Operations and logistics management - Essay Example

as internet as a channel of business and communication has gained a strong footing, internet retailing is becoming an option to expand business across new horizon; synergies need to be established in the multi channel retailing strategy or moving across boundaries with pure brick and mortar model. With huge business empire build up decision should made with respect to the organizational structure, centralization vs decentralization of operations, use of technology in the operations such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), data mining, point of sales (POS) terminals etc.

eBay transformed this experience into a virtual market place. The internet marketplace as an industry is rapidly growing, and the industry is becoming very competitive, with loads of user demand increasing continuously. This use of technology revolutionized the brick and mortar business concept to the virtual network of business. Hence, then evolved various business models for the online business solutions; three of them mainly include – the e-commerce model, the content-rich model and the membership/subscription model.

The companies selling products, goods and services over the internet, make use of the e-commerce business model; providing advertising spaces on websites that attract visitors and subscribers is the domain of content rich model and lastly, web pages that provide subscription and membership to access different parts or items contained on the site by charging a certain amount of fee is another of the model. With the passage of time the aggregator business model, with aggressive infrastructure built up by many entrants to the industry gained popularity – but not all survived.

The need be achieving and capitalizing on economies of scale for myriad of services to be offered at the cheapest offers to the customer. eBay provides both product and service. The service as distinguished from a good has certain characteristics viz. intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity or