Australian and International Websites Comparing Australian and

¶ … Australian and International Websites Comparing Australian and International E-Commerce Websites The catalyst of all successful e-commerce strategies is the orchestration of supply chain management, logistics, fulfillment and the intuitively-designed user experience of the website itself. The unique value proposition of e-commerce strategies are predicated on how well they orchestrate these many systems, processes and platforms together to create a unified, highly efficient selling and delivery system.

Successful e-commerce sites are able to unify these diverse business model elements and consistently deliver an exceptional customer experience on the websites they use to sell online with as well. The most successful e-commerce websites are able to pull together these many diverse value chain elements and deliver consistent performance that builds trust and loyalty with customers over time (Beatty, Reay, Dick, Miller, 2011). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate an Australian and international website to see how each varies in their orchestration of the key elements of e-commerce.

Comparing the Australian e-commerce website The Iconic (http://www.theiconic.com.au / ) and global e-commerce leader Amazon.com is the intent of this analysis. Analysis of Australian And International E-Commerce Business Models Both The Iconic and Amazon.com's business models rely on extensive supply chains, highly efficient logistics and inventory management processes, and a continual commitment to launch new products and keep prospects and customers interested in new products.

The Australian website The Iconic is in one of the most rapidly changing industries there are in terms of product lifecycles and new product introductions, with seasonal sales being critical to their profitability and growth. They are also very focused on the Australian market and have designed their supply chain, logistics and website to all align with shopper's expectations for this country.

The Iconic also faces the challenge of a very rapidly changing supply chain and mix of products as well, as their ability to react to seasonal variation in demand has an immediate impact on their ability to generate greater online sales. Despite the added pressure to stay seasonal and relevant to a given national market, e-commerce websites that are nationally-based can attain greater levels of customer trust and loyalty by concentrating their efforts in specific customer segments and audiences within segments (Beatty, Reay, Dick, Miller, 2011).

The Iconic has done this so well that they have received significant venture capital from Australian investors to build out their e-commerce platform and system. The investors see that The Iconic is a powerful platform for continually gaining insights into the dynamics of the Australian market and are paying for that capability. This is consistent with research findings that show national e-commerce systems are capable of capturing knowledge and acting on it quickly and with greater acuity and focus than global e-commerce sites in the same markets (Wang, 2010).

In juxtaposition to the national focus of The Iconic, the global focus of Amazon.com can be seen in the scale and scope of its global supply chain, advanced logistics and forecasting centers, and the multiple national sites that are all synchronized to a common e-commerce platform. Amazon.com has created a globally scalable platform that includes multilingual capability through Unicode programming support and a distributed order management system that can take orders for individual items, aggregate them and manage inbound shipments from large-scale pick-pack-ship suppliers (Filson, 2004).

The distributed order management and advanced logistics capabilities of Amazon.com are what make the commitment of 24-hour delivery attainable.