Many company uses the website as well as outlets and catalogs as ways of reselling their products right to the customers. In the beginnings since it offers founded in 1963 in Chicago, Lands' End's website offered only limited products, however by enough time the site offers every Lands' End products such as clothes if they are sports or uniforms for girls, men and children, suitcases, overstocks, shoes and furniture. As of recent, the company has had success using its "Custom Clothing" brand. The ordering process is not sophisticated through the company's web site; a customer would answer a variety of simple questions regarding his or her body type and style choices in order to produce the "perfect" shirt or shorts. The order is refined through a sophisticated technology system, which transmits the appropriate information to the respective places. Lands' End functions on the way that tries to attain the best products for the customer. As a result, customers have discovered to expect a high degree of service at all times; from the beginning of the order, to receiving insight, to speedy delivery, and further follow-up when necessary. It really is increasingly becoming greater every year as well as making itself known much more on the internet as well. However, catalogs do and probably will for the others with their lives continue being the first in their marketing strategies; although it costs less when they bring customers to its data file through e-commerce. Also the business is now also selling its products at Sears stores; the majority of their sales come from of their products being sold at Sears stores because by the fall of 2003, the company lines were to be accessible in every Sears' full series stores. Sears Roebuck acquired Lands' Result in 2002 they were bought by Kmart Holdings which happens to be Sears Holdings.
Key issues:
It faces some troubles in increasing its industry; Lands' End sensed a growing desire for enhancing and growing its marketing strategies, multi-channel marketing campaigns, and a shifting management focus from product-centric ( customization ) to customer-centric strategies. Their objective was to increase customer commitment with the objective of increasing income. So, the have some issues or obstacles in maintain their competitive benefit in its industry regarding its product category and price. For example, the prevailing and new rivals like Amazon and Sears could threaten its brand' name and position in software industry and the appropriate use from it to preserve its competitive of benefits in the light of up coming new solutions and trends.
Analysis and Interpretation:
Who will be the stakeholders that should particularly involve in this case? and which have the major affect to measure the company's talents and weakness. You will discover two main stakeholder organizations that offer with Lands End. The clients and the traders. The customers will be the people who drive all the sales through buying the apparel. They also have the greatest have an impact on through having their responses about the store as well as the website. So, with no internet, the customers satisfaction would not be existing and could not be measured or investigated by the shareholders to manage functional aspects of marketing promotions through attaining the position between business strategy and IT strategy. So, the internet works as a major advertisement because it contains all their financial information and since the company is so successful.
The standards that categorized Lands' End as a leader in marketing are quality of products, dedication to services and customization through its effective website. This can be thought as its advantages or its powerful make sure to develop customer human relationships and business communication to increase sales and market show.
Website (customization-website-customer service)
The site itself is particularly easy and makes the shopping unique, interesting, easy and attractive. The internet site design is structured regarding ordering online process, its fascinating products because it presents versions and manufacturing a variety of similar but individualized. This is an example of a good company's position and strategic methods because it supports and maintain customer commitment as Lands' End's mature vice president for e-commerce said "customer loyalty to our custom designed clothing has surprised me. The level of sense that customers have is amazing. This is particularly true for ladies. After they get a pair of jeans to fit some will order every color atlanta divorce attorneys fabric" ( Piccoli, 2007 ). A number of the benefits of customization are building and keeping customer loyalty, costing and keeping away from physical scanning and body way of measuring if they go to the shop. (My Digital Model) is one of the company progressive shopping tool. According to it, customers can create a 3-D model of themselves by providing critical measurements, which can be then put on the individual's personal Virtual Model. Once a electronic model is established the client can put it to use to "try on" items to see how they'll look on his / her body. Outfits can be stored and recalled for later research. In addition, the model created, someone's model can even be used at other attire internet sites in the My Virtual Model network, and can be e-mailed to family and friends. Also, from the customer's perspective, the website allows you to understand everything about Lands' End from the origins to the end. Lands End has learned how to attract customers as well as keep them on the webpage through a fairly easy way which to buy. Its divisions are incredibly organized you start with gender of sex begins with gender of gender. ; then it'll separate it up in bits of clothing whether its shorts, shirts, dresses, shoes and so forth. Moreover, it offers section to measure the customers' willingness to pay through determining the amount they like to pay to present all the merchandise which have the certain price range. This way will save a lot of time and probably money; so it provides customer a quick inside online store of just what a normal shop store would look like in person. . When the site is unorganized or running slow, that will turn customers away from the web site. But Lands' End website assures its customers security insurance policies and provides them with an extremely standard of customer service if indeed they order using telephone. Through the website they can get the required information about their customers if they are old, current, new or future.
