...they will face the challenge to diversify or not. Diversification is a risk management technique that allows companies to mix a wide variety of investments in a portfolio, if one investment fails then the other’s success make up the difference. Amazon is widely known to use the internet as the sole method for selling extensive selection of goods to its consumers. Amazon has grown from a book seller to a virtual Wall Mart of the Web selling diverse products. Amazon’s growth and diversification of business offers the following advantages: 1. Cost Leadership is pursued by Amazon.com by differentiating itself primarily on the basis of price. Due to this strategy, Amazon.com always makes sure that it offers the same quality products as other companies for a considerably less price. 2. Cost Savings: Amazon’s business strategy has helped it reduce costs associated with operations and staffing. A reduced cost gives increased revenue. 3. Provides current and prospective customers with different design, quality or convenience. Amazon.com always selects a differentiator that is different among the competitor. So, Amazon.com consumers can recognize and differentiate its product. 4. Existing expertise, knowledge and resources in the company is a major advantage when expanding into new activities 5. Provide better risk control through no longer being reliant on a single market or product. 6. In case of unrelated diversification as...
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...internet as the core of Amazon's business model. Amazon customers are able to search inside the book before buying it, read customer ratings on products of interest, and purchase products at low prices. Amazon’s initial target market of online book consumers, proved to be very lucrative. In addition, the expansion into more diverse product offerings beyond books, such as music, DVD & video, toys, electronics, home improvement and auctions only served to increase the company’s product list. Branching into other areas such as automotive, apparel, jewelry, office equipment, and recreational merchandise, to name a few, was necessary to achieve Amazon’s goal of providing a large diversity of products. Amazon has identified an aggressive marketing strategy to broaden the company’s target market, expand the product positioning to...
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...Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary and so on to serve the outdoor enthusiasts in the major regions in Canada. But its not enough, MEC wants to serve more customers and expand its market countrywide. The best way to achieve the goal is to create a website, and hence allow the customers buying on-line despite of where they are. This is what the president and chairman of MEC concerning about recently. By analyzing the following aspects, the company may create a successful website to match the customers' requirement indeed. First, MEC should consider how the market segments will impact the website and it's ecommence strategy. Customer segmentation is a method for grouping customers based upon similarities they share with respect to any dimensions the company deem relevant to its business (http://www.mindofmarketing.net). And Trites & Boritz (2008) identifys "an ebusiness strategy is the sum of all the choices that a business makes to offer unique value to its customers that differentiates its business model from those of its competitors" (pp.23). There are five major market segments MEC deal with: Young adults, Retired, Families, Businesses, and Gift buyers. MEC should choose to focus on two or three of those market segments, and create a website more suitable for the focused classes. For example, Young adults and Families classes may have some same characteristics, such as: enjoying weekend excursions to release the stress, going outside in group, and driving by themselves. Hence the...
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...70 -11.2% 26% 591.89 -7.2% 198.28 -5.8% 34% 156.85 -3.6% 27% FQ1 '14 FQ2 '14 FQ3 '14 529.83 -10.5% 174.84 -11.8% 33% 137.76 -12.2% 26% 536.95 1.3% 182.56 4.4% 34% 135.58 -1.6% 25% 523.51 -2.5% 183.23 0.4% 35% 137.42 1.4% 26% FQ4 '14 (Projected) 504.26 -3.7% 173.97 -5.1% 35% 128.59 -6.4% 26% 322.98 40% 258.39 32% Rajasthali – Industry & Competitor Analysis Industry Size & Revenue by Competition FQ1 '12 Market Size (in MN INR) 15235 FQ2 '12 15250 FQ3 '12 15285 FQ4 '12 15290 FQ1 '13 15295 FQ2 '13 15300 FQ3 '13 15308 FQ4 '13 15298 FQ1 '14 15310 FQ2 '14 15318 FQ3 '14 15330 FQ4 '14 (Projected) 15332 Fab Furnish Urban Ladder India Circus Online Others Home Stop Home Centre Fab India Brick & Mortar Others Online Players 60.94 67.10 36.56 33.55 24.38 23.49 182.82 211.37 Brick & Mortar 2742.30...
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...Name: Nikunj Patel Course(sect.): COMM 1133(05) Teacher: Keith Hobbs Date: 26th Nov 2014 Impact of e-commerce on traditional bricks and mortar retailers 21’st century has brought tremendous development of information technology ,and brought innovative and unique ideas to the whole world. Adoption of information technology ,internet and computer network have transformed the mode of operation of many business. E-Commerce has become the market trend of the century, it has came up with a unique way of business strategy, particularly in terms of pricing, convenience and product availability that draws consumer attention to buy products/goods online rather than through traditional bricks and mortar retailers. Taking about the most important factor that attracts consumer towards e-commerce is low pricing. Online stores only need to manage inventory in a warehouse, one store can serve all consumers. This allows them to focus on price , as their fundamental operating costs are typically lower. Hence online sites puts daily deals and offer cheaper pricing on products. “Most admit ,offline discounts can hardly eve match what’s on offer online”(Anonymus,2014,Retailers stumble as traffic heads to e-commerce sites, paragraph 3).Apart from that ,online sites have now started their own brands. ”So instead of taking clothes from, say Calvin Klein and selling them over the web, companies are now making their own clothes. This allows them to match traditional competitors...
