Wednesday, February 4, 2009

An example of an E-Commerce failure and its causes

As we know, not all E-Commerce business successful as amazon.com. One of an example of an E-Commerce failure is webvan.com

About Webvan

Webvan was an online “credit and delivery’ grocery business. It was headquartered in Foster City, California, USA, near Silicon Valley. It delivered product to customers’ homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing.

Factors that cause Webvan failure


Types of product

Most of the product sell in Webvan are F&B product like food. Their top seller products are Toblerone Swiss Milk Chocolate, Kellogg’s Bite Size Frosted Mini-Wheats Cinnamon Streusel and so on. Food is a large part of most budgets, even for the folks Webvan targeted. Shopper may also price sensitive on the product where Webvan had to include extra labor cost and shipping cost on the product. So discount of the grocery product, the expire dates and the price of the product are the factor that effect consumer decision whether buy online or buy through retail shop. Consumer may think that if they buy at retail shop they able to look and touch on the product and know the contain, the production date, and the size of the product.


Logistic


It is not easy to convenience all customer at the same time. Scheduling the time to delivery is not easy job for a logistic department of Webvan. If the company want to schedule all the delivery process well where the company able to send to product in time and able to save company cost it take days to complete. So it is a challenge for logistic department to do well. If the company unable to send the product to their customer on time, this will effect the consumer loyalty to the company.

Delivery on the time that the customer needed it

The advantage of Webvan is that they will deliver to your home after you place the order. But the problem is that Webvan unable to completely send to you when you need it now and the delivery cost might be more expensive then the product. Product like fresh vegetable and fruit may no fulfill the consumer need where the customers unable get the goods on time where they need it.

This is on of our group example of a failure E-Commerce business. If you felt you have any opinion or suggestion. Don’t hesitate to post comment.

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