An Example of an E-Commerce Failure and its Causes

Although the E-Commerce had been known of its successfulness after being implemented it but still there are some failures of it. The Pets.com was a key example of companies which plummeted in the Dot.com crash. Pets.com attempted to sell pet accessories and supplies directly to the customer over the web.

Pets.com was started by Greg McLemore in November 1998. It was then purchased in early 1999 by a venture capitalist firm. Amazon.com backed Pets.com raised $82.5 million in an IPO funds in February 2000. However, Pets.com was gone into liquidation in November 6, 2000.

However, lack of experience in management and poorly constituted business plan led to the downfall of Pets.com. Company had raised more than $100 million in supporting only for the advertisement. Besides that, the CEO and the managing body had little or no experience in running the company. This consistent deficiency of experience led to the lack of a sufficient business proposal. Moreover, the company was loosing money on every shipment it made.

Furthermore, the idea of Pets.com was inadequate. The company was choosing a business that is not profitable. Via internet, the customers just can view the picture of the pets but cannot touch the pets by themselves. This makes the customers loss confident to trust on the quality of the pets and also the pets’ health condition. However if customers really want to order for the pets, they also have to wait for several days before the pets delivered to them. Purchasing online offered no real benefit whether it is regards to price or convenience.

That is very important to identify the demand and needs of the consumers as well as understand the market and the needs of the consumers. Before begin the business, Pets.com never survey for the market demand of the pets. The inability to define clearly and to understand the market demand and the needs of the customer and their buying habits also causes the failure of e-commerce.

Although Pets.com shows the failure of e-commerce, but there are also some transactions showing the success of e-commerce such as amazon.com, eBay.com, and Dell. Thus, lots of strategic planning has to be done before implementing e-commerce.
There are few more others website that facing E-Commerce failures. View the link below.

http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6278387-1.html?tag=feat.2