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...1. Discuss the pros and cons of Amazon’s growth and diversification of business and specialization, and make recommendations about what Amazon could have done differently. Amazon.com started out as a large online book retailer. It has transformed itself from the little bookstore on the corner to the mega-super-duper-full-of-stuff store that squats at the end of a monstrous parking lot! You can search inside books, read customer reviews of books, etc. They have managed to keep their pricing low. Their product list has grown to include music, electronics, toys, home improvement and the list goes on. It seems that their goal of providing products for every aspect of life is working. Over the past year Amazon has seen growth along with struggles. Financially they have seen an increase in their business. Amazon has expanded their business pretty rapidly over the past fifteen years and they are still trying to expand further. Amazon is innovative – it started by losing money on books. However, it quickly expanded into other products. Surprisingly, now it even makes money on books though it sells them at a deep discount. As previously stated Amazon began by allowing customers to write comments on the products it sells. There was great resistance from the sellers but the customers loved it. Now the practice has become an industry standard. http://seekingalpha.com/article/78257-the-case-for-amazon-com. It has becomes apparent that the company is so good at reinventing itself because...
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...Research Report E-Commerce Division Entry Elements Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Introduction 4 Research Findings 4 Effective Website Design 4 Reputation Management 5 Impact to Brick-and-Mortar 5 Recommendations 5 Conclusion 6 References 7 Executive Summary The e-commerce program has initiated preliminary steps to resolve the resources, elements and lines of business required to begin planning. The e-commerce division entry elements report contains critical factors pertaining to selling, controlling and managing the online business presence. The elements are not comprehensive of all aspects of planning a new line of business. The findings here are a summarization of necessary building blocks to a successful expansion. An effective website design is the most elementary, imperative piece of the expansion. The website is the company’s image, reliability, salesman, quality and storefront. The company can fail at other components but this one. Reputation management is the control of the company brand and standing. Internally controlled systems allow for customization of that direction but a multichannel approach will achieve higher satisfaction results if including third party handlers. The impact to brick-and-mortar operations contains a reduction in sales volume. However, the value to the company of the enlarged market, expected revenue gain and scalability is high and manageable. The recommendation of this report is...
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...Since San Walton opened his first store in 1962, Walmart has grown into a global retailer with more than 4,000 store in the United States and more than 6,000 internationally. Walmart is comprised of three business segments, Walmart US, Walmart International and Sam’s Club. Walmart Global eCommerce works across all three segments. Walmart’s mission statement “We save people money so they can live better”, is not indicative of where its strategic focus areas are, but it does sound good for the average customer who has a limited budget. This mission statement leads directly into Walmart Global eCommerce goals which include combining online, social innovations with physical stores to give consumers “anywhere, anytime shopping experience” in addition to its organizational sustainability goal of creating zero waste, using only sustainable energy and selling products that sustain the environment which is important to all of Walmart’s segments including eCommerce. Walmart’s overall objective is to deliver shareholder value by increasing earnings per share, returns and maintaining strong stable returns on investment. According to Walmart CEO, Mike Duke, Walmart’s strategic focus areas are: •Making sure the company has the best retail talent at every level of the organization by recruiting, developing and retaining the best associates; •Delivering on the productivity loop that enables Walmart to operate for less so the company can drive prices even lower for its customers ...
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...Monwakeh Keiyegar COMPANY NAME/WEBSITE/INDUSTRY The name of the company is FreshDirect and it is in the retail grocery industry, the company website where people go to buy products from is freshdirect.com BACKGROUND/HISTORY The company in the case study is FreshDirect. FreshDirect was founded in July 2001 by Jason Ackerman and Joseph Fedele. FreshDirect is an online base grocery store in New York that provide high quality fresh foods and grocery items at cheap price and delivers to more than 250,000 customers in the New York and New Jersey area. The FreshDirect plan to win in the market is by eliminating the middleman SWOT ANAYSIS | INTERNAL ENTERNAL | | Strengths |Opportunities | |FreshDirect have strong financial assets. |Reputed brand name and its customers are highly trusted on| | |FreshDirect products. | |Advance food technology software system. | | | |Delivery of un-perishable products along with its popular | |FreshDirect had refrigerated loaded trucks that keep |perishable products. | |their foods fresh....
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...Here are the three threats that I feel will most likely affect Target in the near future: 1. It’s undefined grocery strategy. Its intention to not become a full-fledged service grocery while Walmart, one of its primary competitor continuously upgrading its food areas could work against Target. 2. It’s defined customer base of affluent and conscious customers. Target needs to expand its customer base to attract more demographics. Its core customers are more akin to Amazon shoppers; Target's shoppers have a median income of approximately $75,000 (http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-reveals-amazon-is-crushing-target-2016-5). Amazon here has a competitive edge due it its widespread product line. 3. Misalignment among its online stores...
