E-commerce - Cape Peninsula University of Technology
E-commerce - Cape Peninsula University of Technology E-commerce - Cape Peninsula University of Technology
I will go back to delivery. Delivery is always difficult because we tell our customers that we would get to their house at about 1Dam or 11 am tomorrow but then we do not make it at time maybe because there were other deliveries to be made before hers. In this way, we are loosing customers so we need to find ways to improve our services, and ifwe say that we are doing something, we should go ahead and do it. When we overcome these two major problems out ofstock and delivery we will be ahead of other people in the business as it is a common problem in the market. Q: LESSONS LEARNT FROM BEING IN THIS POSITION OF MANAGING AN E-RETAlL SECTION OF THE COMPANY A: It is the most incredible difficult thing to do. That little e-bubble that everyone is saying... The entire thesis that you read at the University, every single magazine that you picked up was absolutely adamant saying that Clicks will replace Bricks but I can tell you now from my experience, Clicks will never replace Bricks, never. Essentially in a very short space of time a lot of the original thinking was disproved. Now what we have to do is to find a new way to integrate the clicks with the bricks so that people can have the same experience they have in the traditional shop online also. This will help to have a choice on which medium ofshopping to use. Q: HOW DOES THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS SEE THIS SECTION OF PICK'N PAY BUSINESS - E-RETAlLlNG? A: They will like to see it adding a lot to the bottom line to the company. And hence improve more, get more customers and help change the way people see Pick 'n' Pay. Q: HOW DOES YOUR EMPLOYEES SEE THIS SECTION OF PICK 'N' PAY BUSINESS - E-RETAlLlNG A: Ifs interesting because unless you are in one of the stores where you are directly affected, I don't think many of the employees know too much about it. And it sounds strange but if you consider we have 35 000 people in the company and of those 2000 have access to computers, I honestly don't believe that ifs been thought out very well. It's sad but that's the way it is. Q: YOU DO HAVE INTERNAL MAGAZINES THAT YOU USE TO MARKET AND ALSO CREATE AWARENESS TO BOTH CUSTOMERS AND EMPLOYEES? A: Yes, we do, plenty in the company. On occasions some marketing is done through that for e-retailing. Our home shopping division also runs an electronic magazine that we send to our customers not necessarily employees. We also have one that is on the Intranet, so anyone who has access to computer within the company can access the Internet magazine if they want to.
Q: HOW DOES PICK 'N' PAY MANAGE QUALITY OF INFORMATION, SERVICE/PRODUCT? A: By being picky, picky picky. It's a very difficult thing to do. If we look at the quality of service in the store and I will go back to the fact that we have 35000 people in our stores. It's very easy for the GEO to say, we don't want customers standing in queues in our stores, which is one of our five promises. But that's very difficult to implement. It's easy for us to say we guarantee we will deliver in the stock time, we promise that. The only way we can get anywhere near there is to measure how close you are as opposed to whether you actually achieving it. Because it is by constantly reviewing, so you have to keep going back, look at the business processes change them ifnecessary, re-learn, re-motivate, re-teach them to the people. And that goes for the quality and cleanliness of the store. Q: WHERE DO YOU THINK E-RETAlLlNG IS GOING? A: If I look at the way retailing is going. We tend to follow the retail pattern. Retailing is moving towards convenient store, close to where you live, ease of preparation for you, not going to slice and dice because people want instantaneous satisfaction, high quality product, convenience. Looking at that model, if you link e-retailing to that, that model says that we should be able to link into that. This shows that we should be to be delivering the services at quickly to customers as possible. The issue we have in SA and Africa in general is that we have relatively small population and relatively wide spread areas are not the high densely populated and our supplier chain is very long that we have to move things from Durban and Gape Town, where is in the European market and the big cities there is more chances of its success because everything is so densely populated. I still think their will be a segment in the market who actually will choose to do e-retailing and huge segment that will want to just walk down the street rather than e-retail purchases. Q: WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE, WITH REGARDS TO YOUR EXPERIENCE IN THE E-RETAIL BUSINESS? A: Change management both internally and externally. Getting people to understand what you are trying to do, justifying it. Technology is easy but change management is difficult. Q: HOW DO YOU THINK THESE CHALLENGES SHOULD BE HANDLED TO MAKE THE BUSINESS A SUCCES IN THE FUTURE? A: I think we have to be responsive to consumer needs. When I look back four years ago, when we started up, we had to believe in the way people would respond to customer need and we essentially structured our business model within those needs. There wasn't this huge movement from bricks to clicks as anticipated at the time and yet there's a whole need for people to be dealt in a different way. As I explained to you, we have to deal with people in a way that they will appreciate. We should rather try not to be a follower than a
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- Page 77 and 78: Chapter 5: Recommendations and conc
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- Page 81 and 82: References REFERENCES Page 74 Alba,
- Page 83 and 84: References Page 76 Fisher, M. 2000.
