Zappos Case Study

Retail super-giant Wal-Mart has fought its way to becoming the world's largest company. Wal-Mart’s legendary supply chain technology has allowed them to break the three-day barrier that some economists in the eighties felt that it was unbreakable. In other words, Wal-Mart is often able to replenish items on the Wal-Mart shelf in less than three days – not from the central warehouse to the shelf, but from the manufacturer to the shelf. With quick and reliable 2-day turn around, Wal-Mart is able to maintain lower levels of inventory and still meet customer demand. These lower inventory levels result in either a reduced floor plan with lower carrying costs and lower interest expense – or a greater diversity of products on the store shelves.

Walmart’s approach means frequent, informal cooperation among stores, distribution centres and suppliers and less centralized control. The company’s supply chain allowed consumers to effectively pull merchandise to stores rather than having the company push goods onto shelves by tracking customer purchases and demand. Through the use of universal product codes, implementation of Retail links at the store, use of RFIDs and smart tags, suppliers and manufacturers within the supply chain synchronize their demand forecaste under a collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment scheme, and every link in the chain was connected through technology that includes a central database, store-level point-of-sale systems, and a satellite network. As per report, there was a 16% reduction in out-of-stocks with the use of RFIDs and pointed out that the products using an electronic product code were replenished three times as fast as items that only used bar code technology. These strategies have made Walmart to be the dominant force over other competitors with information and technology helping its supply chain strategy attain greater

Also, Amazon has emphasized on building “several distribution centers around the world to hasten deliveries”(Hof and Himelstein, 1999). Coupled with its software it provides a “laser-like focus on the buying experience”(IT Business Edge, 2012). Such a system and service is what draws customers towards Amazon and subsequently retains them.

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.

The two supply chains of Walmart and Amazon are different from each other and are efficient at their own perspectives. Both the supply chains are highly efficient in reaching out the customers in different ways. Walmart’s supply chain is completely based on store based retailing whereas Amazon’s supply chain is based on online retailing. The various methods followed by Walmart in its supply chain are vendor management inventory, cross-docking and central warehousing. Amazon acts as a retailer, as a third party and as an agent in supply chain management while selling various products through online.

Supply chain innovations should ensure on-shelf availability at retail outlets, improving collaboration between vendors and retailers, translating supply chain costs to product pricing, lean inventory and real time replenishment. Wal-Mart should ensure that process differentiation to determine the right method of moving products with varying demand characteristics (Akehurst, C., & Alexander, N. (1995)

It provides a structure to capture the linkage of organizational activities that create value for the customer and profit for the organisation. It is particularly useful to get across the notion that operations and the other activities must work cross functionally for optimal organization performance(Chase et al. 2007).

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

Zappos has created a very structural attractive company. There is a lot of room for growth with the recent purchase by Amazon.

The Spanish retail chain Zara has unique supply chain management practices that enable it to gain a competitive advantage over other fashion retailers in the industry. Zara’s rapid response time enables the firm to quickly respond to changing fashions while deliberately under producing products. This strategy, which is supported by competencies in logistic management, design and information systems, allows the company to maintain less inventory and higher profit margins and is a key factor to Zara’s success. The firm should continue to add value by seeking new opportunities to expand in the retail market and maintain their sustainable growth.

An effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program can be used to identify, retain, satisfy and obtain customers by using technology to optimize strategies for understanding customers’ needs to manage business interactions with current, former, and prospective customers. Additionally, CRM also enables companies to maximize internal, external, marketing and customer service operations to better address the needs of the customer building a better relationship with customers that a more profitable. (Ahmad & Buttle, 2001)

Walmart is equally ranked among the highly valuable companies, in terms of market value, as well as the biggest grocery retailer where it generates more than 51% of its sales from the grocery business. This paper explores Walmart’s operation management with regard to supply chain characteristics, global business operations, production processes, the company commitment to quality and excellence, inventory methodologies, operational planning and movement towards lean processes (Massengill, 2013).

An effective supply chain strategy makes the company is able to respond high level of responsiveness. Amazon balances between cost of distributions

Today, customer relationship management is very important to the business world. Most of the companies established a department and the programs to manage their relationship with the customers. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a business strategy which designed to help a company to understand and look forward to the needs of its potential and current customers (Anderson & Stang, 2000). Customer data is being collected in several different areas of the company, stored in a central database, analyzed, and distributed to key points (Anderson & Stang, 2000).The business world once was “product-centric”, the companies just provided what they could produce. However, it is now become “customer-centric”, they provide products and service

Another problem that Zara’s information system is facing is that it is not sustainable in an ecological way. Indeed, the amount of shipping required by the actual centralized business model is already massive and it is expected to grow exponentially with the participation of the booming Asian economies. Such a model is not complying with the current ecological trends and reforms. For instance, the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI), a group of manufacturers and retailers working together to simplify and promote global commerce has lately been working on the elaboration of the 2016 Future supply chain design. Roland Dachs and Xavier Derycke, members of the GCI Future Supply Chain Work Team, announced in a report “In the future, the (supply chain)