Amazon into Apparels

Authors

Authors: Pradip Ranjan Sinha,
Associate Consultant,
ICMR (IBS Center for Management Research).

Links

Free Resources,
Articles,
Book Reviews,
Interviews

Tools

Pros and Cons

How is Amazon going to benefit from selling apparels when compared to selling books and CDs? What are the factors that are associated with Amazon, which will attract customers to visit and buy apparels from their store? "The first major factor for Amazon will be its brand name and the peoples trust in Amazon's product," says Gaurav Chadha. Generally people tend to buy from someone they know, or from someone they had bought earlier, or from someone they had heard of before.

When the word online buying comes, Amazon's name is right on top of the mind of the people. Amazon's customer satisfaction level is very high as it maintains a huge product inventory, in order to ensure prompt delivery to its customers. It is regarded as the most customer-centric company that delivers the quality products at affordable price at the doorsteps of consumers. Amazon's brand recall will definitely help in its apparel sector. Another advantage of Amazon is its line up of branded items in its apparel store. Amazon.com launched its apparel stores keeping in mind the holidays ahead with lots of attractive schemes to lure customers. Amazon's move into the apparels already began to show results.

The first few weeks' sale of Amazon's apparel store was very encouraging as in that short period only the customers ordered more than 9,000 trousers, about 1,500 shirts, 2,000 sweaters, 3,000 pairs of socks and many other items in bulk quantity. Apparel and accessories store is the company's fastest growing store in terms of units sold in the first 60 days of operation. Since consumers are already comfortable with shopping on the site, Amazons involvement in apparel sales will improve its overall sales. It will be of great help to those who regularly browse through the site of Amazon to shop for apparels, instead of going to another site to buy the same. The loyal customers of Amazon will come handy here. It makes for a better customer experience to go to Amazon and put everything in one shopping basket.

Amazon's main advantage lies in the savings it provides to its customers in transaction costs. If the customer knows exactly what they want, they can order it in minutes. The ease of use of its websites and the ordering and tracking system further saves time for customers. While all this is fine, there may be some hitches in the successful running of Amazon's apparel and accessory store. Amazon's early success was built largely on selling items, such as books and CDs that a customer did not have to touch or feel or see in person before buying. Now, Amazon has diversified itself from books and CDs to apparels both having a vast difference between them. The key difference between books and apparels is in the urgency of need. Consumers across the world mostly buy books as collectables and apparels as consumables.

Next >>