Online business Amazon

ADDITION TO all of the resources available on the Web, there are a great number of career-related books that can help job seekers land the best possible job. If you can t find these books at your local bookstore, they re probably available online from Amazon.com (www.amazon.com) or Barnes and Noble Online (www.bn.com). CareerBookStore.com (www.careerbookstore.com) is another excellent resource for finding and purchasing career-related books online. Also, consider reading the business and employment sections of... 

Online sales can lower a firm s inventories if it can postpone the introduction of variety until after the customer order is received. The time lag between when a customer places the order and when he or she expects delivery offers a company selling online a window of opportunity to implement postponement. For example, for its online business, Dell keeps its inventory as components and assembles its servers after receiving the customer order. The amount of component inventory required is much lower than it would be if Dell kept its inventories in the form of assembled servers. Similarly, Amazon prints some low-volume books to order, allowing it to reduce inventories. 

Compare the transportation costs for an online business such as Amazon and a retailer such as Home Depot when selling... 

Industry and Business Sectors. Computer science has led to the creation of electronic retailing (e-tailing). Online sales rose 15.5 percent in 2009, while brick and mortar (traditional) sales were up 3.6 percent from the previous year. Online-only outlets such as Amazon.com have been carving out a significant part of the retail market. Traditional businesses, such as Macy s and Home Depot, are finding that they must have an online presence. Online sales for the 2009 Christmas season were estimated at 27 billion. 

The value of setting up online sales is not the same in every industry. Whereas Amazon and Blue Nile have shown increased profits after going online, Webvan and many other online grocers have gone out of business. The scorecard in Table 4-9 can be used to understand how online sales affect the performance of different supply chain networks. In the next section, we apply the online sales scorecard to several examples. 

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