Zulily.com, based in Seattle, is a well-established and ingenious corporation extending its online services to mothers, its target audience, as a leader in the retail market. The company provides unique and branded boutique articles for babies, kids, and mothers including children’s outfits, maternity articles, items for a baby shower, and amazing clothing options for newborn babies. This paper answers the questions provided in the Zulily case study assignment in a fun and interactive way possible.
Question no. 01-09: Go to zulily.com and register. Identify features of the site that make shopping entertaining to mothers and explain why those features entertain. Explain why this is important to the Zulily business model.
Sign-in and Registration
Before a visitor buys an article from the site, Zulily asks him/her to register by providing his/her email address and creating a strong password to stay safe and convenient while shopping online. The online brand offers sign-in and subscription to their newsletter services that come along with numerous gifts, free shipping, and the best deals every day. The shoppers can download the Zulily app, register themselves with their email ids, and enjoy the safe and fun shopping experience virtually.
Interactive Features of Zulily.com
The website is designed in a fun and inviting way. It has a visually appealing appearance with a large array of categories where a shopper can search for women’s clothing, shoes and other accessories for children. A buyer can also look for options for his/her garden, or home, gifts for men, beauty and wellness items, toys and games for children of different age groups, and clearance sales. It has easy navigation and clear shopping processes that make it easy to browse and purchase the products the shopper looks for. The shoppers at Zulily.com feel safe shopping online because the website has a secure checkout that is also easy to navigate. I have also traced that the website uses several different security technologies to ensure the safety of shoppers’ personal information so that they can place orders quickly and safely.
Zulily’s Business Model
Zulily offers an interactive business model that targets particular audiences including women and kids, so the corporation attempts to make the website model fascinating for customers. The designers of the Zulily.com website have put everything in place in a large, curated, and well-arranged order where a shopper can easily look for his/her desired article in the catalog without zooming in on each article. Thus, it does not require a visitor to click each item and zoom it to clearly have an idea of what the company offers. Furthermore, the website has themed catalogs towards the bottom where parents, as well as children, can pick from the dashboard as if they select articles from the real corporate store. The system uses adorable babies and beautiful mothers as model selections to make it easy for the audience of the site to acquire high-end clothing, toys, and accessories at major discounts. In my opinion, this strategy helps the brand earn more revenue than other competitive corporations in the market.
Question no. 01-10: Go to Nordstrom.com and shop for children’s clothes. How does the Zulily shopping experience differ from that at Nordstrom? Briefly describe the advantages and disadvantages of each type of experience.
Nordstrom.com is vastly different from Zulily.com as well as shares a similar proposition with noticeable variances. Nordstrom has a clearly defined shopping experience, whereas Zulily’s shopping experience is not as neatly packaged. It appears that Zulily’s shopping experience is more like that of a search engine rather than that of a brick-and-mortar website where customers can search for and browse products. The shipping process at Zulily is not simple as the corporation makes and asks brands to prepare bulk orders which takes a lot of time. Zulily shipping time frame is also different as compared to the other competitive brands in the market as an average customer has to receive the order in about 10 to 11 days and sometimes this timeframe may vary depending upon the item and the specific details about it. So, a shopper needs to expect the shipping of items to take longer than for other sites and especially Nordstrom.com.
Another comparative service between Zulily.com vs. Nordstrom.com is that Zulily allows shoppers to easily and quickly find products and choose a fitting, piece of clothing that is closest to their expectations and their expectations match their experience at the shopping mall. There is no such experience for Nordstrom because Nordstrom’s staff is experienced and knowledgeable when it comes to finding the right piece of clothing for the customer. Furthermore, I found Nordstrom’s customer service staff typically more friendly than Zulily’s as at Nordstrom you would spend your time with salespersons or the customer service personnel. Contrary to that, at Zulily, you would spend your time on a website, select items, and fill the cart by yourself. However, the selection of clothing is limited, but the website is easy to navigate as compared to Nordstrom which has a complex system and requires a shopper to know what he/she is looking for before he/she actually finds it.
Question no. 01-11: If you were a buyer for Zulily, what data would you like to have about customer purchase habits?
