ECommerce - Levi Strauss: key reasons for the failure of its B2C site, consider and explain how the company might have utilised its existing B2B e-commerce to expand successfully to B2C

Due to the above reasons and lack of promotion, Levi’s achieved only 65% of their sales target. They promoted the wrong product under their brand, for the wrong price at the wrong place. They failed to understand the needs of their customers.

J.C. Penney is a retail outlet that operates in many locations globally. It deals with product lines such as clothing, footwear, beauty products, electronics, and jewelry. There are several changes that have taken place in the macro environment that promises to increase the fortunes of the company. The advertisement in technology is one single important factor that has increased the performance of the business (Ali, 2007). The company has an elaborate website through which it uses to tap the online market. In fact, thirty percent of the company’s revenue comes from the website.

Many businesses have shown that after implementing an e-commerce system into their companies, sales have increased immensely. Sneaker Joe’s is a small family run business that is looking to expand their business after the sneakers they sell have shown to be very popular locally, after a picture of them was spotted on a social networking site. I have been looking at some of the most popular websites that consumers use to purchase their goods and what kind of commerce system they have in place, but first, I have written an explanation of the different types of ecommerce used today.

In 2003, they excess inventory that was “built up based on previous years of strong sales” (pg. 9). Their sales decreased by 1.6% which indicated that their expansion slightly bottomed out. After this, Kohl’s decided to start a new line of clothing to compete with the likes of Banana Republic and Perry Ellis. Their Apt. 9 brand was designed to appeal the middle class customer. In 2007, Kohl’s decided to offer more products online that were “not generally available in its stores” (pg. 9); these products include many home furnishings, dinnerware, electronics, and children’s toys. Later in the year, Kohl’s expanded its athletic department striking a deal with Fila. This agreement led to an exclusive deal to sell athletic “apparel, footwear, and accessories for women, men, and children” (pg. 9). Also, this deal is special as it gives Kohl’s a large amount of control over the Fila product line. The main part of this deal consists of Fila controlling only the manufacturing of its footwear and consists of Kohl’s controlling “the manufacturing, production, distribution, sales, and marketing of the FILA SPORT apparel and accessories” (pg. 9).

They also understand that “when you stop evolving with your customer, you die,” as Jamie Nordstrom, president of stores, has said. They are building fulfillment centers to accommodate online shopping more quickly, use RFID chips to keep their perpetual inventory system for stores and online to share, and invested more into online growth than brick and mortar stores, knowing that this is where their growth is coming from. “Over the next several years Nordstrom expects to derive half of its sales from the Rack and from its online units, versus 38 percent today,” and that’s because “the U.S. Commerce Department estimates that electronic commerce amounted to 6.2 percent of total retail sales in the first quarter of 2014.” Analysts have also been saying Nordstrom has thrived compared to competitors because it is a pioneer in perks like free shipping and also having the unique diversity of products online. (https://nrf.com/news/nordstrom-exec-evolve-or-die) (http://www.luxurydaily.com/nordstrom-integrates-instagram-to-create-shopping-experience/) (http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2024313399_nordstromearningsxml.html) (http://wwwiebe.com/nordstrom-customer-service-first/)

Being a multi-billion dollar retailer comes with its perks. JCPenney’s dominance over catalog merchandising has now extended into the cyber world at www.jcpenney.com. This website is multi-functional and easy to navigate, but how would JCPenney’s new e-commerce site stack up against its toughest competitor, Kohl’s, on the web? The answer may surprise you. This is an intriguing look at how varied retail comparisons can be. While JCPenney is struggling with sales on the retail floor, Kohl’s continues to exceed expectations in their stores. Online though, it is a completely different story.

Another social factor is demographics. As Lululemon products are highly prices, it is important to research the social economic aspects of the neighborhood. Moreover, Lululemon faces high rates of obesity and overweight in America and Australia, hence the importance for well-trained “educators.” As Lululemon incorporated e-commerce in 2009, a technological as well as an external factor is to ensure customer service provides the same level of customer services as the face-to-face interaction in the stores, and to maintain the website up-to date. It is important for Lululemon to maintain a user friendly website that would encourage people from all ages to buy Lululemon’s products.

Many stores Johnny Macs online store has very few products for sale. This could be a problem since e commerce is becoming a bigger industry now. With the internet booming more than ever before seven percent of Dicks Sporting Goods sales came from the internet (Minaya). While that doesn’t seem like a lot that’s seven percent Johhnny Macs is potentially automatically losing because there online store doesn’t have products for sale. The store in Detroit is only open for team sales which provides the sporting goods market to the rival companies more sales to that market. They offer free shipping on products with certain orders but if there’s nothing to buy online than why have that advertisement displayed on their home page of the online

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 reason for this is in 2011 JcPenney decided to create separate strategies for online and physical stores, and things did not work well for them. They had set out to handle e-commerce as a very separate channel with its own exclusive merchandise. Their employees could no longer refer customers to belong to the JcPenney website when the customer was looking for something. In addition, JcPenney customer’s customer will try going on JcPenney website and still could find the items in the actual stores. Their E-commerce sales declined in 2012. The online sales went down 32% to roughly over $1 billion yearly. There were more to the decline than JcPenney deciding to separate online and physical stores. They had started offering fewer discounts and coupons because they were attempting to reinvent the firm. They resolved to change up their strategy in 2013, JcPenney had realized that suffering an online and store sales separated were making the gross revenue decline. E-commerce sales had raised nearly 6% over the previous year in 2013. JcPenney online retail started to grow 26% in 2014 (Smith,

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.

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.

There are more categories of products on the internet. And there are a lot of choices that people can choose, so they can buy what they want. The choice of a store is very much influenced by location and store types (Sinha, p.14). But brick and mortar stores have fewer kinds of products than online, and online shopping does not be influenced by location. Also, people do not need to be afraid to go buy some private things, if they want to buy in public store, such as, sanitary towel, underwear and so on. Because they can buy it on the internet and even it has more choices. Moreover, if customers want to buy a lot of things, and those things are not in the same place, then they need to run around here and there to buy all kinds of products they want. However, online shopping does not have this problem. People do not need to go out on a sunny or rainy day, just stay at home and pay it on the phone or computer. But the mall can provide some services for customers that are not available online, such as urgent care medical centers and roller coasters (Resnick, pp.1127-1128). Even then, online shopping is still better than traditional shopping. Furthermore, people can compare merchandise from different shops, so they can choose the cheapest and the best. Customers can try on new forms of apparel in stores, but it is too risky to purchase it based on pictures and text description in the internet (Resnick,

Despite the rapid growth of E-commerce sites, 43 percent of the them fails, and the difference between the success and the failure is consumer experience, according to Ecommercetimes.com. The Dotcom Survival Guide reported there is still one resource left untapped that can save dotcoms from failure. It's the one resource that historically is most ignored in favor of ads, press, and flashy features yet it's the one resource that can lead dotcoms to survival. That resource is customers. Customers can provide the revenues needed to attain profitability. Customers can give the word-of-mouth marketing to drive traffic. Customers can give the feedback needed to continually improve the website.