E-Business: Toys R Us Case - Research Paper Example

The paper "E-Business: Toys R Us Case" is an excellent example of a business research paper. Without any doubts, the growth of human beings has been exponential. It took the first humans years to build proper homes, community, and societies. In fact, the first men on earth wasted thousands of years just to explore the method of lighting fire, making sound and covering his body. However, it took the human race a few decades to change the outlook of this planet completely. If a person of early 19th century gets the chance to visit our world of 2010, he would definitely claim that he is on the wrong planet.

This process of non-stop change, growth, and development has affected every aspect of life including business. Now more and more organizations are leaving their traditional ways of doing business in the “brick and mortar” style and are now shifting to E-business. With E-business, a firm uses the latest technologies to support and run all aspects of its business. There are so many examples of firms shifting from the traditional brick and mortar style to the E-business approaches. One of them is “Toys “R” us” which is one of the largest toys retailers all over the world.

It has its operations in more than 36 countries of North America, Oceania, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Founded in 1948 in its earliest forms it has been ruling to the children toy market for long. The rest of the paper focuses on the transition of “Toys “R” Us” from brick and mortar to E-business, the advantages and disadvantages of the same, the limitations, and the risks that this firm had to face or is facing, for this transition. Discussion “Toy “R” Us” faced the need for this transition so that it can compete with one of its important competitors, which was “eToys.com.” Founded in 1997, this online toy retailer slowly was eating away “Toy “R” Us” business.

Immediately, toy “R” Us responded by coming up with their own website and jumped into the e-commerce business as well. Looking at the advantages of the same, “Toys “R” Us” was able to achieve its long-awaited of a dream of “global presence.” Now Toy “R” us was no longer working in specific areas of 36 countries however people around the world now had access to its products and services. Internet is one of the best ways of broadening the customer base of any company.

With E-commerce, firms are able to provide better and ensured customer service to their customers. For example, whenever a customer visits a website, the website greets him with a pop-up window, an email, an e-greeting card, or a message (Kidd, 2000). This way the company can ensure good customer service to everyone. Moreover, with an online business, the company finds it easier to maintain a database of their customers efficiently and effectively. With online business, the company also reduces the cost of mailing and making calls to customers since all of it can now happen with just an email.

E-commerce is also a cost-effective method of conducting business. With physical presence, the cost of acquisition, maintenance, depreciation, rent, safety, security, and many other liabilities are there (Jackson, 2003). Moreover, the biggest costs are of employing huge staff, paying them, hiring, and recruiting them and other human resource costs. However, for e-commerce business, most of these expenses are just not there. Without any doubts, this new world has left the customers with less time to spend on other activities.

In fact, many working people find it difficult to take time for anything else than their work. Therefore, these customers are in search of shopping methods, which offer utmost convenience, time saving and response speed. E-commerce is just the right choice for them. In fact, these types of customers are increasing and experts believe that in the next decade the majority of the people would think in the same way. That is one of the long-term benefits that Toy “R” us wants to gain out of this move.

However, there is a darker side of this picture as well. Despite the fact that Toyrus.com was able to gain all these advantages but there were some disadvantages associated with it as well. This paper would analyze them mainly with the experiences of toyrus.com. It was the Christmas season of 1999 when the company first realized that internet business is not so simple and easy. Toyrus.com had plenty of order before Christmas. In fact, the were so much that the company was sure that they won't be able to deliver them on time, even if they would make their delivery staff work 24/7 (Smith, 2001).

Therefore, Toyrus.com decided to mail those customers about the same four days before. The damage caused was serious. Three percent of the order went into refunds; they had to send gifts to the affected customers worth US 100 dollars. Moreover, the Federal Trade Commission charged them with another 350,000 US dollars plenty for not informing the customers early enough. It was then that toyrus.com had to sign a deal with amazon.com so that Amazon can help them in delivery. This was an attempt to fix the problem but unfortunately, it decreased the profits of toyrus.

com (Smith, 2001). Furthermore, toyrus.com soon found out that people would like to buy small toys and presents from the internet but not the big and costly ones. This was because people wanted to actually touch and look at the toy before they buy it. Moreover, the threats of hacking and internet frauds always remain there.