Read the document I send you carefully Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Read the document I send you carefully - Essay Example This paper tries to understand how the market for clothes/ textiles has changed over the years to adopt technology and gain competitive advantage. The past and present trends in clothes business will be studied to understand the impact of e-business initiatives in the sector. How value chain has emerged to impact the marketers of clothes will be discussed and recommendations for increasing online purchasing of clothes will be given. e-Marketing and clothing trade Noting Corral (2000), â€Å"The apparel industry has started using the Internet in an attempt to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing, provide customers access to information about products and their availability, build brand value, and to offer customers a convenient medium to make purchases online. The most valuable aspects of Internet shopping, as compared to store-based ad catalog shopping, are typically perceived to be competitive pricing, one-source shopping, convenience and time-savings (Tuunainen an d Rossi, 2002). Rapidly changing consumer preferences and distribution requirements in the increasingly globalized world where trade is liberalized and need innovation is also strong, textile and clothing sector has undergone a sea change as did the other sectors. Businesses in the sector are vying for differentiation on price as there is a high concentration on manufacturing and distribution. Companies that have tried to adopt change are increasingly focusing on reducing operational costs in the supply chain while reducing time to market and lead time. There is an increased use of information technology to integrate the supply chain to control quality, time and operational costs. The European Union is the largest trader and exporter of textile and clothing with a large portion of exports considered temporary as they are re-imported for final production and distribution (e-business watch, 2004). Although there are different opinions as to the impact of ecommerce on retailing in the clothing industry, one fact is true, that those that do not adopt technology will lose their competitive advantage. Ecommerce is set to make a significant and permanent impact on retailing as it is set to increase revenue flow phenomenally. In the US, it is seen that a significant portion of the economy is contributed by internet-influenced revenue with a seven percent sales on internet can reduce profits of brick-and-mortar businesses by almost 50 percent. While e-retailers deliver well on product, price and place, traditional retailers manage to deliver well on margin flexibility, location, selection and delivering physical products at the right time (Taylor and Cosenza, 2013, pp 46, 47). Businesses can transform into electronic enterprises to reduce operational costs and improve process productivity. The speed at which businesses transform to adopt electronic transactions determines the capacity with which they implement processes. Greater the speed of adoption and transformation , higher the number of processes they can execute and the more rapid their expansion since it reduces transactional costs. This also gives enterprises strategic competitive advantage. A business can have a website and the extent to which it is open to customers determines its adoption of ecommerce (Figure 1): Figure 1: Ecommerce industry transformation. Source: (Rollyson,