As I visited Zulily’s website, I was curious to see and know what aspects of consumer behavior the data would reveal. It is pertinent that a review slot on the website would be my first resort to have data about customer purchase habits. I would love to use social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram to get a hold of how often customers engage with the brand via digital platforms or what number of customers approaches the website directly. This data will help show the website’s reach to new and existing customers, the exact type of products the customers are interested in, the amount they will spend on different clothing items, and from what strata they are coming from. Later data analysis might include ways of highlighting the customer profile and their characteristics to ensure the credibility of the reviews. As a buyer, this data or information will be useful as it would help me build more and better merchandising campaigns for the brand. Having these data will also allow for offering better incentives for the customers to buy more products from the website.
Question no. 01-12: If you were a buyer for Zulily, what data would you like to have about past vendor performance?
If I were a buyer, I would research the company’s website with a well-understood mission, transparency, and strong competitive edge that the brand Zulily offers to its past vendors. This data would provide a sense of the state of the industry by analyzing customer acquisition strategies, competitive initiatives, product development trends, and expected future business growth of Zulily as a leader business model in the retail market. Moreover, the data I would like to have about past vendors is the earning history of each vendor. I would like to know how long each vendor has been in business and the sales revenue they have earned during that time. Moreover, the data I would like to collect include the prices at which the items were sold and the profits generated by each vendor for the company. This data would help me evaluate whether or not I want to continue doing business with a particular vendor in the future as having this information would make it easier for me to make my business decisions.
Question no. 01-13: In the general course of life, 2-year-old boys become 3-year-old boys, 4-year-old girls become 5-year-old girls, and so on. How can Zulily use this not-so-remarkable phenomenon to customize a customer’s shopping experience? What data would you need to do this?
The general course of life is that children become more and more similar to one another as they grow older. This is known as maturation. In Zulily, this phenomenon is used to customize the shopping experience for customers of different ages in the company. Using data about the different ages of the children and their specific needs according to the age, Zulily can tailor the shopping experience to meet the specific needs of that age group. For example, if a 5-year-old girl is shopping at Zulily, the site can tailor the experience to appeal to that particular age group by offering products that are aimed at that age group. This tailoring can be done through the use of products like toys, accessories, games, clothing, and books available on Zulily’s website. These products would need to be developed and marketed according to each age group so that customers can use them during their shopping experience at Zulily.
Question no. 01-14: As a business professional, it is likely information systems professionals will ask you data questions like those in questions 1-11 to 1-13 above. What is the best way for you to respond? Verbally in a meeting? With a written document? With a sketch or diagram? How will you know if you have been understood?
The best way for a business professional to respond to the above-listed questions is through effective communication verbally with professional answers. For that, I should be articulate and confident before information systems professionals to be able to convey the message. When answering the questions, it is pertinent to include all the facts about the company, system, shipping processes, supply system, and returns policy of the brand while having a face-to-face conversation opportunity. Meanwhile, written documents, catalogs, visual representations of the products, and reviews in written form would help the doubts be cleared on the professionals’ end. Data questions can be difficult to answer because there is no one right way instead I would like to focus on the most important points regarding the queries about Zulily to be sure to communicate the thought process in verbal interaction. Zulily’s brand is unique and offers a great value proposition to customers that can be taken into consideration in order to effectively answer any data questions that would come my way. In a nutshell, infographics combining verbal communication and graphics cover the best practice of communication when it comes to interacting with information systems professionals.
Question no. 01-15: At the April 2015 stock price of $14.59, the market values Zulily at $1.86B. This is a big drop from the February 2014 high of $68.39 a share price. Describe zulily’s principal assets. Does a $1.86B valuation seem appropriate, given your description of the company’s assets? Justify your answer.
Zulily, a riskier online retailing company experienced a drop in market value from its peak (February 2014) of $68.39 per share to $14.59. The company has recently gone public and the stock has undergone a great deal of volatility over the past six months. Zulily’s assets include technology, physical assets, logistics, intangible assets, market-based assets, and capital assets. In this specific instance, Zulily could focus on the market-based assets and analyze the price and profitability of the stock. After looking into the factors, Zulily could estimate the stock value and analyse the market-based assets including customers, stock management, third-party management, consistency of supply, and quality control. Zulily has a high valuation and the company’s stated cash flows show strong growth. After the biggest drop, some investors may believe that the company is too risky to venture capital but in my opinion, Zulily is worth more due to the high valuation of the brand. As I said earlier, the assets of the Zulily company include technology, intangible assets, physical assets, capital assets, and so on are the reasons why Zulily is so valuable.
