Overview of the Company
Individual Assignment Process Read the article “The future of the retail store”. Select a retail store to be the focus of this assignment. Briefly describe the current operation of this store. You will search in the peer reviewed recent journal articles in ProQuest to find at least two articles relevant to the assignment.
In the contemporary world of business-oriented markets, a majority of the organizations are implementing effective strategies for overall and sustainable development. Due to rise in globalization and privatization, business operations have become more competent in nature. Customer attraction and retention are explored as a major problem for the functioning business in the existing times. Therefore, implications of internet technology are incorporated by companies to enhance the factor of accessibility and contact with the customers. In the simple context, in order to gain more business opportunities and market possession, companies start implementing internet practices to business models. This further helps in ornamenting convenience for the company by availing things at a distance of single click (Laudon and Traver, 2013).
Considering the following relations, this report is undertaken to present an enlightening discussion about the e-commerce practices that are adopted by the organizations. In order to validate the aim and objectives of this report, a comprehensive discussion about David Jones, which is an Australian department store, is considered in the study. The research report will present descriptive information about the operational processes of the company. Along with this, it will also explore the benefits and challenges of implementing e-commerce business practices to David Jones. Furthermore, some recommendations will also be proposed for the company to information technology challenges.
David Jones Limited is an Australian departmental owned since the year 2014 by a South African retail group known as Woolworths Holdings Limited. In 1838, David Jones was founded by Mr. David Jones after his immigration to Australia. He was a Welsh merchant and future politician at the time. David Jones is registered as the oldest departmental store in the world, which is still functional under its original name. In the present times, David Jones has expanded to a great extent by owning 35 stores and 2 warehouse outlets. The foremost orientation behind David Jones Limited was to provide the best quality and exclusive everyday need stock for mankind. Gradually, with the passage of time, David Jones retired from the business and handled the management to his business partners (David Jones, 2018).
Contemporary Operational Practices of David Jones
The first parental store of David Jones was situated in front of the General Post Office, on the main artery of the new town. Since starting, the company got a prosperous response from the Sydney gentry as well as the country settlers to buy products such as fabrics, silks, cotton, and ginghams. After the retirement of Mr. Jones, the store was gravely affected and the assets were assigned to the trustees. Afterward, Jones returned back out of retirement, took loans and worked hard with his son Edward Lloyd Jones to regain the store’s market value and business opportunities. His son traveled around the world in order to bring effective practices of retailing, which included the concept of “departmental store” from European countries (David Jones, 2018).
Since 1838, the business operations of the market have changed to a great extent; still, David Jones made impending efforts to justify its commitment of providing world-class services along with loyalty program and brand innovation for the customers. With the preliminary of the decade, David Jones entered the Western Australian market by presenting David Jones Shareholder Rewards Program and new website of the company. Appointment of brand ambassadors from the Australian celebrity market potentially facilitated David Jones in establishing the brand connection with the Australian customers. Considerations of the company laid especially emphasize over the attributes of store service and visual merchandising. As a result, at Adelaide Central Plaza, the reconstructed store was awarded the prestigious international award for being the best newly completed store in the world (David Jones, 2018).
Moreover, in present times, the company also eased the in-store services like Personal Shopping and Bridal on Seven at Elizabeth Street by investing a large sum of money. In addition to this, the functionalities of the company are also aligned to establish its digital presence and strategic partnerships in the market. The future objectives of the company are further aimed to get directed as an Omni Channel Retailer of the emerging market. In the year 2013, David Jones achieved a great milestone of successfully completing 175 years in the retailing business. The stores and business of the company are still functional under its original name and parental associations. The market acceptance of the company rose to such extent that it is now considered as a synonym for style and progress (David Jones, 2018).
In order to deal with the competitiveness of the contemporary business-oriented market, David Jones incorporated the practices of online business. The foremost rationale behind the following implementation is to enhance the accessibility and market possession by gaining better and profitable business opportunities from all around the world. The three-point strategy implemented by the David Jones facilitated the company by providing a 40% write-down profits. Out of the three, development of an e-commerce store is considered as the most significant and innovative element of the strategy. The development, charge, and maintenance of the online store were outsourced to Mondo Digital. The orientation of the company has now transferred from traditional marketing to online shopping in order to capitalize on the flourishing online market (Pickernell, et al. 2013).
