Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2.
The Internet can be a powerful source of information
about various industries and organizations. Locate several
industry or organization Web sites. Which Web site is the
best designed? Which one provides the most amount of
information?
4.
Set up an account on
www.twitter.com
and invite a few
friends to join. Use Twitter to send messages to your friends
on their cell phones, keeping everyone posted on what you
are doing throughout the day. Write a review of the service
to submit to your instructor.
3.
Research some of the potential disadvantages of using the
Internet, such as privacy, fraud, or unauthorized Web sites.
Write a brief report on what you found.
CAREER EXERCISES
1.
Use the Internet to explore starting salaries, benefits, and
job descriptions for a career in developing or managing a
Web site. Monster.com is a good place to start.
2.
Describe how the Internet can be used on the job for two
careers that interest you.
CASE STUDIES
ful catalog for the retailer, one that reaches millions of poten-
tial customers. J.C. Penney integrated its Web presence with
its in-store and catalog sales to create more synergy and
more retail power.
At the turn of the millennium, J.C. Penney's stockholders
were concerned about the future of the company. In the late
1990s, Penney's catalog revenues peaked at about $4 billion
and started to decline. Catalog sales continued declining over
time until in 2006 they reached $1.7 billion. In that same
period, J.C. Penney's online sales increased to $1.5 billion in
2007. The total revenue for J.C. Penney in 2007 was $19.9 bil-
lion. While the catalog sales have continued to decline, the
combined catalog and Internet sales as well as total sales for
the business have steadily increased over the past four years.
This indicates that the synergy between Internet and in-
store sales is strong. JCPenney.com is working to lure cus-
tomers into the brick-and-mortar stores. Like the catalog,
JCPenney.com lists three times as much merchandise as is
stocked in the stores. Computer terminals are provided at
Penney's 35,000 check-out registers to allow in-store cus-
tomers to shop online for items that they could not find in the
store. Listing so many items online provided J.C. Penney with
a low-cost mechanism for selling slow-moving items. Online
customers can check the availability of items in local stores,
allowing them to find what they like from the comfort of their
own home and pick it up locally the same day—without incur-
ring shipping charges.
Penney's online sales accounted for 6 percent of total
sales compared with 4 percent for Sears, and only 1 percent
for Wal-Mart. Plus, Penney's online customers are consider-
ably younger than its in-store customers, enabling the com-
pany to reach out to the next generation.
Guess which brick-and-mortar retail business—that is, a
business with a physical store—attracts the most customers
to its Web site. Wal-Mart? Target? Best Buy? A recent study
by Nielsen NetRatings revealed that J.C. Penney attracts more
shoppers to its Web site than any other brick-and-mortar
retailer. About as many people visit jcpenney.com as visit
Amazon.com or eBay. For J.C. Penney, that's over 300,000
unique paying customers per month. What's their secret?
J.C. Penney knows how to create synergy between differ-
ent avenues of sales. Synergy occurs when separate entities
combine to create a greater effect than the sum of their
separate effects. A common analogy is a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich, which tastes better because of combined
flavors. J.C. Penney's peanut butter has been its more than
1,000 department stores, and its jelly is its catalog business,
the nation's largest. Through these two sales vehicles,
J.C. Penney can provide the merchandise customers desire
when they desire it.
The synergy between J.C. Penney's catalog and store
occurs by each supporting the other to meet customers'
needs. If an item is unavailable to a customer in the store, the
customer is directed to the catalog desk, where he or she can
browse through three times the amount of merchandise as is
available in stock. By delivering catalogs to tens of thousands
of households, J.C. Penney reaches customers that might not
otherwise visit their stores.
Moving online was natural for this company because it
had a long history of experience selling to customers remotely
through its printed catalog. The Web provided a more power-
