E Business Application For Fashion Retailer Company - A Case Study On The Iconic: An Essay.

Use of Ecommerce Site

Discuss about the E Business Application for Fashion Retailer Company.

The Iconic, an online sportswear and fashion retailer company of Australia offers fashionable and trendy clothes, accessories and shoes to the customers of Australia. The headquarter of the Iconic is based on Sydney and was launched under Rocket Internet, which is an e-commerce incubator in 2011. With the effective e—business strategies, The Iconic has become the largest fashion retailer company on online in Australia (Theiconic.com.au. 2016). The Iconic possesses a vast stock of more than 50,000 fashion products and 800 brands of both local and international. Although the Iconic enjoys its best position in the fashion retail industry of Australia, still it maintains a perfect start-up like culture and feels in order to motivate its employees in constant manner.

Galliers & Leidner (2014) have mentioned that every start-up planners should take various important things before launching online store and the major part includes to selects the appropriate platform for using the actual facilities of the e-commerce site. Similarly The Iconic has taken help of the business experts and software developers in order to choose the suitable e-commerce site for selling their fashion and sports products in various cities of Australia. According to Cavusgil et al., (2014), the agencies of engine marketing usually suggest the appropriate e-commerce site. However, there are two types of e-commerce platforms including self-hosted and hosted. Hosted e-commerce platforms generally host the store of the clients, whereas, self-hosted also provides the relevant and effective software in order to make the e-commerce site perfect. The management of The Iconic has selected appropriate e-commerce site for their business operation as the website suggests the first interface in between the seller and the consumer. The website of The Ionic is full of adequate and relevant information of the offered products by the company and the consumers can perceive a true and ideal picture of the company. Wu et al., (2012) have suggested that a well-designed website has the best potential to communicate with the targeted and segmented customers of online retailers. There are also resources, which are appropriate to determine the suitable e-commerce platform for the online company. Since five years the concept of e-commerce has been increasing in constant manner across the world in order to attract the new generation, who prefer online shopping experience instead of traditional mode of shopping, such as visiting the outlets in various locations.

Present E Business Applications

The Iconic performs its roles and responsibilities in the Australian fashion retail industry in proper manner. With its present e-business application such as the mobile and web application, The Iconic enjoys the best position in the fashion retail industry of Australia. According to Kacen et al., (2013), e-business applications suggest the information and communication technologies (ICT), which helps an online company to maintain its activities in the market. With the existing e-business application, The Iconic attract the new generation consumers of Australia with employing e-advertising and e-marketing. The e-business application also develops the service efficiency of an online company with the potential incorporation of e-support functions and e-services. The existing e-business application of The Iconic also enhances the scope and possibilities of the reaching the international fashion and sports apparel and accessories. The e-business application of The Iconic increases the basic sales revenue, minimizes the marketing cost of the company and communicates with the consumers of Australia in accessible manner. According to Cheung &Lee (2012), most of the companies in today’s competitive business world prefer e-business just because it saves time of both the consumers and the seller, there is perfect flexibility of the timings for online payment, internet banking is safe and secured with constant software development and it ensures a safe transaction. The Iconic provides an easy delivery process at the doorstep of the consumers in various locations of Australia and New Zealand.

As opined by Shiau & Luo (2012), the challenging part of e-business involves its process of marketing. However, The Iconic employs a perfect marketing strategy with using the social media platform, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snap chat, official online website and blog. Even The Iconic provides advertisements with making attractive YouTube videos in order attract the new generation of Australia and New Zealand. Ha & Stoel (2012) have mentioned that effective and relevant marketing strategies play a significant role in the case of online business. As there is no scope or facilities for the consumers to interact facto face with the sellers, therefore, the online advertisements should include adequate information in order to solve any kind of query of consumers. The Iconic strikes a perfect balance in between the existing marketing strategies. The Iconic also employs email marketing, content marketing and PPC advertising. All these strategies have enough capabilities to create a perfect foundation for the online business of an organization (Fang et al., 2014). As personalization strategy is perfect for the online marketing, therefore, The Iconic spends lump sum money on this particular marketing strategy. The personalization strategy of The Iconic involves every details of the offered products and how they are made in a video mode, this strategy actually reveals the inner business operation of the company.

