Online vs. Offline Marketing Problem: Borders Bankruptcy Case

At CanGo it is obvious that the Internet has changed how society shares information, communicate, educate, shop and entertain them selves. Cushman & Wakefield conducted an extensive research during 2013 on the “online retail/ecommerce market”. The information published by Cushman & Wakefield is important to CanGo because CanGo’s business is part of the “online retail/ecommerce market”. The report has indicated that the growth has been an average of 18% during the course of three years (2009-2012) as opposed to the growth of the normal or traditional retail sales, which only grew 1.3% for the same period of time.

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.

According to Katawetawaraks & Wang(2011) online shopping has facilitated the presence of many foreign companies looking to boost their brand visibility . Locally, buyers have easy access on information and products that may not be physically available in their home countries(Oreku, Mtenzi, & Ali, 2013).Unlike conventional stores, online shops are open 24 hours a day throughout the year(Gong, Stump, & Maddox, 2013). Moreover, consumers from the comfort of their homes can log in at any time throughout the world and buy products and services at their convenience. On the other hand, online retailers who do not have physical presence can gain local and international exposure whilst reducing transactional costs(Laohapensang, 2009).

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

Of course the Internet brings lots of competition among retailers, which affects the supply conditions within an industry. Companies overseas are able to place their products on the net, which in return expands their market, and therefore sell to a larger area this causes force of lower prices and creates a greater incentive for sellers to set apart their products or services.

One of the opportunities we have in today’s world is whether to buy online or go to a brick and mortar store to do our purchasing. The two offer great sales and promotions along with selections from which we can choose. As online shopping and brick and mortar may seem similar; however, both differ in pricing, convenience and selection.

Online shopping has been a growing phenomenon all over the world especially among countries with well-developed infrastructure with marketing activities over the Internet (Kau, Tang & Ghose, 2003 ). Hawkins, Best & Coney (2001:592) are of the opinion that Internet sales will increase rapidly in years to come.

Online is changing the financial aspects of markets in a crucial manner - and in a manner that does not bode all that well for routine stores

This way of buying through retailers gets to cut down overall cost factors that are simplistic as easy discounted arrangements enacting like lethal target hitters you can with certainty acquire when you see options of buying which are efficiently determined through discounts online to get relevant cuttings come into action and there can be wanted cut priced trading you always revert to when shopping with Missguided.

Department stores Targets, Kohls, and Kmart provides the consumer with a large selection of merchandise for all ages and genders these stores use a multichannel strategy which describes how these corporations incorporate their business’s offline and online channels, this technique is also known as brick and mortar (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012). The marketing scheme is to let the customer decide how they want to make a purchase a product through the store, the website which provides more information about the products, a call can be placed to a customer service representative or forms that are included in catalogs can be filled out and mailed into the store. Online shopping allows for comparison shopping to see which store

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

Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon) is a leading e-commerce company that successfully offers a wide variety of products and services offered through customer facing Websites (reuters.com, n.d.). This global e-commerce giant was born online in 1996 and continues to lead in e-commerce via sales of its own products and sales of third party products in a plethora of categories that caters to the B2B and B2C sales environments. Unlike Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com, Inc. (Barnes & Noble) did not begin as an online e-commerce company. The inception of Barnes & Noble began in 1986 and focused on the retail environment in “content, digital media and educational products” (reuters.com, n.d) with its principal focus on trade books. However, the digital segment of Barnes & Noble, which offers books, magazine, DVD’s, software, and electronics, etc. does compete with Amazon (reuters.com, n.d.). According to Cheeseman (2013), the

Consumers demonstrate different behaviors when shopping online and offline. These differences affect not only the strategy but also how that strategy is finally implemented from an operationally. Because the experiences considered online and offline

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 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.