Evaluative study of major Internet bookshops

Abstract

Internet Bookshops are the online bookshops that allow the user to search the items of his interest, navigate, make a query, communicate, place an order, bargain and negotiate. At its simplest the Internet Bookshop or online bookshop list the products for sale or the services offered and invite the customer to phone, fax or e-mail their order. The present paper evaluates major ten Internet bookshops by using the evaluation criteria like Authority, variety of collection, help menu, shopping procedures, payment acceptance, special facilities for online purchase, user search support, product details, navigation facilities and discounts on the products. A 100 marks scoring system has been adopted to assign the scores to each Internet bookshop under study. Based on the marks obtained these bookshops are graded into five categories viz. Excellent, Very Good, Good, Average and Poor. Amazon.com, USA and Amazom, UK fall uder excellent category while the Internet bookshops from India viz D.K.Agencies and Khemraj fall under good and average category respectively.