Should retailers abandon their stores and jump head-first into e-commerce -- or revitalize them to withstand home-shopping temptations? Should manufacturers set up their own direct-to-consumer operations? Is there any compromise solutions? E-Shock supplies the hard-hitting answers. Written by an international business strategist and Internet guru, this enlightening, practical book supplies:
-- An astute analysis of the far-reaching impact of the e-commerce revolution
-- 30 essential survival rules for retailers and manufacturers
-- The ES Test that pinpoints products and services best suited for online selling
-- Guidelines for identifying the right strategy for a specific company
-- Profiles of 8 innovative companies that have pioneered change
-- Plus many more tools for preparing for the new challenges of the electronic age.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
E-shock value,
By A Customer
This review is from: E-Shock : The New Rules--Internet Strategies for Retailers and Manufacturers (Paperback)
Panic! Alert! Paradigm shift! "E-shock" originates from that obnoxious time period when everyone with a mouth, pen or posterior spouted Darwinist warnings of extinction for any business that failed to embrace the Internet and its associated New Economy. "The new game in town means some of the traditional barriers are breaking down and new ones are taking their place," de Kare-Silver states. "Understand these new rules and win. Ignore them and die."DIE! "E-shock" is clearly intended to arouse Joe Businessman's survival instincts. For a college geography student like me, it fails to get the adrenaline pumping. Fortunately, it is a quick read. De Kare-Silver writes about modern consumer time poverty -- one of the reasons you're reading this may very well be that you're too busy and pressured to bother making it to the bookstore -- and the book is thus written for the person on the go. Its never ending bullets, lists and overviews would tidily transfer to a PowerPoint presentation. In fact, I think I would rather have received the book in such a form. Without going into gruesome detail, "E-shock" is concerned with the implications of the e-commerce revolution for the retailer, manufacturer and business in general. The Internet has spawned a New Economy and with it come all sorts of changes that you'd better consider. You need to change your operations. You need to rethink your strategies. But don't worry; consultants such as De Kare-Silver are out there to help you. You need to realize that E-commerce investments can actually be earnings diluting. You should forget PE ratios when evaluating an e-business. You should consider internet flotations as part of the formula for delivering shareholder value. You should also do away with commas. "E-shock" finds this form of punctuation antiquated in the context of the new business-writing environment. When I read sentences such as, "Bursting onto the scene in 1994 it has caused a major rethink on how to sell products and services to consumers," I can't go any further without penciling in a comma between '1994' and 'it.' But I'm just a stodgy old dinosaur lumbering along shackled to the Old Punctuation. If I had an ounce of self-preservation, I would adapt and invest in the New Punctuation, which I suspect goes something like this: 1) Because they take up time and space do not bother with commas and in order to remain competitive you may have to do away with semicolons hyphens and 10% of your periods. 2) Not only is "e-" an acceptable prefix to any word, concept or phrase, it is the New Prefix. It is the e-new e-way of e-doing e-things so e-get e-with e-the e-program e-. 3) A major issue will be punctuation distribution. In a virtual sentence, how do you deliver your periods, semicolons and exclamation points to the sentence's consumer? You may have to try novel approaches such as starting sentences with ampersands or centralizing all of your paragraph's periods next to one word with a high demand, such as "the." 4) Some forms of punctuation will be easier to adapt to the virtual environment than others. A big factor is familiarity. Consumers will be quite willing to see periods, commas and question marks in their virtual sentences, but more obscure things like tildes (~) will seem less trustworthy to online readers. 5) Accept the fact that cannibalisation will occur. For example, semicolons may be used in many instances in which a period would suffice instead. You may not use as many periods as you used to, but that's simply part of the New Punctuation. I hope you invest in this book so that you'll be more prepared for these sort of changes. As de Kare-Silver says, "It's a bit like staking out the ground for the future and the market recognises to survive ... [one must] do that and to do it now. Like the gold rush, there is only going to be so much territory, so ... [one must] stake out [one's] share." Of course, the gold rush only lasted a few years. This book is already in its second edition and I wouldn't be e-shocked if it needs updating again soon.
