Employing New Technologies

According to JCKonline, the Internet’s competitive strength was recognized by a significant number of companies by 2000. As it follows from a survey taken at the Centurion Jewelry Show not long ago, their awareness of the Internet grew over the recent years as they developed workable strategies for their businesses.
During the survey at the Tucson show (February 2-6) the jewelers were offered to discuss the Internet and how they use it in day-to-day retail business.
 
When asked when they began to take the Internet seriously as a competitor and/or channel of distribution, close to 60% of respondents reported they became focused on the Web before 2004. In fact, more than one fourth of them were seriously treating the Internet before 2000. Another 26.1% reported they had started their Internet operations after 2005 but before 2007.  And close to 16% have so far been unconscious of business opportunities in the Internet.

A total of 53% of survey respondents said they are not involved with Internet blogs while 42% have an idea about this Internet feature. However, only 5% of respondents use blogs to communicate with their customers.
FaceBook or similar social webs in the Internet are familiar to 36% of Centurion 2008 attendees. YouTube is also familiar to prestige jewelers, with 65% using it or similar technology regularly.  Only 4% of them, however, use YouTube to promote their businesses by posting videos.

A total of 70% of respondents spend less than 1% on their Internet presence. 13% spend from 1-3.99% and only 9% spend more than 5% a year. More than half of the respondents have an in-house employee and an outside person, company, or agency maintain their Web sites; 8% of respondents have no Internet presence. A total of 42% of respondents do not use the Internet with their personnel matters. About 20% use their own Web sites to fill in their vacancies; a quarter of the surveyed use Monster or Yahoo to try to find new personnel; and 8% of respondents use the Internet only to research possible candidates.

More than one-third of prestige jewelers are spending a considerable amount of money on their Internet presence and it’s slowly working, say respondents. Only 4% are targeting Internet shoppers and making it pay off handsomely. A further 34% use the Internet in non-ecommerce ways and believe they get from the Web what they need. About 26% have not been able to find a way to make the Internet work for them.
About 60% of prestige jewelers communicate regularly with their customers via email.
Only 37% of respondents disagreed with the statement to the effect that the Internet was “hard to deal but it has helped their business.”

A total of 85% of respondents offer their employees email through their store, giving their employees another way to talk to their customers. And 89% of those having access to email do use it to reach their customers.
It is noted that Internet advertising is being used extensively. While one-fifth do not advertise at all, almost half advertise on their own Web sites. 8% use other Web sites, and search engine advertising is used by 14%.
Nearly three-quarters of prestige jewelers and their employees use the Internet to keep up with industry news.
The following statistic speaks for having a content-rich, constantly updated web site: Almost half of all respondents believe that 10 to 50% of new customers visited their jewelers’ Web site before entering their store. More than 58% of respondents update their Website as needed, not regularly. More than 40% update their site daily, weekly, or monthly.

On the personal technology front, only 5% of prestige jeweler respondents characterize themselves as dinosaurs and do not carry a cell phone. 52% depend regularly on a cell phone and 43% have email capable cell phones to stay in touch.