Office Depot Inc. , founded in 1986, is one of the leaders at work supplies industry with its brain quarters in Boca Raton, Florida, USA. The Office Depot's products include business machines, personal computers, softwares and business furniture whereas the services cover printing, copying, record reproduction, shipment and mailing. The customers to the company include specific customers, small office/home offices, and medium-/large-sized businesses.
The sales are obtained through numerous channels which comprises of office supply stores, an outbound telephone account management sales force, internet sites, immediate marketing catalogues and call centres.
Office Depot Inc. , deals to customers in 52 countries throughout North America, European countries, Asia and Latin America. The business runs more than 40 distinct websites in the International Department.
While the word e-commerce refers to all the online transactions, B2C means "business-to-consumer" and applies to any business company that sells its products or services to consumers on the web.
The business model followed by Office Depot is B2C e-commerce model. The model provides both proper and operational advantages to the company. The model helps in low order processing costs; brand acceptance; improved customer service; market expansion to locations where no office supplies store exists; reduces labour cost due to streamlined inside process; and increased information system integration.
The company employs click-and-mortar kind of B2C model where the company allows customer to buy products and services online as well as they may have physical stores located at various locations. The model linked the e-commerce frontend to the company's inventory and order management systems, and conducted real time inventory inspections to ensure stock was available near by. The model is build in customer centric e-commerce systems were designed to make customers so content with their online shopping experience that they would not take the time looking somewhere else on the Internet to save lots of a few pennies. Customers were able to check warehouse inventory in real-time, place purchases online, purchase requests online, and request returns at a local store.
4. Customer Value Proposition
The customer value proposition essentially means the benefits which the seller offers to the customers in exchange to the amount charged for the specific products. The Office Depot assures a wide collection of quality office products and services. These products and services encompass the next characteristics: great quality, invention, value and satisfaction assurance.
The major challenges that officedepot. com has tackled fairly are simple to use, have an improved search capabilities, an expanded range of item availability, and they are meeting the objectives of customer's with shipping quality and timely delivery.
5. Earnings Model
The main goal of producing B2C website is to bring down the cost or improve customer service, however, the primary seeks remains to be era of earnings and earn profit. The officedepot. com is the website providing products as well as services to its customers. This is the most frequent kind of e-business model for generating revenue. In such a model, the electronic catalogue is manufactured available to the consumers; they can choose the desired products from the catalogue and put it in the shopping cart. Then the payment received from the client is the source of earning income.
After the successful implementation of the B2C model, the full total sales revenue of the company has truly gone up substantially because of e-sales. With over $4. 9 billion in e-Business sales during 2007, Office Depot is one of the most significant online retailers on earth. They have confidence in offering customers the best option of digital trading alternatives available, with different purchasing options regarding with their needs. The amount1 suggests the sudden climb in the sales after the implementation of the web site and the ongoing go up thereafter.
6. Marketplace
Office Depot discounts in the segment of office products and services. They are simply in competition to be the marketplace leaders in the section. The number of products office depot provides includes business machines, computers, softwares and office furniture whereas the assistance cover printing, copying, doc reproduction, shipment and mailing. The growing prevalence of the internet access has allowed new marketplaces to emerge online. To handle with the market of consumers and businesses of all sizes the company has been segmented into three the retail division, the business solution department and the international section.
Office Depot performs over 1, 200 office resource stores in THE UNITED STATES. Internationally, the company manages another 400 retail stores in 48 countries.
7. Main Competitors
The main competition to Office Depot are Staples and Officemax. Collectively the three companies will be the market leaders at work industry. However, together they account for about only 10% of the full total estimated $300 billion market. They remaining market is divided broadly between supermarkets, wholesale suppliers and smaller self-employed companies.
Office Depot stands second to Staples in the full total sales and profits but had better sales and higher functioning margin in the international market than the key competitor.
Office Depot by the department of the retail and business solution sales in the international market is trying to make the most in the international market by acquiring contract office suppliers around the world in profitable markets such as Asia and South America.
Staples: www. staples. com
OfficeMax: www. officemax. com
8. Comparative Advantages
The Office Depot was the first to introduce the idea of shopping, purchasing and managing shipments online for the office products and services section.
Office understands the type, reasons, needs and concerns of customer by realizing that all the customers won't be the same level. Almost every other customer has different wants and needs.
The company has added the brick-and-mortar catalogue on their website and thus have successfully increased selections, selection and searching capabilities.
Officedepot. com provides lower prices by discount offers, auctions and promotional prices. Discount rates are given to the universities.
The product information are obvious and concise, and usually have measurements included, sometimes in graphical format as well.
Officedepot. com has the advantage of owned by a more developed syndication infrastructure that are designed for peak demand. It also has an founded brand with a good and trusted image, large customer base, knowledge and facilities to serve customers with catalogue sales, and has stores for handling product comes back. Bricks-and-clicks suppliers enjoy significant advantages over Internet pure-plays including lower customer acquisition and smaller marketing-related outlays.
Officedepot. com website is designed with proper attention and it is capturing, energetic, changing, offering new things and deals, user-friendly, not congested or overwhelming, useful and possible for navigation, just in time information for out of stock items, and readable text.
9. Market Strategy
Office Depot focuses on consumers and businesses of all sizes. They range from individual customers to the tiny offices/home office buildings to the large offices and organizations. The main strategy is to provide maximum possible options combined with special discount offers.
The basic market strategy accompanied by the officedepot. com to keep the customers intact and at exactly the same time providing satisfaction is:
Intelligent Search Facilities - a wonderfully easy way to find the right product every time
Bulletin Board - a powerful online communication tool to reach all end users with important information
User set-up and Management - Office Depot Online is a do it yourself service solution placing our customers in the traveling seat
Controls - personalized approval operations and budgeting are available to help you to take care of your business
Multiple Shopping lists - list all of your favourite items in a single place to create your requests with
10. Conclusion
Officedepot. com is one of the best possible types of the business-to-customer e-commerce model. The officedepot. com was presented by Office Depot to be able to meet up with the increasing requirements with the quick growth of the web. The website officedepot. com is a click and mortar kind with addition of brick and mortar catalogue and thus increasing your options available to pick from. The revenue produced is merely through the advertising of the products. Officedepot. com does indeed face stiff competition but with the sort of infrastructure and service it is being able to catch the attention of customers to itself.
11. References
http://www. officedepot. com/
http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Customer_value_proposition
http://www. living2xcess. com/2010/06/office-depot-strategic-analysis_01. html
http://www. slideshare. net/socialcoop/ebusiness-models
http://www. buzzle. com/articles/b2c-marketing-a-guide-to-business-to-consumer-marketing. html