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...City were the two major brick and mortar stores where consumers were able to purchase electronics. With the rising technology and E-commerce, Circuit City was not able to adapt to the changing environment and now Best Buy is on the same path as its former competitor. Best Buy had to close down fifty stores and fire over 400 employees due to its poor financial performance. Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn explained that there was no innovation by the company to adapt to the changing market on how consumers were purchasing electronics. Consumers are now price comparing with Best Buy’s products with online retailers. Online competitors of Best Buy are utilizing the new emerging technologies to help make purchasing of products convenient to the consumers. Problem Statement Best Buy is on a slow downward slope towards bankruptcy, if the company does not have any new innovation in the way it sells its products to consumers. Best Buy needs to understand how consumers are purchasing electronics and restructure how its employees are interacting with customers. Amazon is taking advantage of being an online retailer which means that Best Buy has to take advantage of their physical locations. Alternative Solutions One of the strategies Best Buy can implement is to offer a price match guarantee to the customers if they can find a lower price than Best Buy’s products then Best Buy will match the price. This strategy will attract more customers to the brick and mortars store instead of its online...
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...Internet Customer Acquisition Strategy at Bankinter Bankinter is a small independent national Spanish bank founded in 1965 and operating through various customer acquisition networks and distribution channels. Among their competitors, which are traditional brick-and-mortar banks and Internet-only banks, Bankinter positions itself as innovative, multichannel and low-cost provider of financial services. In 1992, Bankinter started to change its strategy by closing some of its branches and focusing more on product and channel-oriented marketing. In line with its innovative positioning, Bankinter was the first Spanish bank to offer telephone, electronic and internet banking. In 1999, as part of their polarization strategy, Bankinter launched its e-collaborator program aiming to attract new Internet customers at low cost. Branch 8700, Bankinter’s Internet branch, experienced rapid growth leading to decreases customer acquisition costs and increases in costumer acquisitions. After its alliance strategy with highly trafficked dominant online portals that proved to be cost-intensive and didn’t lead to new customer acquisitions, Bankinter launched its e-collaborator program in 2001. E-collaborator is a low-cost acquisition tool placing banners on Websites that link the user directly to ebankinter.com, Bankinter’s online site launched in 1997. As it is a very cost-effective program, it resulted in lowering per customer acquisition costs while increasing new customer acquisitions. Apart...
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...Amazon is one of the largest online retailers in the world and was one of the first to sell goods over the internet. The effects of economic, cultural, trade environment and political and legal factors have varying influences upon Amazon’s international marketing mix. The economic impacts of market characteristics and competition are vital information for the growth of Amazon. Internet retailing industry will continue to see positive growth and expand. The online retailer industry sales increased by 14% compared to 2011 (Guardian, 2012). There has also been an increase in disposable income spent on online retailers over the last 5 years (Forbes, 2011). Both these market characteristics provide positive sign for potential market growth for Amazon and possibly indicate expansion in the future. There is a wide range of competition that Amazon faces from small companies such as dotcom businesses to larger ones such as EBay. First mover advantages is largely a function of technology, foresight and the ability to gain trade secrets ( Lieberman, 1988). A strong brand image and economies of scale in production are some of the positives as a result that Amazon has gained. There remains intense competitive rivalry, as search engines such as Google are becoming first choice for consumer when shopping on line. For Amazon, this increase in competition faced forces the business to expand its services to a broader market and strengthen its established markets. The online retailer industry...
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...Table of Contents Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…. 2 Brief company background ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2 Discussion of business problem ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 3 The cost of brick and mortar ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 4 High level solution ………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………. 7 Benefits of solving the problem ……………………………………………………………………………….…………… 8 Business/technical approach ………………………………………………………………………………………….…….. 8 Business process changes …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 11 Technology or business practices used to augment the solution ………………………………………….. 11 Conclusions and overall recommendations ………………………………………………………….….…………… 12 Summary of project ……………………………………………………………………………………………….….…………. 15 References …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….…………. 16 Abstract This paper analyzes the advantages of Troy’s Sporting Goods implementing a technology based growth strategy through the utilization of an e-commerce website versus continuing solely through a brick and mortar approach. Currently, Troy’s competes against other well-known sporting goods companies for market share who already have a strong e-commerce presence. An evaluation of cost, resource utilization, customer base, and customer experience are compared, while also considering the primary necessities for the successful implementation of a business to customer (B2C) website, including: (1) Hosting and...
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...Customization means firms can tailor their products and services to meet a customer’s particular needs on a large scale Interactive Communities means companies can communicate with customers, improving their image of responsiveness Collaboration refers to different departments of a company can use the Web to collaborate Transaction Support–clients and businesses can conduct business online without human support EC Business Strategies Brick-and-mortar Business Strategy refers to the strategies that firms operating solely in the traditional physical markets. Click-only Business Strategy (virtual companies/pure play companies) means that the business is conducted electronically in cyberspace only. These firms usually compete on price alone. Pros: compete more effectively on price; tend to be highly adept with technology and can innovate very rapidly as new technologies become available; Cons: difficult for customers to return a product; Individuals may be leery about the security of giving credit card number to a virtual company Click-and-mortar Business Strategy refers to the business model that firms that straddle the two environments, operating in both physical and virtual arenas Pros:...
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