Collected Musings from Bricks and Mortar to E-commerce

By John Shenton

Retail selling has been evolving since early man developed the barter system. We just need to adjust our thinking as regards implementation of a retail environment on a web site and the subsequent integration of a shopping cart.

Online, the primary merchandising challenge is to attract visitors. To do this, e-tailers typically seek to build brand awareness through advertising.

Strong brands attract customers, but to connect with them and keep them as long-term customers, on-line retailers must merchandise their products and services more effectively.

Today's customer has many choices when it comes to making a purchasing decision. The merchandise selection by itself, although important, is seldom the primary reason for the customer shopping on your web site. The challenge then is to create and maintain an inviting atmosphere that will encourage the visitor to make a purchasing decision.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Shenton
• Release date: May 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201629946

John Shenton

John Shenton was born in Birmingham, England and grew up in postwar England. He spent several years as a Radio Officer onboard a variety of vessels sailing to the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and South China seas. With degrees and a background in electronics and computers he has lived and worked within the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and Canada. While doing so, he established numerous trading relationships in Japan, Korea, the USA, China and other countries. He has been retired for some time now living in Montréal Canada enjoying golfing, sailing and many other things automotive.

Book preview

Collected Musings from Bricks and Mortar to E-commerce

John Shenton

Prologue

RETAIL SELLING HAS been evolving since early man developed the barter system. We just need to adjust our thinking as regards implementation of a retail environment on a web site and the subsequent integration of a shopping cart.

Online, the primary merchandising challenge is to attract visitors. To do this, e-tailers typically seek to build brand awareness through advertising.

Strong brands attract customers, but to connect with them and keep them as long-term customers, on-line retailers must merchandise their products and services more effectively.

Today's customer has many choices when it comes to making a purchasing decision. The merchandise selection by itself, although important, is seldom the primary reason for the customer shopping on your web site. The challenge then is to create and maintain an inviting atmosphere that will encourage the visitor to make a purchasing decision.

The content of this book is from a collection of my original articles that were first published as a monthly series by the Montreal Gazette in 2002/3. They include some updated references as we are now in 2021, but the original philosophies are still relevant today!

Organizing for eBusiness

ARE YOU ORGANIZED FOR eBusiness?

Our informal survey says, Possibly not. In fact, many organizations throw up an expensive web site using all the latest ‘glitter’ and find it a generally unsatisfying experience. Apart from the technical vs. sales and marketing issues of the website itself many organizations both in terms of appropriate organizational behaviors as well as of effective organizational designs has been sadly neglected by many established retailers.

You may have a business site with dedicated Web staff, yet it is poorly integrated within your parent organization and tasked with ill-defined roles. A simple question needs to be asked. Do you have a central Internet group (CIG) directed by a chief Web officer and composed of dedicated staff for each business function? If not, then depending upon your organizations size and abilities you need to implement a CIG or outsource those functions.

Typically, many conventional retailers have acquired organizational habits that are not well aligned to the needs of eCommerce. It should be noted that four undesirable traits or behaviors found in many organizations must be guarded against. You might find that increasing complexity in your company has resulted in inflexibility and slow decision-making processes. There is also a tendency towards internal conflict and stratification, as well as a leadership that would tend to emphasize capital investment as a solution to all problems. Finally, the movement towards centralized control, which characterizes a typical consumer goods business, will carry with it limited co-ordination among your departments and divisions resulting in a weakened sense of market trends and increased dissatisfaction.

These features are in direct conflict with what you should know about the cultural characteristics of pure successful eBusinesses. An eBusiness is predominantly a flat organization with quick decision making, where risk taking is encouraged and failure is merely education. Employees tend to work long hours at the office by choice and are very self-disciplined. Typically, such companies use guiding principles rather than procedures and tend to lead by example.

When these two types of cultural environment are brought together, unexpected and perhaps dysfunctional behaviors must be expected to emerge.

Given the cultural and organizational differences between new and old economy businesses, the way in which you as an established retailer should set up and manage Internet operations is therefore extremely important. One factor to consider is that small businesses are more flexible organizationally. You should consider that eCommerce has provided greater e-quality for smaller businesses in relation to their larger competitors.

You will need an increased willingness to seek appropriate alliances and partnerships, plus consider organizational designs, company spin-offs, etc., that will provide convergence to the integrated business model required to overcome these mismatches in culture and outlook.

The many advantages derived from the Internet must be exploited both within and between existing sectors of your bricks and mortar business. With the ways in which networked organizations are evolving, it should be realized that only those retaining an Internet culture in a parallel or centralized Internet group (CIG) style of operation closely identified with the eCommerce aspects of a business’s overall objectives will be successful.

Reorganize for A Balanced eBusiness

Effective e-business strategy

REORGANIZING YOUR ‘BRICKS and mortar’ business to survive or improve sales and profits can be beneficial or disastrous according to the organizational balance and make-up of the planning team. Also, as most businesses have already discovered, the journey into adding effective e-business isn’t without its challenges and hard work. Automating and reengineering business processes can require equal amounts of innovative thinking and technology skills. Teaching customers and employees to use new systems effectively often demands patience and persistence.

But these tasks pale in comparison with the difficult process of linking an organization’s various systems such as commerce (sales), procurement, manufacturing, fulfillment, payables, receivable and more, into a seamless e-business environment.

At issue is the fact that all too often, companies wind up applying the same strategies they’ve used in the brick-and-mortar world to create islands of automation in the click-and-mortar world by creating the same set of problems that have plagued reorganization and enterprise application development since the advent of the PC.

We are all aware that in a typical organization there are four major personnel groups, namely in order of importance; sales and marketing; manufacturing/fulfillment; accounting