E-Commerce (Starbucks vs. Green Mountain Coffee companies)

A variety of businesses are conducted online, including retail businesses that sell products to consumers, service providers that sell services to consumers, auctioneers that create a marketplace for products and services, and business-to-business commerce. Retail transactions make up the largest part of e-commerce. Consumers can find computers, automobiles, clothing, books, music, airline and event tickets, food, and just about anything else for sale on the Internet.
Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) is the exchange of goods and services by means of the Internet or other computer networks. E-commerce follows the same basic principles as traditional commerce that is, buyers and sellers come together to exchange goods for money. But rather than conducting business in the traditional way in stores and other “brick and mortar” buildings or through mail order catalogs and telephone operators, in e-commerce buyers and sellers transact business over networked computers.
Both Starbucks and Green Mountain Coffee have IT that offers buyers convenience. You can visit the World Wide Web sites of both vendors 24 hours a day and seven days a week to compare prices and make purchases, without having to leave your homes or offices. In some cases, consumers can immediately obtain other product or service, such nutrition information, brewing equipment, and Ice Cream.
With e-commerce, both websites offer a way to cut costs and expand their markets. They do not need to build, staff, or maintain a store or print and distribute mail order catalogs. Automated order tracking and billing systems cut additional labor costs, and if the product or service can be downloaded.
Because they sell over the global Internet, sellers have the potential to market their products or services globally and are not limited by the physical location of a store. By opening an account with both companies, IT permits them to track the interests and preferences of their customers with the customer’s permission and then use this information to build an ongoing relationship with the customer by customizing products and services to meet the customer’s needs.
Starbucks and Green Mountain Coffee are retail Web sites that typically include electronic catalogs that describe and display coffee and other related products for sale. Consumers can search for individual items (Coffee) or randomly browse electronic catalogs, some much larger than their mail order print counterparts. They offer many different type of coffee for sale on their Web sites, far more coffees than could fit into a store or that could be included cost-effectively in a print catalog.
Starbucks and Green Mountain Coffee allow customers to order products and then track the shipment of their order. They also allow consumers to choose different combinations of coffee, selecting the combination that best suits their budget and needs. They also automatically notify their customers by e-mail when the product has been shipped.
Established encryption methods such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a protocol developed by Netscape Communications Corporation, encode credit card numbers and other information to foil would-be thieves. Shoppers can determine if the site they are using is secure by noting the “secure” icon at the bottom of their browser window. Also, the address bar of Internet browsers will carry the “https” prefix instead of the standard “http” prefix when the site is secured. Both Web sites do not have the prefix “https”. Nevertheless, some consumers are reluctant to divulge credit card information over the Internet, and this reluctance is based on name recognition of the companies.
In addition to credit card security, many shoppers worry about privacy. To put them at ease, Starbucks and Green Mountain Coffee post “privacy statements” that explains their policy of sharing or not sharing customer information with other businesses. This privacy policy may include refusing to give the customer’s name and e-mail address to companies that send unsolicited and unwanted commercial e-mail messages, often known as junk mail or spam. The one good thing about Starbucks is that they offer their own credit card which can also be use in any Starbucks’ stores; But, Green Mountain Coffee does not offer any credit cards.
Starbucks and Green Mountain Coffee companies have a good chance to success with Customer Relationship Management because their goals are not too broad, their strategies are not too generic, and their implementations are not software-centric.