4.0 out of 5 stars
E-Shock: The New Rules,
By Lu, Hung-yi (University of Hawaii at Manoa) - See all my reviews
This review is from: E-Shock : The New Rules--Internet Strategies for Retailers and Manufacturers (Paperback)
In the book, E-Shock: The New Rules ¡V Internet Strategies for Retailers & Manufacturers, the author, Michael de Kare-Silver, not only presents a lot of e-commerce pioneer¡¦s examples, but also quotes data (from leading journals and newspapers) and interviews (from business executives and think tanks) to help answer those questions. As a whole, the book is not a theoretical but practical, up-to-date volume and, especially, will help retailers and manufactures answer whether their companies are ready for virtual selling and how to proceed opportunities for e-commerce. De Kare-Silver acknowledges that forecasting future market development can never be an exact science, but he argues that he has been enormously encouraged in his conclusions and convictions by a number of people. In the first part of the book, de Kare-Silver cites a bunch of reports from newspapers and magazines (e.g. Business Week, Reuter News Service, etc), interviews of CEOs (e.g. Bill Gates) and research or report (e.g. A.C. Nielsen research) to support his assertions. For example, he quotes Gate¡¦s words: ¡§The internet is a tidal wave. It will wash over nearly all industries drowning those who don¡¦t learn to swim in its wave¡¨ (p. 40). Moreover, Jagadish Sheth, professor of marketing in Goizueta business school, indicates that ¡§the combination of technology sophistication, equipment power and ease of use plus the supporting infrastructure will make electronic purchasing widespread in the U.S. by the year 2005¡¨ (P. 42). Those consolidated assertions give de Kare-Silver a stronger ground to say that it¡¦s time to go shopping on line. Also, de Kare-Silver believes, ¡§survival of the fittest.¡¨ Timing, keen observation and real-time decisions decide if you will be a winner or a loser in the future e-shopping competition. So he also gives the readers some innovative companies (e.g. 1-800-FLOWER, First Direct, Levi Strauss) that pioneered changes in the electronic selling arena. They have a history of innovation and they are learning on e-commerce at every step. He strongly recommends that it is important to be at the forefront as the internet develops. That is to say, you lose one minute, and you may lose forever in the e-shopping era. Then, he tries to analyze the far-reaching impacts of the e-commerce revolution and provides essential survival rules for retailers and manufacturers. Facing up to the skyrocketing growth in online shopping, he argues that some of old business administration models are no longer applicable, and as a result, winners in the future need to learn new rules early and learn to play by them. The soaring growth in e-shopping has generated a new set of survival rules for retailers and manufacturers. De Kare-Silver tries to pinpoint some rules and strategies for those who are interested in e-shopping to abide by. Some of these new rules include ¡§be ready to cannibalize,¡¨ ¡§be prepared to become a multi-channel operator,¡¨ ¡§get on interactive TV,¡¨ ¡§think in terms of convenience, convenience, convenience,¡¨ ¡§create a sense of community service¡¨ and the like, is a blueprint for the retailers doing business in the 21st century. Indeed, he tells retailers and manufacturers how to seize the competitive edge in time to help their business. De Kare-Silver highly recommends retailers and manufactures take ES (electronic shopping) TEST into account when propelling e-shopping. The ES TEST, which provides simple step approaches (including product characteristics, familiarity and confidence, and consumer attributes) will help the retailers and manufactures to evaluate products and services best suited for online selling. As De Kare-Silver put it, ¡§the marketplace is dynamic, things are changing rapidly¡K, those who watch their marketplaces carefully and evaluate the trends rigorously can put themselves in the best possible position to respond electronically if and when demand The book¡¦s most intriguing chapter is ¡§ the next wave in e-shopping.¡¨ De Kare-Silver reminds us of thinking about the next wave in e-shopping in the last part of the book. In addition to sophisticated consumer demand, rapidly improving technologies are the key forces driving the changes in shopping habits and the arrival of new wave in e-shopping. With the development of digital TV, de Kare-Silver wonders if this new technology will be the winner of e-shopping in the future. Consequently, he interviews leading experts and commentators including Curtis Kopf ... Mike Nevin (from Dixons), Bruce Lynn (from Microsoft¡¦s Web TV), and James Ackerman & Julian Eccles (From BiB TV) to help answer the question. They dare not disagree that the wave of the future in e-shopping is digital TV because many large corporations are investing heavily in TV interactive shopping channel. Digital TV, undoubtedly, will become omnipresent quickly and play a significant role in e-shopping in the future. By and large, the author prefers giving empirical cases to building theories, so it is easy to read even though your background is not related to business. The rules or strategies previously mentioned teach retailers and manufactures how to respond to changes and competition. This book targets retailers and manufactures: how to make profits and survive in the changing market. These are the important issues the author discusses, but I think the author can do more. I suggest that the author can mention the issue of business ethics. Are there any new strategies or rules that may invade consumer¡¦s privacy? Should retailers and manufactures adapt all the data of consumers they get on line for any purpose? These questions are needed to discuss more for developing a sound e-shopping environment. Business rules and strategies are necessary, however, business ethics cannot be neglected, either. The author also mentions a bunch of examples from the UK, U.S., and some from Japan. However, people in different countries, of course, do not share the same attributes. Undoubtedly, you cannot assure if the rules and strategies workable in the western world will fit in the rest of the world. If the author can compare the differences of e-shopping experiences in different countries and create some alternative rules and strategies, I would be further likely to back him up.
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