Explain how internet marketing has made a selected business more efficient,
effective and successful.
Managing supply chain and disintermediation
Apple purchases the materials and components to build their products from
different suppliers. These components get shipped to the factories in China and
US where the products are build. After products are built they get shipped to
Elk Grove in California which is the central warehouse and call center of Apple.
Here the products get stored and shipped to consumers when they order
something online. Retailers and distributors purchase the products from Elk
Grove to sell for themselves or to sell them to other companies. Apple doesn’t
do disintermediation. If you purchase a product online from them it will directly
be shipped to you and you will not receive it from any other retailer or person.
This benefits Apple because customers put their trust in Apple by ordering an
expensive item form them and if they get the product delivered at the end
from another company they will think they could have also ordered the
product directly from the retailer that delivered the product. Not doing
disintermediation, allows Apple to ship directly to the customer instead of first
to the retailer which delivers it to the customer this saves time and shipping
costs. Apple does sell products to other big retailers for example Media Markt.
But this doesn’t mean Media Markt delivers your product which you originally
ordered from the Apple web shop.
Staff cost
Being active online has made it cheaper for Apple to operate because if they
only had physical stores they would have to pay a lot extra staff costs and
maintenance costs for the store. Also by having an online web shop it has
become easier for Apple to sell their products. There are not many employees
needed to complete an order. Apple has successful established an online web
store from which they earn more money than their physical stores, by putting
more focus on their online shop they saved money on staff cost they would
have to pay more if they had invested more money and time in physical stores
Securing payments
Apple offers different options as
payment. A few of these are;
Ideal, Credit card, Debit Card,
Coupons