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Thursday, June 12, 2008

An example of an E-commerce failure and its causes




With the changing trends of globalization and the development of technology, the growth of e-commerce has boomed in the past few years. However, not all companies are success in e-commerce as they are not able to face the challenges in market by the use of Internet.
One of the top 10 dot-com failures of e-commerce is the Pets.com. Pets.com was a short-lived online business that sold pet accessories and supplies directly to consumers over the World Wide Web. It launched in August of 1998 and went into liquidation in November 6, 2000.
One of the causes of the failure of Pets.com is the insufficient budgets. Developing a website is the beginning expenditure of an e-commerce company. Many companies are under budget in their website maintenance and marketing.
Pets.com made significant investments in infrastructure such as their warehousing. These investments cause Pets.com needed a critical mass of customers to break even, which is to cover the cost to maintain their e-commerce. However, the Pets.com management and board realized that they would not be able to raise further capital after the bursting of the dot-com bubble. They forcefully undertook actions to sell the company.
Moreover, the implementation of ineffective business strategies causes the failure of Pets.com in e-commerce too. The company had to undercharge for its shipping costs to attract their customers, which were actually making loss on most of the items they sold.
Besides, the inadequate order fulfillment is one of the causes of failure of Pets.com. Pets.com was never able to give pet owners a persuasive reason to buy supplies online. For example, after customers ordered kitty litter, they had to wait few days to actually get it. If a company does not have stock on hand or readily available to meet customer orders, it will make the customer annoying and lost their trust to the company’s services and product.
Because of these causes, Pets.com went into liquidation in November of 2000. Therefore, in order to avoid the failure of an e-commerce company, strong organizational and effective team management strategies, effective customer relation policies and meeting the demands of its valuable customers are the key elements of the successfulness in e-commerce.

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