Thursday, March 24, 2011

Role of Logistics in Online Shopping

With the growth of the electronic commerce, the logistics play an important role in the success of the internet shopping. This is because, if products are delivered late than the specified time, the customers get disappointed and the credibility of the online retailer decreases leading to decrease in the sales of the online store. So the online shopping malls should develop an effective logistics strategy for greater reliability and to reduce the costs on the delivery.

Logistics for a business includes physical distribution, ware housing, material handling, packaging, sales order processing, freight transportation, inventory planning and production planning. Logistics management is a part of SCM, which, in order to meet customer requirement plans, implements and controls forward and reverse flow and storage of goods and services between the point of production and the point of consumption.

Acquiring and retaining the customers is a very difficult process for the businesses and this can be done by satisfying the customers from the initial promise to the delivery at the door step. For this reason the companies should look at the option of integrated management system which helps in controlling the whole process from sales to delivery of products in order to maximize the efficiency of shopping mall operation. Some online stores give the order to the manufacturer or the distributor to ship and deliver the products directly to the customer without bringing them to the store, in such cases the retailer should be very careful till the delivery is made on his name, if anything goes wrong, the reputation of the retailer is lost.


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