The Handbag: The Controversy Between An Online Store

The Handbag, a small designer fashion brick-and-mortar store located in Springfield, VA, has seen a reduction in business due to the increased competition of e-businesses such as HauteLook, Nordstrom Rack, and more. Currently, The Handbag only sells its items inside its brick-and-mortar store but lists items on its webpage with basic information and pictures to tout. With the limited staffing, The Handbag would be unable to monitor and self-adjust inventory between an online store and the retail side. In order to forward the company, this report has been built to analyze and find the best practical solutions. The top two solutions for the business would be mobile commerce and intelligent systems. The reason for this implementation is

This number seems to conflict with Farber’s notion of 51% of purchases being made online, but makes sense once it is considered that airlines only had tickets purchasable through ticketing stands in airports and in cities before the internet (Currens, 2014). The internet has made getting cheap tickets easier to find and easier to pay for with e-commerce systems and intelligence systems finding deals through third-party websites (Johnson, 2014). This reflects why e-commerce businesses have huge impacts and it shows how intelligence systems can work for the consumer and the business together in one flawless application. So what does this mean for The Handbag in terms of an evolutionary standpoint for its business? Simple – adapt to the changing environment and utilize the mobile e-commerce system and intelligent systems like Nordstrom Rack and

Intelligent systems are defined as “machine[s] with an embedded, Internet-connected computer that has the capacity to gather and analyze data and communicate with other systems” (Rouse & Wigmore, What is intelligent system? - Definition from WhatIs.com, n.d.). The Handbag would be able to see real-time trends and inventory information that could lead to shopping trend forecasts with an intelligent system running behind the scenes. This trend display, or business metrics as it is known, means that purchasers utilizing The Handbag’s site will offer data to management which would provide information such as what is and isn’t selling, but can also inform what days are selling items more (Goewey, 2015). The management at The Handbag would, then, be able to introduce par leveling so that they can known when to transfer “floor stock” into “e-stock” and vise versa. All in all, this can lead to efficiency in staffing in house, efficiency in stocking between the store and the online sector leading to better inventory control, and lead to an understanding of performance and trends that the business can experience. This shows how successful the intelligent system and the e-commere technological aspects work in a streamline manner both in the brick-and-mortar store and through the online