Implementation of the E-Business Model to David Jones
Even, Adriane McDermott, the general manager for David Jones’ digital marketing also admitted the association of Omni-channel strategy to provide world-class facilities for browsing and shopping brand’s portfolio. There is no denying the fact that David Jones has taken a long time to implement the following business strategy, which could have added to the profit ratios of the company if implemented earlier. Being taken into e-commerce business by David Jones is an influential indication towards the popularity of online shopping. It helped the company in gaining fundamental business opportunity in the modern society. Overall, incorporation of e-commerce business practices by organizations such as David Jones is a considerable action to justify the advancement of online business over the traditional business in the modern scenario (Jones, et al. 2011).
E-Commerce Business can be considered as a large and complex term in itself due to its association with diverse business entities of the market. The classification of the following business type is further made in the mode of operations of business policies. For instance, Business-to-Business (B2B) is considered as the most commonly known strategy. In it, maximum transactions are made through electronic means for dealing in goods and services. This practice is usually integrated by the companies having conventional producers, wholesalers, and retailers. Afterward, Business-to-Consumer (B2C) is also a crucial business strategy model. In it, the end connections are made between the business and the end customer. Such models are used generally in retail online business (Zott, Amit, and Massa, 2011).
Another online business strategy, which can be implemented, is Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C), in which a third party acts as a mediator in making the deal of one consumer with another. It is usually accommodating for sites, where used items are sold and purchased. In addition to this, Consumer-to-Business (C2B) is also a potential strategy, which is self-explanatory in itself. Here, consumers directly contact business entities to deal for products or services. Furthermore, in Business-to-Administration (B2A) model, e-commerce transactions are processed to make dealings between public administration and companies. Some potential examples of B2A are businesses such as legal documentation, employment services, and fiscal measures. Besides, Consumer-to-Administration (C2A) is a model operational between individuals and administration for businesses such as distance learning, data sharing tax filling and many more (Teece, 2010).
Considering all the relevant aspects of David Jones, it is explored that the organization faces some crucial information technology challenges on adopting E-Business practices. For instance, generation of properly targeted traffic over the website is an imperative factor for the company. Therefore, the accomplishment of various operations such as SEO, Social media, retargeting and PPC are undertaken by David Jones. Along with this, evaluation of correct product to sell at the portal is also a predicament for David Jones as it justifies the interest and allegiance of the customers. Moreover, capturing of quality leads from the generated traffic is also a crucial challenge for the organizations of contemporary scenario. Despite having significant traffic on the online store, conversion rates of quality leads varies from 1% to 3%, resulting in depletion of the marketing efforts of the company (Galliers and Leidner, 2014).
Evaluation and Application of Various E-Commerce Business Strategy Models
Besides, another challenge, which influences the overall functionality of David Jones, is fostering the ideal projection as it becomes sterile to have a long list of emails without any association and engagement with the customers. Along with this, firm actions to renovate shoppers to paying customers for the marketing campaign of David Jones could help in driving quality traffic and lead conversion. Furthermore, retaining of existing and loyal customers is also a critical challenge for the company because the attraction of new customers is an expensive as compared to retain existing customers. In addition to this, future prospects are also explored as a considerable dispute for David Jones, which can be overcome by implementing effective operational practices to gain overall and sustainable development of the company (Turban, et al. 2008).
In order to overcome the information technology and e-business issues, David Jones is proposed with some potential recommendations, which are discussed below:
- In order to facilitate the government with better shopping experiences, David Jones is recommended to micro-target on the online shoppers. It will enhance the credibility and customer engagement with the organization (Maswera, Edwards and Dawson, 2009).
- David Jones is further suggested to develop influential content to enhance the factor of stickiness between the customer and the company. For instance, Amazon facilitates the customers to share their opinions about books and various. This will help in advancing customer obligations for David Jones like Amazon (Liang and Turban, 2011).
