Week 5

BUS7112/ week5

11/30/2019 Comment by Brian Allen: APA date format is Month Day, year - Example: September 26, 2017

Turning the concept of retail into customer experience

Amazon has turned the concept of retail into the customer experience. The company has focused on current technology, where many people prefer to use what they already have to get what they need. The company has considered that low prices and free deliveries of the product should be a secondary objective. The primary goal has been to make it easier for customers to access the products and order them through the internet, applications, and other technologies. These practices have brought into account the concept of customer experience in retail. As a result, customers have to choose the products they would like to get using their devices in the comfort of their homes. Comment by Brian Allen: Correct passive voice (See: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/539/ and https://www.grammarly.com/blog/active-vs-passive-voice/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNO3eDvexnE) Comment by Brian Allen: What do you mean by this? Do you mean it is customer focused? If so, compared to what?I like to think of writing as creating a mental roadmap for your reader. You have to provide every detail and cover every concept which may appear to the reader as a stepping-stone, path, pothole, canyon, or wall. You have to logically navigate them through every concept covered and every potential obstacle to understanding your topic. Missed words, disconnected ideas, or incomplete delivery of ideas are all part of this issue.You must provide citations for anything stated as fact

Turning the concept of retail into customer experience has been a continual disruption for Walmart's practices. Initially, Walmart relied on Every-day low prices, unmatched customer experiences, many locations of stores, and an extensive variety of products. The company maintained to be a powerhouse of retail innovation for years but did not think of taking customer experiences as a factor of concern. However, Amazon came with the concept in mind and provided a wide range of products ranging from books to electronics, to groceries, and many other products depending on the experiences of the consumers in the market.

Amazon has therefore reimaged the retail sector by replacing the mailboxes with locker units. It has signed more than 850,000 contracts with building owners in the United States to install theirs.

The company has allowed its drivers to deliver goods inside the homes of the customers. Besides, the company has permitted its drivers to deliver goods to the specified areas of the customers such as a garage, shed, or even a car. Amazon has developed its fleet of transportation to minimize the complications of handling the packages. Besides, the company has product return systems to handle the products that do not meet customer specifications. The company has also provided its customers with devices to signify the return of certain goods to the firm on the touch of a burton.

Operating both online and offline

Amazon has managed to be the world’s largest online marketing retailer. Despite these enormous achievements, the company has embarked on developing offline shops to increase their customer experiences. In the past few years, the company has established several practices that have taken them back to the brick and motor retail. Operating online was one of its main disruptive technology. However, going offline has become so influential in the sense that it has taken advantage of its competitors’ style by conglomerating it with theirs to improve their marketing techniques. 

Amazon Inc. has stores ready for further disruption. It is doing with bricks-and-motor to increase its usual activity of disrupting the retail sector. Setting up stores has provided the company with the opportunities to set apart its competitors and rivals. The company has seen customer dissatisfaction with the current experiences and has set out to improve it The company has seen consumer experiences to be super-charged and has taken the chance to bring physical stores to them to improve the experiences. Furthermore, the company is not just replicating their retailers. Instead, it is highlighting all the friction points in the journey of customers shopping and removing them as much as possible in their physical stores. The company has opted to challenge the status quo, by seeing a spot for someone into the physical retail market.

Amazon has also noticed that the future of the retail sector is blended and has taken the opportunity to challenge it. The company has seen that not all customers prefer to shop online, and not all love to shop offline. It was noted that very few people buy products exclusively online or offline. To improve this area, the company has decided to marry both worlds. It has given consumers a choice, something that all customers love. These practices have enabled Amazon to give customers all the choices they need in the retail sector.

With the physical stores, Amazon has managed to crack the fashion market. The offline shops have enabled the company to develop the sectors where customers can shop in clothing to capture the attention of customers who prefer to feel the fabric before they buy it. The company has mixed these practices with online experiences to enhance customer satisfaction.

