The blank B2C online sales scorecard shown in Table 4-9 can be used by a firm to summarize the impact of online sales on each of the areas identified earlier.
The value of setting up online sales is not the same in every industry. Whereas Amazon and Blue Nile have seen their profits increase after going online, Webvan and many other online grocers have gone out of business. The scorecard in Table 4-9 can be used to understand how online sales affect the performance of different supply chain networks. In the next section, we apply the online sales scorecard to several examples.
Using Online Sales to Sell Computer Hardware: Dell
The online channel has proved very effective for the sale of computer hardware and by 2009 represented about half the sales in this category. After more than a decade of tremendous success selling its PCs only online, Dell started to sell PCs through retail stores such as Wal-Mart in 2007. Since about 2005, Apple has had considerable success selling its phones and computers through retail stores. This raises the question of the relative value of the online channel and retail stores for selling computer hardware.
To make this comparison, we compare Dell’s supply chain for each channel. As shown in Figure 4-11, when using the online channel, Dell typically starts assembly after receiving a