Channel Conflict When Adding Internet Channel on Existing Store Based Retailer

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©2011 IAM IAM Level 2 Certificate in Principles of Business and Administration • Qualification handbook • 7

Online commerce was introduced to consumers in the mid-1990’s, and in the years since, it has grown exponentially. It started out virtually nonexistent and has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Nearly every retail sector has entered online commerce; clothing, electronics, home, health and grooming items, even food and groceries are starting to gain traction online. Online commerce sites rival traditional brick and mortar stores such as Walmart and Target, as well as other big-box stores. As online retailers such as Amazon continue to expand, many brick and mortar stores have been making their way online, indicative of an increasing movement towards online commerce. With more than 80% of the online population having made an online

The definition of E-Commerce or E-Tailing is replacing the traditional relationship of buying and selling in person or the phone with the use of the Internet, Smart Phones and networking. The more people that use the Internet regularly, the more Internet commerce increases. This causes a continual loop of improvements and innovations of which businesses must be aware. Most economists see e-commerce as a market segment that leads to intensive price competition and consumers armed with greater knowledge. E-commerce has changed business models globally, and allows customers to engage in the process of shopping either online or to a destination. Brick and mortar stores do have a conundrum do you want traffic into the store, or do you want the sale based on ease of shopping and/or convenience? (Eisingerich).

Consumers are making purchases daily. There are a number of occasions and reasons prompting people to shop. Special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays all contribute to retail sales. Sustaining one’s daily life through purchase of food, clothing, personal hygiene products and cleaning products also contributes to the economy through commerce. How do most people like to shop? In recent years a new alternative to the traditional brick-and-mortar shopping, online shopping, has increased in popularity. “U.S. e-commerce sales grew from 72 billion U.S. dollars in 2002 to 228 billion U.S. dollars in 2010.” (“Online shopping,” n.d.,

Analyze the challenges that organizations face in the effective transition between selling products using the traditional brick and mortar marketing channel and selling products online. Synthesize the strategies that organizations like Zara and Wal-Mart- two companies that are having difficulty developing eCommerce capability can implement to increase the effortless movement of customers between the traditional and online channels.

The development of the Internet and more specifically the business website has seen brand recognition by consumers escalate to never before seen heights. Because of this brand recognition, it has become important for businesses to design their websites to reflect their overall marketing strategies. This is especially important in the retail world. All retail businesses have a similar overall marketing strategy of generating sales and retaining the customer for future sales. Most of the retail giants still greatly rely on the success of their brick and mortar stores to turn a profit. However, internet sales for these brick and mortar stores have increasingly risen over the last few years to compete with the retail stores like Amazon that are strictly internet based businesses. Brick and mortar retail stores, such as Walmart, Target, Kmart, and Nordstrom, have each designed their websites to reflect the overall retail marketing strategy as well as the individual marketing strategies that have made their brick and mortar businesses successful.

The Internet has changed the way we do virtually everything, including the way we shop. However, shopping is not the only thing that has changed. In the last decade we have changed the way, we apply for loans, study, and even plan a vacation. Doing any of these things would have been impossible a few decades ago. At present, online banking, paying bills, ordering new services, and shopping online have become part of our daily lives. Traditional brick-and-mortar stores have been around much longer than online stores, but we cannot deny that online shopping is giving the traditional stores competition. Many consumers still choose to shop at regular brick-and-mortar stores because they like to see and

According to Turban and King (2003), internet technology renders retailers an additional channel for branding, transactions and customer relationship management, the adaptation of which may drive down retailers’ transaction costs, and ensuring faster and higher quality of customer interactions, resulting in enlarging the existing markets and consumer base. M&S realizes this and have tried to sell clothing via high street stores as well as via internet though they have experienced cost cutting, rationalisation and management changes in order to revive their business in recent years. Internet technology might enable sustainable competitive advantage, but problems remain on how to physically organize their online retail operations.

The idea behind this study is of great significance because e-commerce (online shopping) has grown tremendously since the turn of the century. It has shaped the way people do shopping for the most part.

International Bulletin of Business Administration ISSN: 1451-243X Issue 6 (2009) © EuroJournals, Inc. 2009 http://www.eurojournals.com

By: Toni Hilton, PhD Westminster Business School, UK and Warwick Jones, PhD University of the West of England, UK

There are few studies that show huge percentages of consumers prefer online shopping to store shopping. Online shopping has become a viable threat to traditional shopping channels, such as retail stores and catalogs in certain product areas (Lohse & Spiller, 1998).

Dealing with wide range of channels through which business can interact with customer retailers have applied many concepts to achieve success and profitability. They optimized operations for each channel, which allowed to gain certain advantage in short-term. However, having independently managed channels within scope of operations of one organisation has proven to be rather ineffective approach – nowadays channels are not strictly separate routes of customer communication, but can cross and merge along the customer journey. This is why retailers don’t have other choice as to move to omni-channel concept, which “is about 1:1 experiences across the gamete of devices that consumers use” (Newman, 2014).

BEING A RESEARCH PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTING, FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF ABUJA, ABUJA, NIGERIA