Mixing physical stores with online retail has enabled the company to establish an ecosystem where customers can find everything they need. If the customers are not satisfied with the images and the videos they see online, they are at the liberty to go to stores to observe the products. Besides, once a new customer buys from an Amazon physical shop, they may be tempted to increase their experiences to use other services such as Alexa. To do these, they must be prime members of the company. 

Stores have also enabled the company to offset the increasing shipping costs. These costs are often enormous and are accompanied by significant challenges in the supply chain. Accessing store space has enabled Amazon to reduce shipping costs and enhance return processes. It has brought products closer to customers. The stores are significant pic-up points for customers. 

Immediacy

Amazon has focused on the immediacy with strategic techniques. Customers today, especially those with a yearly prime account can get deliveries almost instantly. The company has established its warehouses in major locations. The company has provided its delivery teams with technologies that permit them to use the fastest routes possible to get to the destined customers. These combinations of human dexterities and technologies have become significant in the almost instant getting orders to the customers (Danneels, 2004). The team of transporters consists of members of Amazon company as well as those from professional shipping organizations. These mixes have also become a significant contributor to the representation of the interest of the company to the customers as well as in providing the most relevant experiences to the customer services required. 

Walmart’s Strategies to Address These Disruptive Innovations at Enterprise, Organizational, And Individual Tiers.

Walmart has always considered retail as one of its strategic pillars. However, Walmart has taken advantage of this to turn retail to customer experiences. To fight this, Walmart needs to use retail as a strategic ecosystem with customers at its center. Walmart must become innovative with this in mind to adapt to the inevitable change and to manage Amazon’s disruptions in the market ecosystem. The practices could be of significant importance since Walmart has a sustained competitive advantage in retail. 

Moreover, Walmart should not focus on these disruptive innovations. Instead, the company should center on newer technologies to disrupt their competitors. For instance, It is not easy for Walmart to adopt online retail within shorter periods to meet all the customer demands and maintain profits. The only solution is to become innovative. As pointed out by Peter Drucker, the greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence itself, but to act with the logic of yesterday. Transformational change is inevitable. 

Walmart also requires to set up independent organizations to pursue disruptive technology. Pursuing these technologies directly will have a twofold consequence to the organization. Firstly, the process of resource allocation will pull away from the efforts to serve current customers. As a result, it is necessary to have a dedicated independent system to perform these practices. The second factor is that it is often difficult to put in place measures that conform to the current operations of the business. For example, matching the size of the organization with the size of the opportunity is often a difficult task. As pointed out by Cristensen & Bower (1996), two-thirds of the organizations that succeeded in pursuing disruptive technologies managed it by using independent organizations. With a substantial amount of resources, and especially with an enormous company such as Walmart, setting up an independent organization would be the best way to pursue these disruptive technologies.  

Therefore, at the retail, management, and individual levels, Walmart requires to put in place independent setups to fight disruptive innovation from its competitors. It requires to put in place disruptive innovation techniques in these independent setups to secure competitive advantage. The company requires, for instance, to go online in its trade, but should perform the task independently. 

Comment by Brian Allen: References need to be corrected to meet APA standard. They must be in proper APA format and they must be in alphabetical order. (See https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/06/) or (http://www.library.kent.edu/files/APACheatSheet.pdf)

References

Danneels, E. (2004). Disruptive technology reconsidered: A critique and research agenda. Journal of product innovation management, 21(4), 246-258.

J. Cowden, B., & S. Alhorr, H. (2013). Disruptive innovation in multinational enterprises. Multinational Business Review, 21(4), 358-371.

Kumaraswamy, A., Garud, R., & Ansari, S. (2018). Perspectives on disruptive innovations. Journal of Management Studies, 55(7), 1025-1042.

Nagy, D., Schuessler, J., & Dubinsky, A. (2016). Defining and identifying disruptive innovations. Industrial Marketing Management, 57, 119-126.