E-commerce strategy of retailer companies

Background:

  1. The change of the market environment for retailer companies. Market share of e-business is increasing and the shopping behavior of customers is changing, which shows more and more people would like to use Internet shopping.
  2. The competition among the traditional retailers is getting more serious. Since the multi-national retailers expand all over the world, the competition among them is not just limited in their domestic markets. For example, in Chinese market, the competition is among the US retailers (e.g. Wal-Mart), French retailer (e.g. Carrefour), Korean retailers (e.g. Lotte Mart, E-mart), other countries’ retailers and Chinese domestic retailers.
  3. Most tradition retailers have implemented the Internet strategy to start their on-line shopping business. [1] Jesse W.J. Weltevredena, Ron A. Boschmab, (2008)

Literature review:

My plan for researching the relevant literature will be focused on several perspectives:

  1. The opportunities of e-commerce enable companies to gain operational efficiency, personalization, and information based products and services. The benefit brought through e-commerce is the driver for companies to adopt e-commerce strategy. This action also will have influence on the existing organization structure of companyies. [2] Kuo-chungChanga, Joyce Jacksona, Varun Grover, (2003)
  2. The use of e-commerce technology strategy will impact the retailers’ performance and the inherent complexity of collaboration. Andthe relationship between the e-business strategy and the organization structure
  3. Through adoption of e-business strategy, technologies might support customer integration and supplier integration in the supply chain, which in turn might impact operating performance. [3] SarvDevaraj, Lee Krajewski, Jerry C. Wei, (2007)
  4. Depending on the value creating strategy of e-commerce companies, I will research how to utilize the retailers’ advantages to make the e-commerce platform more efficient in creating value after its adoption of e-commerce strategy. [4] CHRISTOPH ZOTT, RAPHAEL AMIT, JON DONLEVY, (2000)As well as, the e-commerce system will benefit the existing supply chain of traditional retailers, including improvement of the information management system, suppliers and customers management system, inventory reduction and so on.
  5. The on-line and off-line image will positively impact the customers’ online purchasing intention and behavior. This point is the most advantage of traditional off-line retailers to enter B2C e-business comparing with pure Internet shopping companies. Based on the existing images of retailers, their Internet shopping business will attract quite amount of Internet shopping customers. [5]TibertVerhagen, Willemijn van Dolen, (2009)
  6. Before the retailer company adopt the e-commerce strategy, it should analysis the local market characters and features so as to decide whether it is fit, as well as analysis its situation, including its multi-channel management capability, integration capability and expectation for the e-commerce strategy. And, the difficulties and complex of integrating an e-commerce channel should be under the control of the retailers.

Hypotheses & Expected results:

  1. E-commerce strategy will improve the retailers’ supply chain management capabilities and efficiency
  2. E-commerce strategy will broaden retailers’ suppliers and customers network, reduce the inventory levels, so improve their value-creating ability.
  3. E-commerce strategy will magnify the traditional retailers’ market and service advantages over pure e-commerce companies.
  4. E-commerce strategy will increase the retailers’ technology application capability and information processing ability.

Future research questions:

  1. Is it necessary for a traditional retailer to use the Internet strategy?
  2. If the Internet strategy is necessary, what kind of strategy should be applied?

(1)Acquire a on-line shopping website;

(2)Design and make a website;

(3)Cooperate with famous online shopping companies (e.g. Amazon.com etc.) and open on-line store in the existing platform.

  1. How to integrate the Internet strategy into the company’s existing supply chain?

Reference:

  1. Jesse W.J. Weltevredena, Ron A. Boschmab, (2008), Internet strategies and performance of Dutch retailers, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 15 (2008) 163–178
  2. Kuo-chungChanga, Joyce Jacksona, Varun Grover, (2003), E-commerce and corporate strategy: an executive perspective, Information & Management 40 (2003) 663–675
  3. SarvDevaraj, Lee Krajewski, Jerry C. Wei, (2007), Impact of e-Business technologies on operational performance: the role of production information integration in the supply chain, Journal of Operations Management 25 (2007) 1199–1216
  4. CHRISTOPH ZOTT, RAPHAEL AMIT, JON DONLEVY, (2000), Strategies for value creation in e-commerce-- best practice in Europe, European Management Journal Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 463–475, 2000
  5. TibertVerhagen, Willemijn van Dolen, (2009), Online purchase intentions: A multi-channel store image perspective Information & Management 46 (2009) 77–82
  6. Sungjoo Lee, Yongtae Park, (2009), The classification and strategic management of services in e-commerce: Development of service taxonomy based on customer perception, Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 9618–9624

Review:

First of all, you need to clarify what is “e-commerce strategy”. In order to measure the effect of e-commerce strategy on something else, you need to first establish the concept of e-commerce strategy – what it is, what are the components of it, etc. Defining “strategy” is not easy thing to do because it can be planning only or something other than mere planning – implementation. In your paper, you should make sure whether e-commerce strategy is just planning stage, or when it is actually implemented. There will be numerous issues and problems involved when you define the strategy as planning AND implementation.

I think in this paper, you’d better develop the measurement for your study – not just the literature review and concept development. That way, your concepts will be clearer to understand, and the study will be more practical and feasible to pursue further.