Introduction
There is no doubt that traditional brick-and-mortar retailers like us have seen a decline in sales since the increased growth of e-commerce. After researching the topic at hand, I have identified the issues we face, and devised several solutions to aid us in our competition with online retailers.
Issues Sears Faces
The problem is, online retail is becoming the go to for convenience and customer service while brick and mortar stores are struggling with sales growth. This problem is not only a Sears’s exclusive problem, but a shift in the way customers are shopping today. In order to further examine this issue, I have first compared how other large brick and mortar retailers are doing in their battles with Amazon. Walmart, for example, has seen incredibly slow growth while Amazon, is growing on an exponential level. According to a 2014 article by fool.com, Walmart’s five-year projected annual earnings growth rate was only about 7.9% while Amazon’s was 46.6% (Duggan, 2014).
Consumers are turning to online retailers for cheaper prices, a more convenient shopping experience, fast delivery, and a new technologically advanced way to shop. Traditional retailers are in a price battle with stores like amazon that offer the same or similar products cheaper online. Many times customers will even go to brick and mortar stores just to see the product in person before shopping for better deals online. Shopping online has taken customers from brick and mortar stores
Both Amazon and Walmart are seeking to accomplish the same goal, to become the world’s largest retailer by providing customers with a seamless shopping experience. Both companies have their own strengths, with Amazon being the leader in the online retail space, while Walmart is the clear leader in the brick-and-mortar arena. As more online and brick-and-mortar retailers are eating into the market, both Amazon and Walmart must content with other companies as well as each other. Amazon and Walmart were both created and detonated extraordinary growth due to an innovative push unlike any other in their own respective arenas. “If either Amazon or Walmart is destined to come out on top, it must come from a massive innovation push, a willingness to
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).
One of the greatest is the simple fact that online sales allow a retailer to expand their current customer base without the added costs of opening and operating any additional physical brick and mortar locations. This type of business model also offers lower overhead expenditures, higher profit margins, and the ability to do business on a global scale 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even better, the target market could be anyone, anywhere!
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 trend toward shopping using the Internet is growing faster than expected (Cramer, 2014). Since Internet has become popular medium for people to shop, more companies then launched online shopping platform. With this new platform, they were able to do sales directly to their customer.
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
In today's businesses e-commerce is becomingly more effective in the modern world. Two major companies stand out, one solely relying on online business and the other both store and online services. Most individuals are familiar with these companies, Amazon and Nike. Both of these companies carry strong points in their own right, and as demand for their products grows, so does opportunity. Amazon was once very plain and unattractive but was still the primary bookseller for consumers on the Web, and
The bargaining power of customers is high. First of all, the customer size is tremendous globally, which also has an accelerating growth rate in recent years. Customers’ leverage is strengthening as a result of this. Another inevitable factor is that with countless retailors online, there is low switching cost for customers to find other alternative companies that suits their desire to conduct purchases. Moreover, consumers today are more sophisticated. Consumers are less commit to impulsive-buying, yet are more willing to study about product features and evaluate their options before purchasing online. Their purchase pattern can also be hard to learn too.
The threat of substitutes for Amazon is high. With the exception of its patented technology, there are quite a lot of alternatives to Amazon’s products and services. In addition to physical presence, most companies have an online store as well. Amazon’s products can be purchased all over the internet and they are just spread out among different web sites. The companies operate in brick-and-click mode providing the similar product categories and competitive prices have become the biggest threat for Amazon. However it is extremely difficult for Amazon to establish physical stores or launch price
Business like Amazon wants to make buying item from their business easier for customers. This is why Amazon offers E-retailing which gives customer option to go shopping online. The internet has had impact change on consumers shopping habit as shopping online has numerous advantages which is why online shopping continues to gain popularity. Some of the advantages of E-retailing is that it’s convenient as consumers are able to go shopping at home which could help them save cost on travelling and also gives consumers an option to compare prices of different products as there are wide range of products being sold online.
Retailers have adapted to the online marketplace out of necessity and opportunity. The great recession placed many retail companies in financial hardship and while some failed, others innovated and became some of the largest companies in America such as Amazon. A recent trend is consumers are buying more products online than ever before. As a consumer, I enjoy shopping in the convenience of my home and having the items delivered to my doorstep in 48 hours or less. Global internet access continues to increase, with mobile devices and affordable internet for the home, consumers will continue to shift and buy products online rather than in retail brick and mortar locations. Online sales in the United States have increased over 250% in the last ten years, accomplishing $250.0 billion in 2012 (Tehrani, 2014). Therefore, Amazon is in a solid market position to capitalize on the future trends and booming ecommerce
The traditional retail market has been transformed by technological advances. The internet today has allowed consumers to purchase various products from home ranging from apparel to groceries. The online shopping market has grown significantly within the past decade, leading to many online e-commerce startups such as Amazon, eBay, and mobile start-ups such as Instacart. While e-commerce provides convenience for shopping, it has created major disruption to the traditional shopping industries. Traditional retailers have since faced bankruptcy due to their inability to compete with such start-ups. The traditional American toy store, Toys R Us, announced its state of bankruptcy just last month due to a significant decline in sales. More and more consumers are turning to online giants such as Amazon to purchase daily items as a result of convenience. According to the Washington Post, Toys R Us is just one of more than 300 retailers to file for bankruptcy this year, as Americans ditch the shopping mall in favor of their laptops, smartphones, and tablets (Bhattarai, 2017). Shopping which used to require walking or a vehicle trip to stores is no longer required for consumers with online shopping. Online shopping has appealed to consumers worldwide by encompassing the business aspect of service convenience which constitute saving time and/or effort (Jiang, Yang, and Jun, 2012). For consumers whom have busy lives and those whom are physically disabled, online shopping is a positive
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,
Furthermore, they offer to the customer the experience to buy in a physical store, compared with Amazon that is one of the strongest competitor, there’s no doubt that the internet, and the mobile web in particular, have changed the way people shop, but there is strong evidence that consumers continue to value the experience of