Established in 1999, Zappos.com has quickly become a leader in online apparel and footwear sales by striving to provide shoppers with the best possible service and selection, with gross merchandise sales exceeding $1 billion annually. Zappos’ company culture delivers happiness. Zappos’ CEO says, “It’s a brand about happiness, whether to customers or employees or even vendors.” Zappos’ zany corporate culture and focus on customer satisfaction has made it both successful and a model for other companies. In 2010, Amazon bought the company for $1.2 billion. Although Hsieh had rejected an offer from Amazon in 2005, he believed that this buyout would be better for the company than management from the current board of directors or an outside …show more content…
Employees receive detailed information about the company’s performance and are encouraged to share information about the company. Zappos believes that employees should develop open and honest relationships with all stakeholders with the hope that this will assist in maintaining the company’s reputation. Until now I discussed Zappos’ background, service systems of customers, relationship with their co-workers. Following step, I will analyze Zappos’ competitive environment.
Next, I discuss about Zappos’ strategies in competitive environment. Many companies struggle to incorporate today’s new business memes. The e-commerce landscape is growing more competitive as the number of entrepreneurs entering the online marketplace is increasing, according to online payment service provider PayPal.
Zappos struggled for its first few years, making sales but not generating a profit. The dot‐com crash forced Zappos to lay off half its staff, but the company recovered. In 2003, the company decided that in order to offer the best customer service, it had to control the whole value chain from order to fulfillment to delivery and began holding its entire inventory. Zappos also started to be recognized for its unique work environment and approach to customer service. The Zappos business model is built around developing long‐term customer relationships. In 2012, Zappos has become the best seller of shoes online ahead of J.C. Penney, Macy’s, Foot Locker by stressing customer
company, by critically assessing the pros and cons associated with Zappos operating on a holacracy structure.
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.
* Representing people with disabilities in their catalogs since 1997, which is rare. This is a strength because it represents all customers of Nordstrom, not leaving out certain groups because of industry ‘norms’. This speaks volumes to all customers that Nordstrom recognizes them as individuals, but also, as O’Connell mentioned in an interview, “people with disabilities represent a significant marketing opportunity with $225 billion in discretionary income… and companies that understand this will have a competitive advantage.” (http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/business/ci_26254983/models-disabilities-star-nordstrom-catalog)
Trader Joe stands by their mission statement as being a neighborhood store and a private label brand. The firm offers organic, locally sourced produce and ingredients, offering a wide variety of fresh items that are hard to find enabling the business to enjoy a distinctive competitive advantage. Additionally, through local sourcing Trader Joe’s continued involvement in local events through food donations, gift baskets and providing in store and online recipes and health guides. Apart from the many strengths of Trader Joe, the most significant is their commitment to quality at lower prices. Trader Joe has worked hard to manage the balance by sourcing directly from their suppliers. The firm states that “every penny we save is every penny our customer saves.” Similarly to WFM, their employees are its most valuable resource they possess, and as such they are treated fairly and trained to provide the first class service to Trader Joe’s customers. Each customer is given
Established over a century ago, Walgreens has since grown into a national corporation with over 8,489 stores (Walgreens Corporation, 2013). Today, they are the first largest drugstore chain in the nation before CVS, Rite Aid, and Wal-Mart. Walgreens serves more than 6.3 million customers daily and fills 784 million prescriptions every year (Walgreens Corporation, 2013). Priding itself on innovation and technology, Walgreens was the first drug store chain to use child resistant prescription containers and the first drugstore chain to use satellite technology to connect its pharmacy systems (Walgreens Corporation, 2013).
Macy’s mission statement establish the importance of concentrate all of their resources in the customers. Reaching customers are essential to the success of a company like Macy’s, and for many years they did a good job. However, for nobody is a secret that Macy’s company is in trouble and that the sales growth has been weakening over the last years. Also, experts consider that things could be worse shortly. Many factors are contributing to this situation, such as the global recession, technologic, socio-cultural trends, political, economic and demographic.
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
Macy’s, America’s leading department store retailer, has a rich history dating back to 1858 when it was started off as a small dry goods store by Rowland Hussey Macy 's. At come that time, no one would have guessed that the store would grow on to become one of the largest department store retailers.
CASE 10: Zappos—They Do It with Humor When Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh was the featured guest on The Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert grilled him about the company's success and customer loyalty. Hsieh replied that it's Zappos's goal to deliver WOW" in every shoe or clothing box. The company is consistently ranked highly as one of Fortune's "Best Companies to Work For Amazon's Jelieoris liked Zappos so much he bought the company. Customers First Zappos's relentless pursuit of the ultimate customer experience is the stuff of legend. The company offers fast shipping at no cost and covers return shipping if you are dissatisfied for any reason at any time. The Zappos brand is less about a particular type of product and more about providing good
He started to invest in Zappos which the concept came from Fred. Zappos was also faced with many issues all the time and they tried to eliminate the issues that Tony talks in Chapter 3. Also, he explains the relationship between the poker game and the business strategies. Although, Zappos was growing, they also confronted with the recession, the dot-com stock market crash, and 9/11. Tony solved the issues by selling his properties. He had recovered the business to have a good revenue again. It was a stressful period that Tony talks in Chapter 4. However, Zappos was still doing well. He backed to focus at customer service. Also, Zappos had used the Brand, Culture, Pipeline strategies for managing the organization in the long-term that he describes in Chapter 5. Tony had learned many mistakes from the past and continued developing the services and the stories. Nevertheless, Zappos sold to Amazon in 2009. Tony details the reason why he walks out the board in Chapter 6. In the last chapter, Tony asks the reader about the goal in life. He also summary the details about Zappos is about delivering happiness to the
Zappos has created a very structural attractive company. There is a lot of room for growth with the recent purchase by Amazon.
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.com, established in 1999, has rapidly become a strong competitor in online apparel and footwear sales. With the original corporate vison of offering the absolute best selection in shoes; the vision has evolved over the past several years to include the goal of being the retailer that “provides the absolute best service online -- not just in shoes, but in any category” (Zappos, 2014). The online retailer stocks millions of reasonably priced footwear products; carrying thousands of hard to find brand named shoes, handbags, apparel and accessories via the company website and 7,000 affiliate partners. In recognizing their rapid success, Zappos credits it to their commitment to the customer, stating,
What types of decisions did the owners have to make? Why you think they had to make those decisions?