Online Opportunities: A Quantitative Content Analysis Benchmark Study of Online Retail Plant Sales

Abstract

<jats:p>Online, direct selling (ODS) has become the leading way that people acquire goods, with Amazon (Seattle, WA) being the largest online vendor in the United States. This study sought to determine if horticultural businesses were engaging in ODS with Amazon, ebay, and other websites. Researchers examined the ODS activity of 498 businesses using quantitative content analysis methods, and found that 93 horticultural industry businesses were conducting some form of ODS through their websites, but only four offered products on Amazon. Results indicate that ODS remains an untapped marketplace for the horticultural industry, particularly for small, rural businesses.</jats:p>

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“…In general, rural users were less trusting of new sources and information they saw on social media (Gilbert et al, 2008), which may indicate reaching rural users on social media from an organizational standpoint is more difficult than reaching their urban counterparts. Rural areas can struggle to keep up with online technology, which has been noted in studies looking at the ability for small, rural agricultural businesses to effectively compete in online marketing and strategy (Baker et al, 2018;Peterson et al, 2018;Stebner et al, 2017a;Stebner et al, 2017b). While it is recommended that Extension use new and social media to communicate with stakeholders about programming, available resources, and contentious issues (King et al, 2017;Rohling et al, 2016), during times of disaster there can be power loss and other challenges for communicating via technology.…”

Content marketing strategy and its impact on customers under the global market conditions

“…The largest tool for measuring sales methodology is Eloqua.com or Marketo.com, which have this feature integrated in themselves, but also using Google Analytics. [6] Customers search for different kinds of information and therefore, the focus is on articles on various topics that are published on websites or other online sites. Content marketing includes voice search, where up to 50% of consumers are currently using voicecontrolled technology.…”

Impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on plant purchasing in Southeastern United States

“…Looking at trends during the pandemic can be an issue as firms may devote resources to changing how they do business when consumers plan to revert to their prepandemic norms. For instance, a survey of firms selling plants found 82% were not selling online though online direct sales is the number-one way people acquire goods (Baker et al, 2018). Furthermore, retailers account for 61.2% of floriculture and nursery sales (IBISWorld, 2020) meaning a change in the primary direct-to-consumer sales channel could have echoing ramifications for growers and other stakeholders.…”