Below you will find selected stories of stories of how companies have dealt with or are dealing with the issues that we have described in this analysis.
Amazon
The most famous example of an internet business is Amazon.com. Amazon is an intermediary whose role was made possible by the World Wide Web. What they do could not be done in the physical world, all the way down to their affiliates program. Not only is Amazon becoming an intermediary in the book business, and thus, threatening some more traditional book players, they set it up so that you or I can become an intermediary through Amazon by becoming an affiliate. An affiliate can suggest a book on their own web site and when the surfer pushes the "I want it" button, they are taken to Amazon.com to buy the book. The affiliate gets 6 percent of the sale.
What’s happened is we’ve created a situation no only where Amazon is intermediating itself into the process, and thus displacing, in theory, a transaction that might otherwise go through a bookstore. But they are doing it in a way that, if you want to be an intermediary on top of them, you can.
Starbucks
Starbucks.com The Green Machine finally pulled back some of the curtains hiding its secret Net strategy, yet its stock was still hammered. Apparently Wall Street interpreted the online overture as desperation in the face of a subpar profit report, according to Newsweek's David Kaplan. Starbucks honcho Howard Schultz tried to sugarcoat the earnings news with fancy Net speak, but investors weren't buying. "Mr. Starbucks had the unwanted distinction of actually making the Internet seem financially unappealing," wrote Kaplan. "In an age where every company wants to dot.com itself and cash in, Starbucks had managed to perform reverse alchemy." So what tricks do Starbucks execs have up their sleeves? Schultz hyped his site as "the premier lifestyle portal on the Internet." But Kaplan called it "an amalgam of storefronts at which to buy not just overpriced coffee, but overpriced kitchenware, home furnishings and gourmet food." Ouch - better make that a decaf.
Babbage's Etc.,
The gaming-software retailer that
is scrambling to secure Net real estate before the holiday shopping season.
Although late to the, uh, game, the hopes for Babbage's overhauled Web site
rest on its ability to leverage offline stores and drive online traffic, according
to Business Week's Stefani Eads. This goes against conventional retailer wisdom,
which fears the cannibalization of real-world sales. Babbage's will let customers
pick up, return or exchange their online orders in retail stores and will guarantee
delivery by the same day games arrive at the stores. Synchronizing the online
and offline worlds is easier said than done, and many retailers are saying more
than doing, said Eads. In the meantime, others will surely be watching how Babbage's
online game plays out.
| DRASTIC | Home | Navigator | <Previous in Thread | Next in Thread> |