E-Commerce Marketing Strategies

According to Slack (2015), the major challenges of e-business involves inventory and there is no appropriate established strategies in the supply chain management. The supply chain strategy of The Iconic suggests the reselling process of the manufacturers, the control over the entire process of shipping and packaging, handling the price of products and the dealing volume of products to the consumers. The Iconic provides faster delivery strategy with several distribution points and it also enhances the delivery times. Utz et al., (2012) have stated that being closer to the targeted consumers can actually lead to the freight savings of outbound procedure. The Iconic operates its business operations and functions within a competitive labor market. The liquidation opportunities strategy of The Iconic helps to increase the existing customer base. The measure of market penetration strategy of The Iconic helps this company to work according to the contemporary trend in Australia and New Zealand for attracting new customers and retaining the existing consumers. Roberts & Zahay (2012) have reflected the fact that multichannel retailers should capitalize the basic synergy of several channels in order to meet the exact expectation of the consumers. All the e-commerce supply chain strategies of The Iconic help to avoid the losses and delays in the entire process of shopping to delivering the products to the consumers. As opposed by Wu et al., (2012), there are no establishes supply chain strategies, which companies follow in strict manner for further development of the entire business operation of the company.

According to Slack (2015), the scope and possibilities of e-commerce proceeds at constant growth in a furious pace. However, many consumers believes that online business is well- deigned for openness and at all concerned with the security of the money of customers. The Iconic employs security technologies in their online shopping website in order secure the PIN and password of every customer. The application security of The Iconic minimizes the potential risks while dealing with the online transaction. The Iconic incorporates secure connection in order to make online checkout with the effective use of Secure Sockets Locker (SSL), which requires authentication in order to protect the data for website. The card verification strategy of The Iconic helps to make secured online transaction without exploiting the card verification value (CVV).

Information technology (IT) has made easy the entire business operation of e-business. IT architecture of The Iconic helps the company to reduce the budget for easy success in short period. Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP), the back office and finance department of The Iconic have been improved with the effective use of Information technology (Theiconic.com.au. 2016). Even the IT architecture helps to maintain and enhance the customer relationship management (CRM) in proper manner. The Iconic has employed IT architecture for better customer system and improve the e-business portal platforms with automation system in appropriate manner. The ultimate role of IT architects involves the suitable decision making for CRM.

Although The Iconic enjoys the leading position in the fashion retail industry of Australia and New Zealand, still, it requires few effective recommendations for improving its e-business with using internet technologies.

• The Iconic should reorganize its IT architecture in order to make differences in between the long term and short term goals and contemplate outsourcing.
• The iconic should offer the option of customization with employing modern IT technology.
• The management should ensure that the structure of the online shopping website in easy and accessible manner.
• The Iconic should create a communicative and open environment with employing modern technologies in their online website.

All these above-mentioned recommendations will help The Iconic to retain its present leading position in Australian fashion retail industry in appropriate manner. Even the existing market share will be increasing in gradual manner if the management of The Iconic follows these effective recommendations thoroughly.

References

Cavusgil, S. T., Knight, G., Riesenberger, J. R., Rammal, H. G., & Rose, E. L. (2014). International business. Pearson Australia.

Cheung, C. M., & Lee, M. K. (2012). What drives consumers to spread electronic word of mouth in online consumer-opinion platforms. Decision support systems, 53(1), 218-225.

Fang, Y., Qureshi, I., Sun, H., McCole, P., Ramsey, E., & Lim, K. H. (2014). Trust, Satisfaction, and Online Repurchase Intention: The Moderating Role of Perceived Effectiveness of E-Commerce Institutional Mechanisms. Mis Quarterly, 38(2), 407-427.

Galliers, R. D., & Leidner, D. E. (2014). Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.

Ha, S., & Stoel, L. (2012). Online apparel retailing: roles of e-shopping quality and experiential e-shopping motives. Journal of Service Management,23(2), 197-215.

Kacen, J. J., Hess, J. D., & Chiang, W. Y. K. (2013). Bricks or clicks? Consumer attitudes toward traditional stores and online stores. Global Economics and Management Review, 18(1), 12-21.

Roberts, M. L., & Zahay, D. (2012). Internet marketing: Integrating online and offline strategies. Cengage Learning.

Shiau, W. L., & Luo, M. M. (2012). Factors affecting online group buying intention and satisfaction: A social exchange theory perspective. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(6), 2431-2444.

Slack, N. (2015). Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Theiconic.com.au. (2016) Clothes Online | Shoes Online | THE Iconic. Retrieved 24 September 2016, from https://www.theiconic.com.au/

Utz, S., Kerkhof, P., & van den Bos, J. (2012). Consumers rule: How consumer reviews influence perceived trustworthiness of online stores.Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 11(1), 49-58.

Wu, K. W., Huang, S. Y., Yen, D. C., & Popova, I. (2012). The effect of online privacy policy on consumer privacy concern and trust. Computers in human behavior, 28(3), 889-897.