Introduction
Zappos is a famous online retailing site in America, which was founded in 1999. Within 10 years, the corporation had already reached $1 billion in gross merchandise sales. Today, the website has grown into the most significant online shoe retailer. Zappos’ number one core value is to deliver the ‘WOW’ factor to customers through excellent customer services (Roell, 2009). This paper will explore the sustainable competitiveness of Zappos based on the resource-based view (RBV) theory.
The primary content of resource-based view theory
In general, a corporation with higher competitiveness can create more value in the related field. Therefore, it is essential for companies to study the characteristics of sustainable competitive advantage. …show more content…
It aims to provide a special shopping experience for customers placing service as their number one priority. After every interaction with the company, Zappos wants its customers to evaluate the services as ‘WOW’. It is an open secret that high service quality leads to competitive advantage and better business performance. However, it is difficult for most corporations to put this theory into practice. To improve service quality and customer satisfaction, Zappos developed several strategies to provide a better shopping experience for its customers. Firstly, Zappos was the first corporation to practice the rules of free replacement inviting customers to order different sizes, colours, and styles of shoes, try them on at home, and return those that they do not like. Although this generous returns policy has resulted in a high refund rate (more than one in four orders are returned), it has also helped the corporation to increase its order amount and its gross profit rate. Hence, returns, as the main marketing strategy for Zappos, can help the corporation to improve its customer satisfaction level and control its management costs effectively. Secondly, Zappos has invested a lot of time and effort into providing interesting shopping experiences for its customers. It has optimised its website providing extensive search options and ensuring the webpages take less time to load the information. As part of Zappos’ corporate culture of service, the company established a call centre in Las Vegas, and it allocated several thousand employees to answer the calls. The corporation ensures that all calls are answered within 20 seconds and the customer service staff are empowered to do anything to make customers happy. The superior service level provided by Zappos is the primary resource that is valuable for the corporation to achieve competitive advantage among the
Zappos is a famous online retailing site in America, which was founded in 1999. Within 10 years, the corporation had already reached $1 billion in gross merchandise sales. Today, the website has grown into the most significant online shoe retailer. Zappos’ number one core value is to deliver the ‘WOW’ factor to customers through excellent customer services (Roell, 2009). This paper will explore the sustainable competitiveness of Zappos based on the resource-based view (RBV) theory.
The primary content of resource-based view theory
In general, a corporation with higher competitiveness can create more value in the related field. Therefore, it is essential for companies to study the characteristics of sustainable competitive advantage. …show more content…
It aims to provide a special shopping experience for customers placing service as their number one priority. After every interaction with the company, Zappos wants its customers to evaluate the services as ‘WOW’. It is an open secret that high service quality leads to competitive advantage and better business performance. However, it is difficult for most corporations to put this theory into practice. To improve service quality and customer satisfaction, Zappos developed several strategies to provide a better shopping experience for its customers. Firstly, Zappos was the first corporation to practice the rules of free replacement inviting customers to order different sizes, colours, and styles of shoes, try them on at home, and return those that they do not like. Although this generous returns policy has resulted in a high refund rate (more than one in four orders are returned), it has also helped the corporation to increase its order amount and its gross profit rate. Hence, returns, as the main marketing strategy for Zappos, can help the corporation to improve its customer satisfaction level and control its management costs effectively. Secondly, Zappos has invested a lot of time and effort into providing interesting shopping experiences for its customers. It has optimised its website providing extensive search options and ensuring the webpages take less time to load the information. As part of Zappos’ corporate culture of service, the company established a call centre in Las Vegas, and it allocated several thousand employees to answer the calls. The corporation ensures that all calls are answered within 20 seconds and the customer service staff are empowered to do anything to make customers happy. The superior service level provided by Zappos is the primary resource that is valuable for the corporation to achieve competitive advantage among the