- In order to enhance the customer’s shopping experience, the company is advised to improvise the overall browsing experience by promoting the incorporation of target segments search (Huang and Benyoucef, 2013).
- Furthermore, David Jones is also directed to integrate across various channels because integration of multi-channel offerings will help the company in gaining the benefits of brand consistency among the customers (Hsiao, et al. 2010).
- The company can also expand the business practices simply by investing in mobiles. Generation of an effective mobile platform for David Jones will assist the company in overall and sustainable business development as the mobile business is growing at the rate of 130 percent annually (Cenfetelli, Benbasat, and Al-Natour, 2008).
- In addition to this, another recommendation for David Jones is to bypass the involvement of middlemen. Such implications will facilitate the company as well as its customers in cost relations (Hsu, Chuan-Chuan Lin and Chiang, 2013).
Conclusion
Considering the aforementioned arguments and discussions, it can be inferred that due to rise in competition and globalization of business markets, e-business has become the latest trend. The foremost reason behind such implications is its contribution to enhancing the overall accessibility, customer assistance support. In addition to this, it also facilitates the organization in presenting a wide range of products and services for potential customers in the virtual world. Considering the following aspects, this report is considered to discuss all the relevant attributes of e-commerce business. In order to justify the purpose of this report, business practices of David Jones, which is an Australian upper market departmental store, is also involved in this study.
The report has crucially analyzed the current operational practices of David Jones in the retail business. Furthermore, the discussion has also emphasized the implementation and evaluation of e-business model to the functionality of David Jones. The auxiliary discussions have also explored some potential IT challenges that the organization might fail after e-business model Implementation. On the basis of that, some potential recommendations are proposed for David Jones to overcome the upcoming challenges. Overall, it can be concluded that this report has crucially analyzed the future of David Jones by aligning it to the latest e-business model strategy
References
Cenfetelli, R.T., Benbasat, I. and Al-Natour, S., 2008. Addressing the what and how of online services: Positioning supporting-services functionality and service quality for business-to-consumer success. Information Systems Research, 19(2), pp.161-181.
David Jones. 2018. THE STORY OF DAVID JONES. (Online). Available at: https://www.davidjones.com/about-us/the-story-of-david-jones [Accesed on 20 May 2018].
Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
Hsiao, K.L., Chuan-Chuan Lin, J., Wang, X.Y., Lu, H.P. and Yu, H., 2010. Antecedents and consequences of trust in online product recommendations: An empirical study in social shopping. Online Information Review, 34(6), pp.935-953.
Hsu, C.L., Chuan-Chuan Lin, J. and Chiang, H.S., 2013. The effects of blogger recommendations on customers’ online shopping intentions. Internet Research, 23(1), pp.69-88.
Huang, Z. and Benyoucef, M., 2013. From e-commerce to social commerce: A close look at design features. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12(4), pp.246-259.
Jones, P., Packham, G., Beynon-Davies, P. and Pickernell, D., 2011. False promises: e-business deployment in Wales’ SME community. Journal of Systems and Information Technology, 13(2), pp.163-178.
Laudon, K.C. and Traver, C.G., 2013. E-commerce. Pearson.
Liang, T.P. and Turban, E., 2011. Introduction to the special issue social commerce: a research framework for social commerce. International Journal of electronic commerce, 16(2), pp.5-14.
Maswera, T., Edwards, J. and Dawson, R., 2009. Recommendations for e-commerce systems in the tourism industry of sub-Saharan Africa. Telematics and Informatics, 26(1), pp.12-19.
Pickernell, D., Jones, P., Packham, G., Thomas, B., White, G. and Willis, R., 2013. E-commerce trading activity and the SME sector: an FSB perspective. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 20(4), pp.866-888.
Teece, D.J., 2010. Business models, business strategy and innovation. Long range planning, 43(2-3), pp.172-194.
Turban, E., Leidner, D., McLean, E. and Wetherbe, J., 2008. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR MANAGEMENT, (With CD). John Wiley & Sons.
Zott, C., Amit, R. and Massa, L., 2011. The business model: recent developments and future research. Journal of management, 37(4), pp.1019-1042.
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