Thursday, June 12, 2008

An example of e-commerce failure and its causes

Pets.com was one of examples out of hundred dot.com businesses that failed. The company was a pure-play Internet business with no bricks and mortar presence and its failure occurred on a large scale, with the businesses burning through hundreds of millions of dollars in just a few years. There were few causes regarding the company failure. From the perspective of market positioning, there was little to distinguish one competitor from the next. In the case of pets.com, its experience proposition was that it would combine the convenience of running to the local supermarket to purchase pet products with the knowledge and advice offered by a visit to the local vet. The company failed to differentiate itself in any substantial way from the other online pet retailers. All of the online pet retailers offered similar products; similar services and similar sounding names (pets.com, petstore.com, petsmart.com).As such, consumers had difficulty telling them apart and thus did not develop any sense of loyalty. They could search for the better price, or just go with a familiar, trusted company such as PETsMART, which already had an established bricks and mortar presence. In addition, the speed of growth played a huge role in the failure of this business as well. If a business grows too quickly, it is more likely to fail. Pets.com grew to 320 employees in just 25 months。Granted, the company was experiencing growing revenues, so the staff increases were necessary. In fact, the businesses were growing so quickly that it may not have been possible for management to make effective decisions on how to manage in the dynamic environment. Besides, Channel management was an important issue in the dot com world. When many of the businesses started, they did not give adequate thought to things such as shipping or inventory control. For example, in the case of pets.com, shipping costs were huge in comparison to the value of the goods being shipped. Therefore, it was very hard for the company to make huge profit and grow heavily. As a conclusion, to be successful, businesses had to do more than get consumers to recognize them. Once consumers identify a product or service provider, they must also be confident once they visit the site. Having a value proposition in place is essential for any business. The most successful businesses were characterized by having consumers who understood the reasons why they wanted to shop there, whether price, convenience, experience or product selection.

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