- Page 85 and 86: References Page 78 Monczka, R.M. &
- Page 87: References Page 80 Sweet, P. 2001.
- Page 90: Appendix B Thank you for participat
- Page 101: very dlssaUsfIed 0 0% Ihe purchase
- Page 118 and 119: with credit card/debit card/cheque
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- Page 132: A: Like I mentioned earlier. Being
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I will go back to delivery. Delivery is always difficult because we tell our<br />
customers that we would get to their house at about 1Dam or 11 am tomorrow<br />
but then we do not make it at time maybe because there were other<br />
deliveries to be made before hers. In this way, we are loosing customers so<br />
we need to find ways to improve our services, and ifwe say that we are doing<br />
something, we should go ahead and do it. When we overcome these two<br />
major problems out <strong>of</strong>stock and delivery we will be ahead <strong>of</strong> other people<br />
in the business as it is a common problem in the market.<br />
Q: LESSONS LEARNT FROM BEING IN THIS POSITION OF MANAGING AN<br />
E-RETAlL SECTION OF THE COMPANY<br />
A: It is the most incredible difficult thing to do. That little e-bubble that everyone<br />
is saying... The entire thesis that you read at the <strong>University</strong>, every single<br />
magazine that you picked up was absolutely adamant saying that Clicks will<br />
replace Bricks but I can tell you now from my experience, Clicks will never<br />
replace Bricks, never. Essentially in a very short space <strong>of</strong> time a lot <strong>of</strong> the<br />
original thinking was disproved. Now what we have to do is to find a new<br />
way to integrate the clicks with the bricks so that people can have the<br />
same experience they have in the traditional shop online also. This will<br />
help to have a choice on which medium <strong>of</strong>shopping to use.<br />
Q: HOW DOES THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS SEE THIS SECTION OF<br />
PICK'N PAY BUSINESS - E-RETAlLlNG?<br />
A: They will like to see it adding a lot to the bottom line to the company. And<br />
hence improve more, get more customers and help change the way people<br />
see Pick 'n' Pay.<br />
Q: HOW DOES YOUR EMPLOYEES SEE THIS SECTION OF PICK 'N' PAY<br />
BUSINESS - E-RETAlLlNG<br />
A: Ifs interesting because unless you are in one <strong>of</strong> the stores where you are<br />
directly affected, I don't think many <strong>of</strong> the employees know too much<br />
about it. And it sounds strange but if you consider we have 35 000 people in<br />
the company and <strong>of</strong> those 2000 have access to computers, I honestly don't<br />
believe that ifs been thought out very well. It's sad but that's the way it is.<br />
Q: YOU DO HAVE INTERNAL MAGAZINES THAT YOU USE TO MARKET<br />
AND ALSO CREATE AWARENESS TO BOTH CUSTOMERS AND<br />
EMPLOYEES?<br />
A: Yes, we do, plenty in the company. On occasions some marketing is done<br />
through that for e-retailing. Our home shopping division also runs an<br />
electronic magazine that we send to our customers not necessarily<br />
employees. We also have one that is on the Intranet, so anyone who has<br />
access to computer within the company can access the Internet magazine if<br />
they want to.
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