The development of e-commerce puts its organization, procedures, know-how and rationality to the test. In the economics literature, this organization test has been interpreted within the framework of transaction cost theory.
Some authors have used this theory to describe the impact of new information and communication technologies (NTIC) on the organization. However, they produced quite contradictory results.
On the one hand, some make NICTs less costly to operate. It improves the information transparency of markets by allowing more complex descriptions of products to circulate. It advocates the idea that it supports the effects of electronic mediation technology.
On the contrary, others have decided that organizations are more capable than markets at implementing these technologies.
However, care should be taken that such an analysis essentially defines inter-firm relationships, i.e. what happens up the supply chain in the case of distribution.
The purpose of this article is to focus on the links between distribution and consumption. We do not keep repeating this.
Instead, we will start by observing the adjustments and misalignments between distribution and consumption in stores and on the Internet. We will show by what mechanisms these products have upstream repercussions at the level of supply and the construction of a product offer.
Like the logistics questions mentioned earlier, procurement questions are critical to e-commerce. To solve these, the websites of large distributors can rely on centralized purchasing bodies, which is a significant advantage.
Thanks to their power from the massification of direct flows, purchasing centers ensure that referenced products are available at a price that independents cannot reach.
This seems almost unavoidable in the case of online food trading, where sales are too few to obtain favorable prices directly from suppliers.
We've seen even local businesses try to take advantage of this indirectly by partnering with a supermarket where they prepare their orders.
However, the consumption methods on the Internet and the actual or assumed expectations of Internet users still allow these regulations to be tested according to three different methods.
The first is based on the expectation of an unlimited supply specific to the Internet. Staging an offer on an e-commerce site is indeed less restrictive than in a store: It's much easier to add hundreds of html pages to a site than linear pages in a supermarket.
The strategy and rhetoric of certain sites, such as Amazon, encourages the possibility of creating a more diverse offering on their website than in any physical store.
For this reason, there are some elements that brands that adopt this approach in food trade should do. For products not covered by the central purchasing office, they must establish independent supply chains or negotiate with central purchasing bodies to meet these specific demands.
On the one hand, most major sites have expanded their product offerings. On the other hand, they underlined that the Internet is mostly used for a large supply of standardized products, such as heavy goods that are ordered electronically and delivered in large quantities.
The second has to do with the creation of events, capturing the audience through an electronic re-enchantment of distribution. Creating a truly permanent commercial animation appears to be a necessary condition for electronic consumers to visit sites.
The proliferation of responsive and event-based offers is facilitated by the development of dynamic page editors that lower the setup costs of these marketing events.
Creating an event, putting the trendy product or the product of the day on the site, often requires a greater response than that of the central purchasing department.
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This is an even more important phenomenon in the case of mail. Order sales where timeframes are limited by seasonality of catalogs.
The third concerns the effective possibility of immediate online ordering and purchasing. The corollary to this is the need for real-time, online visibility of product availability.
This requirement turns the goals of minimizing supply shortages in stores into an electronic context.
There is a desire to make stocks, inventories and order cycles consistent, invoicing and returns. Therefore, it manifests itself with the need for information transparency and IT integration in the back office throughout the entire chain supply.
Although in principle this information transparency does not exclude the deployment of market logic, it thus far presents a trend towards bilateral integration and strengthening of strong cooperative relations.
Due to the required investments, customer-supplier relationships are shifting towards permanent cooperation rather than an easily reviewed market relationship.
This also creates an entry barrier for newcomers to the Internet. It is difficult to obtain such terms from suppliers as they do not have commercial credibility.
As such, they face the restrictive practices of one-time contracts and back margins from their suppliers.
Dr.Yaşam Ayavefe
