¶ … Overstock.., a large retail company -identifies: "Overstock. A technology-based retail company offering customers a wide variety high-quality products, great, superior customer service. The company customers opportunity shop bargains offering suppliers alternative inventory distribution channel.
The main similarity between Overstock and a company such as Wal-Mart is the price, as well as the targeted segment of consumers. With low prices in both cases, companies such as Wal-Mart and Overstock aim to attract medium and low income consumers who prefer to purchase a bargain rather than shop in more expensive places. The key element in Overstock's business model is the idea of a bargain: the bargain concept involves not only lower prices, but also the possibility of being able to purchase an important brand at a low price.
Overstock's business model relies on excess inventory: the company intermediates the sale of excess inventory through its website at bargain prices. With this business model, it is practically unique among all its most important competitors, including Amazon, eBay or Wal-Mart.
Overstock takes things even further than Wal-Mart and clearly describes its business as that of a discount retailer. While Amazon, for example, is the regular online marketplace that commercializes virtually everything at their given price, Overstock often trades by offering discounts over the price of the product in another shop. It also looks at particular...
The idea is that the Overstock website has integrated a complex mechanism by which the potential client is able to purchase a product. Technology is the element that ties together all the different elements in the model: the stocks, the delivery, the customer service and the payment process. Depending on how well this functions, the company can then argue that it offers better service than other companies.
Finally, in comparison with Wal-Mart and similar to Amazon, Overstock trades exclusively online. On one hand, this diminishes administrative costs that could be related to a bricks-and-mortar location. However, it brings additional challenges, including, as previously mentioned, the need to have a highly performing technology system that would ensure a smooth interaction with the customers.
Overstock's mission is to save people money, while Overstock's vision relies on providing a superior customer experience. From both the company's mission and its vision, one can conclude that the most important stakeholders for Overstock are its customer: the entire model is built around the idea of providing a better purchasing experience for the clients.
Other than the shareholders, which are, obviously, also important stakeholders for Overstock, the partners…
