Walmart is building up its ability competing with Amazon in the online retailer field through acquisition of Jet.com and installation of new warehousing technologies such as automated product sorting and improved item tracking. It’s like two giants coming from different sides of the world, one rises from virtual online marketplace and the other has been dominated real thousands of real shops and stores, wrestling with each other. An interesting article from Forbes gives us the insight; whoever wants to win this battle must know the following three things: 1. knowing your own advantages and your customers, 2. establishing a robust and flexible supply chain, and 3. discovering new services in retails and dominating it.
To design a set of strategies that address the above three concerns, one thing cannot be ignored is all about information. How to obtain customer and market information, how to analyze and predict where are the demands, and how to storage goods to optimized delivery efficiency, each one of them are big problems waiting to be solved. We are so lucky to live in a world with computers hence tools and algorithms for solving problems are possible. Tools and strategies are not enough, without precise execution, it is very likely to repeat Canada Target’s story.