A friend of mine needs large quantities of certain things for his business. He walked into a well-known, high-end, gourmet food store (that will remain nameless) with a list of things he needed by the box or by the case. He handed it to an employee, we’ll call her “Linda” (Names have been changed in this story to protect the guilty) who promised to give him a call when she had rounded up the items for his order.
Our friend waited a few days, then called the store.
“Linda” wasn’t working that day, and no one else seemed to know anything about what had happened to her notes or whether or not the items were available. Our friend went through the list once again, this time on the phone, with a different employee. We’ll call him “Ralph.”
The next day, our friend got two separate calls with questions about his order, one from Linda, one from Ralph. Apparently they had not talked with each other and were duplicating effort.
Eventually, our friend did get most of his shopping list taken care of. But he resolved to find another supplier for these items, where he can order online and track the progress of his order without multiple trips and phone calls.
In other words, our friend has good reason to prefer to do business with a company that has a good ecommerce site. When he visits the website of his former favorite well-known, high end gourmet grocery store, he is surprised to find that he can’t place orders for merchandise. The site is simply an online brochure with a few nice pictures and a few paragraphs about the store, including locations, hours, and a phone number. As if he wanted to call or visit yet again!
So, why do so few retailers offer the ability to order products online, when so many consumers demand it?
There are three reasons that we hear all the time.
- They think that the system they currently have is adequate for their needs.
- They think it would be too expensive to implement an eCommerce system.
- They think an eCommerce system would be a nightmare to implement.
We’ll be exploring each of these reasons in future articles on this blog!
We solve problems with the Supply Chain Management and e-commerce by providing high-quality software and service.
