on securing the trust of users who are more comfortable with the “offline” shopping experience.

It was felt that adopting a new approach in promoting E-commerce for a non-profit cause would help market products made by rural women cooperatives and NGOs. The research would be primarily in two segments of E-commerce namely online marketing and customer relations.

With the above factors in mind, FOOD has initiated research through this project to create a networking environment that facilitates co-operatives and NGOs in rural and remote areas to come under one umbrella to market their products globally without middlemen.

Through this project, we explored the possibilities of deploying E-marketers to promote products made by women cooperatives and NGOs. An E-marketer is an online marketing agent (or a virtual salesman) that mobilizes online traffic and draws in customers to the E-commerce store. For E-commerce promotion to be effective, the E-marketer will provide not only publicity for the website but also offer online customer service to the users of the E-commerce store. Each E-marketer will be attached to one particular product segment that will be featured on the E-commerce store.

For E-marketers to market products online they should have uninterrupted, cheap access to the Internet. In India Internet access is relatively cheap, but the phone bills that one incurs in connecting to the Internet are exorbitant, often five times more than the access cost the user pays to the ISP!

For providing the Internet facilities to the E-marketers we should have a higher speed permanent up link to the Internet gateway. Towards this end FOOD will explore the possibilities of utilizing high-speed wireless routers to connect telecenters from where the E-marketers will go about their day-to-day promotion activities to FOOD’s Internet gateway. This will provide the E-marketers 24 hours Internet access without having to pay hourly telephone bills. We proposed to use high-speed 1.5 MBPS point-to-multi-point microwave technology to provide Internet access at the 10 telecentres established by FOOD that are located within 12 km radius of FOOD’s office.

The E-marketers project is by design a non-commercial undertaking and the core of the project is to analyze whether E-commerce can be a viable proposition for small and micro-sized enterprises in rural areas in developing countries, and not just for large-sized companies in urban areas.

Since the target group of this project, that is the small and micro-sized enterprises, cannot bear the cost of developing an E-commerce store, at present FOOD has to initiate efforts to create an E-commerce web site and enable it with facilities like shopping cart, credit card processing etc.

It must be noted that as a result of this project employment will be provided to the disadvantaged and indigenous craftsmen who are working in the rural co-operatives in addition to providing employment for the educated unemployed youth who function as E-marketers.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Methodology

The methodology adopted for this project was as follows.

· Short-listing women co-operatives and NGOs, orientation program for short-listed producers, collecting information on products to be offered on the E-commerce store (Dec 4^th 2000 to Feb 10^th 2001)

FOOD’s research team visited and identified several women co-operatives and NGOs from 4 districts in Tamilnadu whose products will be featured on the E-commerce store. We collected details on the products like product name, description, price, height and weight from the producers. The team also explained the concept of E-commerce and the objectives of this project to the potential beneficiaries. The artisans and entrepreneurs were very receptive to this project and expressed their willingness to cooperate with us in successfully launching the E-commerce store.

The team collected details on more than 1000 products produced by the women cooperatives and NGOs including products like Kancheepuram sarees, wooden handicrafts, wooden wall hangings, jute wall hangings, jute bags, copper products, paintings, curios made out of sea shells, paper mesh toys etc

· Designing and hosting India Shop (Feb 12^th 2001 to Feb 28^th 2001)

Based on the product details collected our team designed an E-commerce store with a shopping cart interfaced to a credit card merchant account provider for the purpose of online credit card validation and payments. The E-commerce store was hosted online on FOOD’s Internet server at http://xlweb.com/indiashop/

· Access provision - wireless routers for high speed Internet access (Mar 1^st 2001 to Mar 16^th 2001)

For the purpose of Internet access provision we utilized Wireless Internet Service Provision System (http://www.mikrotik.com/3index.html) that is an integrated system for wirelessly connecting users to the Internet within a range of about 12km. The WISP data-links connected a wireless Internet router at FOOD’s office and 10 telecenters established by us to provide Internet access for the E-marketers to work from not only FOOD’s office but also from any of these telecenters. Benefits of the WISP system are that it offers high-speed data link and cost effective solution for prolonged use by multiple users for reliable 24-hour Internet access. During the course of this project, DSL Internet access became widely available and since the cost of DSL access was cheap we provided this access via DSL lines also for the E-marketers who were telecommuting.

