Online Shopping: Product Availability and Logistics Essay -- The Logis

Table of Contents Introduction 1 Online shops, Logistics and the Last Mile Problem 3 The E-Commerce Platform’s Accessibility and Availability 6 Efficient Customer Response and Quick Response 8 Conclusion 10 References 11 Introduction Online shops are an alternative to traditional shopping methods, but do they solve product availability issues in a viable way, and are traditional shopping methods preferred over online shopping? Morris, B (2013) points out that more consumers prefer online shopping as 70 % of 3,000 online shoppers surveyed in February 2013 in a study performed by the United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) say they would rather shop their favorite retailer online. This can only lead us to understand that a relatively large number of customers choose to satisfy their needs in an online platform. At first sight, it might be possible to speculate and assume that the reasons many of these customers choose to follow this path derives from qualities that include but are not limited to the ease-of-use, reliability, platform availability and accessibility as e-commerce platforms are accessible and available round the year, only as long as access to the internet is on hand (Gao, N.A.). It is accurate to pry into these qualities and strive in the possible relationship they might have with a term such as customer satisfaction, which could be prematurely answered if the fact that such terms describe the benefits online platforms have. As opposed to those found within traditional shopping methods. Moreover, Morris, B. (2013) showed that UPS (a logistics and package delivery company) had a positive overall customer satisfaction score of 83% which not only explains why the â€Å"back-end of the online shopping experi... ...s.com/sites/ashoka/2014/02/17/6459/ [Accessed April 29, 2014]. 6. Gao, J. (N.A.) â€Å"Introduction to E-Commerce† Computer, College of engineering ISE, Information & Systems Engineering, San Jose State University. https://www.uop.edu.jo/download/research/members/introduction.pdf [Accesed April 29, 2014] 7. The World Bank. (2013). â€Å"Internet Users (per 100 people). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2 [Accesed April 29, 2014]. 8. Price Waterhouse Coopers. (2012). â€Å"10 myths of multichannel retailing†. http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/retail-consumer/retail-consumer-publications/global-multi-channel-consumer-survey/country-snapshots.jhtml [Accesed April 29, 2014]. 9. Weinstein, R. (2005) â€Å"RFID: A Technical Overview and its Application to Enterprise† the IEEE Computer Society, IT Pro. http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~jgao/CSE370-spring07/RFID.pdf [accessed April 29, 2014].