It was one of the first retailers to use a 24 x 7 toll-free telephone number and the Internet for direct sales to consumers. A decade ago, 1-800-Flowers was a business waiting eagerly for the Internet to take off. Today, the company has an e-commerce platform that can grow along with its business. For the delivery of smiles, 1-800-FLOWERS implemented more scalable, centralized e-commerce platform to support its rapid business growth. Also the company fills its orders in two ways: through a network of florists and through drop shipments.
(Wal-Mart Corporate Website) Huge turnover, large customer base and returning customers show that Wal-Mart has been able to achieve this goal in its 50 years of existence. Wal-Mart sources material from third world countries at low price. Very efficient supply chain management and bargaining power has enabled Wal-Mart to sell goods at low price. Company is also pursuing vertical integration strategy to lower cost. Answer-2) Wal-Mart Stores had turnover of $446.95 billion and net income of $15.77 billion in financial year ending
The company’s vision statement points to broader sales purpose, “As digital and online sales accelerate, Barnes & Noble remains well positioned to gain a significant share of these exciting new markets.” This vision takes B&N away from its core competency of bookselling. B&N must return to bookselling as its first goal, and ensure alignment at every level of the corporation. Bookselling must be stated first in all communications. The B&N of today traces its roots to a single bookstore. The sales of physical books and eBooks will give the company its greatest competitive advantage in the years to come.
BACKGROUND Amazon.com Inc. is a Multinational Company in the field of Electronic Commerce. Jeff Bezos founded the company in 1994. The company initially started as an online bookstore. Amazon.com started and revolutionized the field of E-Commerce. It is the world largest online retailer.
Williams-Sonoma is a leading company that sells specialty products for the home. They use several strategies to maintain a competitive advantage in the market. They currently have 522 retail stores in 42 states and Washington DC. (“Internet Mini Case #6” n.d.) The company has experience a great deal of growth and currently obtains roughly 60% of sales from the retail stores and 40% from the direct to customer sales. (“Internet Mini Case #6” n.d.) Williams-Sonoma leadership had the vision to understand that e-commerce is an avenue of sales that cannot be avoided.
Inuit was founded in 1983 by Scott Cook (Former Procter & Gamble employee) and Tom Proulx (Stanford University Programmer), that develops and sells financial and tax solution software for consumers and small to medium sized businesses. The company has always thrived to revolutionise people’s lives by solving their important business and financial management problems. Quicken was its product that was launched in 1984 and struggled the first year, but due to positive reviews in trade journals and print campaign strategies, Intuit got its first break and by 1988 Quicken was the best selling finance product on the market. Early 1990’s saw Intuit growing due to success of Quicken, QuickBooks and Turbotax. These products made some significant contribution in small businesses.
Amazon has only recently begun to implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) plans into its overall business strategy. Despite this, Amazon continues to be among the highest rated companies by consumers (Vozza, 2014). This is solely due to Amazon's customer-focused business style and reliability. However, Amazon and founder Bezos have recently been criticized for lacking an environmental component to their business plan. Prior to this, Amazon critics targeted Bezos for not disclosing and encouraging charitable donations.
1) Amazon.com experienced each of the following except A) maintaining its position as the number one B2C money-making EC site in the world. B) driving growth largely by product diversification and its international presence. C) declaring its first profit in 2005. D) patenting its 1-click feature which allows customers to place an order in a secure manner without having to enter personal, billing, and shipping information each time they shop. Answer: C 2) According to Internet Retailer (2009), approximately ________ percent of adult U.S. Internet users shop online or research offline sales online.
Kayla Webley (2010) from time.com and Ian McAllister (2010) from quora.com utilized numerous resources to complete their analysis of these two companies. The case study from Dave Chaffey (2012) at smart insights.com and the article written by Valerie Peterson at about.com also provided in-depth insight into the workings of these two retail giants. Originally incorporated in Washington in 1994, but was re-incorporated in Delaware by 1996, Amazon.com was started by founder Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos came up with the company’s name by looking in the dictionary. He had a vision on being the biggest company in the world.
The firm has been able to maintain leadership in small-package delivery services despite stiff competition from FedEx and Airborne Express by inventing heavily in advanced information technology. UPS spends more than $1 billion each year to maintain a high level of customer service while keeping costs low and streamlining its overall operations. It all starts with the scannable bar- code label attached to a package, which contains detailed information about the sender, the destination and when the package should arrive. Customers can download and print their own labels using special software provided by UPS or by accessing the UPS Web site. Before the package is even picked up, information from the “smart”label is transmitted to one of UPS’s computer centers in Mahwah, New Jersey, or Alpharetta, Georgia, and sent to the distribution center nearest its final destination.