Amazon into Apparels

continued from: Pros and Cons

When the word online buying comes, Amazon's name is right on top of the mind of the people. Amazon's customer satisfaction level is very high as it maintains a huge product inventory, in order to ensure prompt delivery to its customers. It is regarded as the most customer-centric company that delivers the quality products at affordable price at the doorsteps of consumers. Amazon's brand recall will definitely help in its apparel sector. Another advantage of Amazon is its line up of branded items in its apparel store.

Amazon.com launched its apparel stores keeping in mind the holidays ahead with lots of attractive schemes to lure customers. Amazon's move into the apparels already began to show results. The first few weeks' sale of Amazon's apparel store was very encouraging as in that short period only the customers ordered more than 9,000 trousers, about 1,500 shirts, 2,000 sweaters, 3,000 pairs of socks and many other items in bulk quantity.

Apparel and accessories store is the company's fastest growing store in terms of units sold in the first 60 days of operation. Since consumers are already comfortable with shopping on the site, Amazons involvement in apparel sales will improve its overall sales. It will be of great help to those who regularly browse through the site of Amazon to shop for apparels, instead of going to another site to buy the same. The loyal customers of Amazon will come handy here. It makes for a better customer experience to go to Amazon and put everything in one shopping basket.

Amazon's main advantage lies in the savings it provides to its customers in transaction costs. If the customer knows exactly what they want, they can order it in minutes. The ease of use of its websites and the ordering and tracking system further saves time for customers.
While all this is fine, there may be some hitches in the successful running of Amazon's apparel and accessory store.

Amazon's early success was built largely on selling items, such as books and CDs that a customer did not have to touch or feel or see in person before buying. Now, Amazon has diversified itself from books and CDs to apparels both having a vast difference between them. The key difference between books and apparels is in the urgency of need. Consumers across the world mostly buy books as collectables and apparels as consumables. The need for books is not usually immediate i.e., consumers may not bother waiting for some extra days in case of a delay in delivery, but it's not the same in the case of apparels. A delay in delivering the apparels may lead to loss of customer in future.

Moreover, the two most important problems that prevent people shopping for clothing online are they are unable to try on clothes for fit and unable to feel clothes for the quality of clothes. Further, apparels reflect character of an individual and consumers select the basic fit only after a few trips to the trial room. It's not easy from a customer's point of view to just watch the item on the website and order it. The fear of not getting the same color, size, and quality, as is projected online will always be there in the customers mind. So it will not be that easy to sell apparels as it was in the case of books and CDs.

Amazon will be facing a lot of stiff competition from various other leading players like Wal-Mart and Sears in selling apparels and it may miss the physical store in this battle of selling apparels online. Moreover there is always the possibility that the suppliers come up with their own websites, as they came up in the case of books. Some people may find it a lot easier to browse through these websites rather than browsing through Amazon.

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