Zappos Case Study

Zappos is an online shoes retailer that started its business in the year 1999. Later on the company had expanded its business to include the beauty products, clothing and even the housewares within its leading e-commerce website. This case emphasizes on the customer service department of Zappos Company and initially the business focused only on the drop ship method. Later on the company also increased the variety of the products. The company had also created a bricks and mortar storefront to expand the business and increase the sales of the business.

In order for a firm to create competitive advantage, it needs to create a set of activites that can deliver value to the specific product and services it offers to its customers. To start talking about my life as a “value chain”, I may need to compare it to a specific product”. This is going to take precedence both in my personal life and professional life.

Features and benefits- the features and benefits of these services are that when you shop at sainsburys, due to the helpful and willing staff, it makes you want to shop their again because you feel your

The value chain, made by Michael Porter, is really important to see how a company structure is created. The value chain is constituted by two parts: support activities (firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, procurement) and primary activities (inbound logistic, operations, outbound logistic, marketing and sales, service). (Johnson et al. 2011, p.97-99)

They are more like a big family. At Zappos there are lots of fun activities to get the employees involved, like face painting, wacky parades, and gaming in the lounge on breaks. Employees have the freedom to dress causal and comfortable. The company ensures customer loyalty by closely training and mentoring their team, and at the end of training they offer their employees $3,000 to leave (most of whom do not except the offer after weighing the options). Besides their fun and supportive environment, Zappos offers their employees full health care benefits, free meals, and competitive salaries. Lastly, while many other companies have call centers located outside of the country, (in order to save money) Zappos call center is located in Loss Vegas. Phone calls are not timed or scripted, which gives the employees a chance to interact with the customers on a more personal

Value chain is a set of activities a company performs in order to provide a valuable solution to their customer problem in their market space or industry. The value chain is made up of primary and support activities. Primary activities being research and development, production, marketing and sales and customer service. These are the primary steps that are required to get a product or service to market to solve the customer problems. Some of the secondary steps include company

Zams Consulting has been progressively working on our research on the overall customer service at Applebee’s. We are currently analyzing and gathering secondary research about what good customer service is to have a general idea of what to look for when we are evaluating Applebee’s for the that specific criteria that we learn from our secondary research. We are currently on schedule with our research and our next step is to conduct our primary research Thursday night.

In this particular type of industry it is impossible to offer some “service offers” that other companies may be able to offer. We can’t offer big sales, buy one get one free and other types of promotions that companies follow. The cost of materials keeps rising and in order to keep competitive we do only sell work at a fair price, not like some other double glazing companies where they price very high so that they can appear to offer the customer a one off special offer with a discount by bringing the price down. We like to remain fair at all times.

Zappos has made the online shopping experience very safe and easy. The marketing strategy used by Zappos has to be one of the best one in any market. Zappos took was given to them and turn the focus to the customer experience. The entire idea was to make the shopping experience better so that customers would return. The promotion of a fun and hip culture for the employees is a big reason this strategy is working. Employees are in good moods and so this passes on the customer. The Zappos atmosphere is fun. There are no sales goals for employee because Zappos wants the relationship between the employee and customer to be genuine.

Founded in 1999 by Nick Swinmurn, Zappos.com, initially named ShoeSite.com, has grown from an inventory-less, “drop-ship” shoe sales website that connected customer orders with shoe suppliers to an Internet shoe mega-retailer that recorded a reported $2.1 billion in revenue in

However, by employing the right people, Zappos can shun or reduce the consequences of levering to a self-governing organization, creating a different application route to rule out applicants who are not well-suited with the Holarctic system, would be the idyllic

The threat of new entrants into the online shoe/apparel market is relatively small due to the fact that Zappos is such an established brand and has specialized their business model. It would be far too expensive for a new company to copy the characteristics of Zappos including their next day delivery and large overhead. The fact that Zappos was losing money initially illustrates this difficulty. Another issue that would create a high barrier to entry is Zappos commitment to the consumer through overnight shipping. Zappos stated that the overnight shipping caused them to leave their warehouses open for the entire day. Any other company would

Zappos started out by selling shoes online to become the world’s largest online retailer of shoes. Subsequently, in their quest to boost sales, they moved beyond footwear to become an E-tailer that sells ‘anything and everything’.

Zappos has successfully shaped a one-of-a-kind culture to which it owes its success. While there is not a true “problem” with Zappos.com; the company realizes significant growth potential. Sister company, Amazon.com, recognizing the asset of the renowned customer service Zappos has formed, has approached the Zappos management team with discussions of a potential acquisition.

a. How can the company's value-chain activities be better linked to create value for the