We also equipped our office with Internet access kiosks as well as office automation facilities like DTP, photocopying etc which would enable E-marketers to telecommute and function as online marketers for the E-commerce store.

· Researching online promotion and customer relations strategies for the E-commerce site (Mar 19^th 2001 to Apr 27^th 2001)

One of the first tasks of FOOD’s research team was to go online and shop at the many e-commerce stores that were already online. By shopping online FOOD’s researchers got a feel for what works and what does not, from the customer's point of view. Also FOOD’s researchers gained valuable insight that helped to design a marketing strategy for the India Shop. The good (and bad) design methodologies used by these online stores was observed in order to serve as a guideline while implementing the India Shop online store.

Our team involved itself in researching various techniques and technologies for online marketing and customer relations by extracting the best practices from various other websites including how the E-marketers can effectively use e-mail to promote the E-commerce shop, optimizing the E-commerce site design, search engine promotion, maintaining communications with potential and current customers, efficient product deliveries etc. A guideline document was prepared based on our research that was provided to the E-marketers to assist them in their marketing and customer service efforts. This document is enclosed as Annexure 1.

§ Training for the e-marketers (May 1^st 2001 to May 31^st 2001)

We provided training to the E-marketers on online marketing and customer service for the E-commerce web site. The training followed a hands-on approach wherein the E-marketers were given computers and asked to login to the Internet and use several of the search engines and websites available to enable them to get familiar with web browsing, using search engines, designing web pages etc. Our team guided and assisted the E-marketers in their learning process. Each E-marketer was provided an e-mail account and space on FOOD’s server to enable them to store their work files, email communications etc.

· E-commerce site goes live (June 4^th 2001 onwards)

On completion of the training program each E-marketer was attached to a particular product segment on the India Shop E-commerce store. The E-marketers were provided online Internet access including computer time. The E-marketers started off by experimenting with the skills they had learnt and within few months many of them were successfully promoting sales of products entrusted to them. The E-marketers are being paid a commission for mobilizing sales for the products featured on the E-commerce store.

§ Monitoring and refinement of strategies (ongoing)

We held regular meetings with the E-marketers and the producers to enable us to analyze the direction of the marketing and sales efforts. This process allowed us to collect feedback from the producers on whether they saw any improvement in their financial status through sales made from the online shop, whether they were now receiving wider publicity for their activities by being a part of an umbrella E-commerce network and so on. The meetings also allowed us to analyze the practical problems faced by the E-marketers and exchange ideas and success or failure stories in the strategies being adopted by them for online marketing. Suggestions made by the producers and the E-marketers were incorporated into the overall strategy for India Shop.

Main research findings

Survey of users who visited or bought products from India Shop

A survey conducted by us of users who have visited and/or bought products from the India Shop site provided us with the following findings. Users were sent an email survey that was completed and e-mailed back to our research team. The findings of our survey was useful to us in evaluating our strategies.

1. Overall, how satisfied are you with our website? (mark as 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 with 1 being extremely satisfied and 5 being very dissatisfied)

Results:

1	2	3	4	5
8%	15%	60%	15%	2%

2. What aspect of the site could we enhance, to most improve your level of satisfaction.

Results:

Suggestions given by the users included improving the shopping cart on the website, providing free shipping or reducing shipping costs, enhancing the graphics design of the site, providing 24 hours online live support, etc. Based on the feedback from the users many of the suggestions have been implemented on the India Shop site.

3. Please rate the importance of the following characteristics when using our E-commerce website (with 1 being extremely important and 4 being insignificant)

Results:

· Ease of navigation

1	2	3	4
76%	15%	8%	0%

· Product ordering

1	2	3	4
65%	27%	6%	2%

· Product pricing

1	2	3	4
57%	34%	7%	2%

· Product quality

1	2	3	4
45%	37%	11%	7%

· Product selection

1	2	3	4
8%	24%	67%	1%

· Product shipping

1	2	3	4
62%