It is very useful to collect the information the business needs about the customer to actually increase the degree of knowledge for the business about the customers and it allows them to know far more about every individual customer especially because they have got profile of their customers.
Strategic Alignment
One of any organisation factor of success strategically and technologically is bringing both It and is also strategies within the organisation strategy. That is called strategic position which means the effective relationship between interior and exterior domains. Internal domain comes out the integration between business strategy and IT strategy while the external domain name is mixed up in integration between organizational infrastructure and process and is also infrastructure and process. In this case, Lands' End achieves a higher degree of strategic positioning; through using archetype solutions for custom-tailored clothes, an activity engineering approach that included creating a commercial metric model and head map that anticipated the specific ways that inventory professionals would utilize them to boost and develop business strategy. Inventory management system is used to help ensure client satisfaction by avoiding unexpected backorders. Purchases are electronically sent to the warehouse, where in fact the goods are packaged, shipping labels are paper, and the package deal is delivered to a delivery service. Otherwise, orders including personalized items are sent to a mainframe which computes projected measurements predicated on end user data, which is utilized to build up a pattern to be utilized in the creation of that. It supports fast shipping and delivery and embroidering. As it mentioned before the high performance of customer support is quite a good evidence of the system's potential to retrieve orders quickly and accurately. In addition, lower prices comes out the efficiency and effectively resulting from sending the purchases to the warehouse in electronic digital form. That's the reason the internet site brings the competitive benefit to Lands' End. The organisation's business strategy is presented to accomplish its range, marinating competitive advantage and achieving business governance. It shows in the case through providing each customer with an individual experience that builds a good standard marriage to carry on for very long time. Also, its successful business strategy shows through dependable quality, fair prices, reliable service, call again program and positive worker experience. To attain its opportunity, it will depend on archetype alternatives that fits mass customization and custom-clothing service and web based services in clothing industry. Due to AS, the company has made big investment in people and technology to attain the competitive benefit and have the expected gains. After looking at Exhibit 1 and 2, the finances in Lands' End shows its improvement which signifies its position. The first desk shows their earnings in thousands from 1999 to 2002. There is a big leap of about 197 millions dollars from 1999 to 2002 in the business. Each year they'll continue steadily to make a little more money mainly from increasing cliental and offering a wider span of products.
Challenges: (competitive advantages)/ Recommendations
Lands' End's mass customization and web-based customer service initiatives provide a great opportunity to discuss the sustainability of competitive gain produced from IT-driven strategic initiatives. Although AS, Inc allows the business to keep up its competitive gain, Ends' End's mainly has competencies in clothes manufacturing and retail efficiency. So that it should consider those areas in its functional integration to have the link between your organisational infrastructure and IS, It will pay its particular attention to its use of computer. The most important opportunity that Lands' End should take good thing about is to put Internet terminals along with the clothing displays in the Sears stores. This might allow customers to try-on clothes, feel materials, and test sizes inside the Sears store, yet still place an order for a specific item that is not offered in the store. This might increase sales by eliminating the increased loss of sales from stock-outs, as well as increase brand recognition. With the invention and creativity of new textiles, Lands' End can expand its current ordering system to include new fabric options on various products. This might allow customers to both customizing their own clothing and electing a colour, which would increase customer satisfaction and as a result customer loyalty. Lands' End should also market towards young customers maturing from ( 10 - 20) in order to increase sales both currently and keep maintaining them in the future (by keeping customers). It could do that by developing new styles and advertising through its site. Lands' End should stay a competitive benefit in its industry regarding its functions to continue in custom-tailored clothes; and the required improvement of its industry is essential and essential to product category and price. It also should have the ability to use It in the light of future technologies and tendencies. Lands' End might lose its competitive edge due to fallen barriers, technology replication pattern.
