E-Commerce Critical Analysis

In this paper, the definition and description of what a case study is, what are some reasons for using a case study, what are some disadvantages and advantages of this approach? Also included in this paper I will talk about what are some of the ways a researcher can acquire information that can is used for a case study. A case study can be defined as a descriptive account of the behavior, history, and other relevant factors concerning a particular individual (Cozby, Bates, 2012).

Service innovation happens when a company changes and improves their customer service methods. This makes the company’s product more desirable to customers because they are offered better customer service. This also gives the company the opportunity to build a better relationship with their customers. Often service innovation involves getting customer feedback on how to better their customer service. Better customer service creates more customers and; therefore, more cash flow and profits are experienced by the company.

Service innovation. Customers are open to increasingly outsourcing supply chain and logistics activities to third parties. Flexible and innovative solutions are highly important to gain and retain profitable market share.

The purpose of this paper is to show how to evaluate the impact on innovation through strategies, processes, products and services through three different organizations. The organizations evaluated are Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble’s and the University of Phoenix. As a manager of the in original and companies, it is important that several companies find a system to pursue accordingly and maintain the focus on remaining competitive. Consumers of all three businesses will profit from innovated options such as keeping the cost of products and services at a lower cost and by offering better options for a price which will enhance savings.

However, it can be argued that having a well communicated service concept could restrict an organisation and its managers should they what to change their service or product. Johnston et al. (2012) goes as far as saying that significant changes to service concepts can expose the weaknesses in the organisation. The service concepts of Travelodge and Hilton are considerably different, a comparison of the two (appendix four) shows this. It could be said that the service concept of Hilton provides broader outcomes and customer experience, should Travelodge want to tailor their service concept to achieve similar outcomes they would have to veer from the service concept in which their employees and customers are already invested in, creating a

This section of the article shall address the approach used in the case study, providing explanations of the preferred research method, sample details, variables under examination, data collection

There has to be an understanding of the complexity of services before one can begin to determine what challenges face the service industry and the most efficient means of facing those challenges to maintain success. A service organization provides intangible services for a monetary value as perceived by the consumer (Lovelock & Wirtz, 2011). A simple definition is that there are no physical items exchanged in a service transaction as opposed to retail where an item is given in exchange for a predetermined price point. This paper will provide

The service industry interacts with our lives on a daily basis. Services can be defined as deeds, processes and performances. When considering the differences between products and services, intangibility and the fact that a service cannot be touched, tasted, viewed or tried on are terms often used (McColl-Kennedy & Kiel 2000). Services differ from goods in essentially four ways: (1) intangibility; (2) inseparability; (3) heterogeneity; (4) perishability (Kotler, Brown, Adam, Burton, Armstrong 2006). To deliver a quality service, managers also pay attention to the importance of tangibles that support service delivery as well as service delivery blueprinting. Managers must also accept that service failures occur and be able to

The contemporary school of thought in service science is currently dominated by the notion of service-centric services (Lusch & Vargo, 2008), whereby it is believed that the end users are the determinant of value of a given service and co-producing a service with the end users would enhance the value of the service. A main assumption made by this school of thought is that all aspect of services, from creation to delivery process, is the domain of the service providers. However, the emergence of disruptive technologies such as the internet, social media, etc has reduced the operational barriers, empowering the end users to become services provider themselves. This empowerment has led to the creation of what is known as

Tangible goods, or rather manufactured goods, have been the dominant medium of exchange for centuries. However, recent decades have proved that it is no longer the case as there has been a prevalence of being service oriented (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:1-2). Services, as defined by Vargo and Lusch (2004), are  “the application of specialized competences (knowledge and skills) through deeds, processes, and performances for the benefit of another entity or the entity itself (p.2).” Utilizing services gives businesses an edge, a competitive advantage, particularly in an evolving competitive market, something which Metalfrio is definitely part of (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:9).  Those businesses that learn to adapt tend to do well. In addition, Vargo and Lusch (2004) write this shift to services is also a shift from producer perspective to a customer perspective (p.2). Thus, it leads to more of a collaborative effort where co-creation leads to adding value to the service rather than a product having value (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:6). Also, customers rather develop relationships with those that can provide a range of related services over an extended period of time, thus allowing businesses retain their clients for the long term (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:13). Overall, service oriented marketing is a direction that businesses should be headed towards to ensure that they can remain relevant and competitive in the

Service firms are increasingly using customer service to develop sustainable competitive advantage – through value generation as well as differentiation. This

Many organizations industriously look for the opportunity to gain the competitive advantages in their industries. One of the opportunities that frequently used by the organization is the implementation of e-commerce. Thus, the e-commerce and the online sale transaction become popular in each industry. E-commerce provides many benefits, such as the saving of shopping time, the cost savings, convenience, and free from geographical constraints.

Due to the rapid advancement in information technology (IT), which entails information, communication, mobile, and networking technologies, the service sector’s list of ventures is constantly expanding (Rust & Huang, 2014). The advances in IT sector, therefore, are very closely associated with the service revolution and the information revolution. Rust and Huang (2014) aim to explain these phenomena’s relationship to advances in IT and to consider the implications of this relationship for marketing science. Much of the drastic transformation of the world’s service sector from an industrial to a post-industrial service society is due to both the contribution of IT to service and from IT as a service. In other words, the advancement of IT has transformed the nature of service fundamentally (Rust & Huang, 2014). IT plays a role of facilitator; as the mobile and networking technology allows the consumers to access various services anywhere at any time, IT facilitates firm-to-customer, firm-to-firm, and customer-to-firm communications online and on mobile devices. Hence, this trend enables application developers to tailor services to fit the needs of each consumer (Rust & Huang, 2014). As an application developer aims to satisfy a specific need of the target consumers, the service quality and the satisfaction of the consumers increase. As Figure 1

Promotion of excellence and innovation require different service systems. (Rubalcaba, Gallego & Den Hertog, 2010). It is also known as services innovation. IKEA follows different approaches to innovate

The base line of this case study is to identify a service along with three different providers of that service and compare the different competitive priorities and operating strategies such as cost, quality, time, flexibility, product range… etc. for these three different service providers with the help of “COMPETITIVE PRIORITIES BY KRAJEWSKI & RITZMAN” and “ORDER WINNING CRITERIA BY T. HILL” . Each and every corporate objectives and marketing strategies are taken into deliberation to comprehend how the services win orders in the market place, by taking source from the particular provider’s promotional information and reviews. Every service developers comes up with disparate new ideas to provide best service quality to the costumers. Some of the provider’s concentrate on wide range of the services and some on low cost and some of them concentrate on quality in the service, because every costumer will have different personalized priorities. In this study we are going to compare operations strategy and priorities of the product service that is being provided to the costumer. The below disquisition depends predominantly on the advancement information of the manufacturer and costumer reviews on the service.