AuchanDrive, E-ZPass and Amadeus cases

Résumé du document

The drive-in hypermarket Auchan Drive is a concept which was launched in Leers (north of the France) in 2000. This new service offers the customer the possibility to place an order on the website www.auchandrive.fr (or on a terminal located into the stores), and to pay for it by credit card directly online. The client decides the date and the hour of delivery, and chooses the Auchan Drive nearest to his home. When the customer comes to the drive-in, he swipes his credit card into the electronic device at the entrance, and gets back a printed ticket with a bar code. Finally, the client simply needs to park his car in the delivery area, where his order will be loaded into his trunk in less than 5 minutes, in exchange for the ticket. Today, 6 000 products are available on the website and 15 Auchan Drive's are established in France .

This concept is a partial e-business model with only one degree of digitization: that of the process. The product and the delivery are physically threaded by Auchan employees . This is a click and mortar organization, using the Auchan hypermarket as an additional marketing channel.

The benefit that Auchan Drive derives from this e-business model is an economy of time, making the purchase process easier for the customers. The clients save time when they order directly on the web (no wasted time into the stores), as well as when they pick up their order (goods are loaded into the cars and clients stay at the wheel).

Extraits

[...] Then, they receive a small electronic tag to place into their car. Each time a driver fitted with an E-Pass will pass through a toll, the fees will be automatically deducted of its account. Furthermore, thanks to the radio frequency identification tag located inside the electronic device, the driver is immediately recognized, what saves the lost time at the toll (queue, time to look for money On most of the highway, the drivers have to slow down the speed (between 5 and 15 mph) but some recent toll are fitted out an Express E-ZPass: there is no longer a need to decelerate[10]. [...]

[...] Finally, the E-ZPass solution increases the number of drivers on not free road because there is no more waiting time due to traffic jam at the toll (what increases the revenues). Advantages of the E-ZPass solution - Improvement of the traffic flow by reducing traffic jam at tolls. - By reducing the toxic gas emission (cars and trucks are not waiting hours in the queue), this system is one solution to preserve the environment. - Possibility to get real time information about the traffic status. [...]

[...] In addition to these facilities, many roads offers discounts for the drivers using the E-ZPass lane, without any previous enrollment. Finally, other non-toll uses have been implemented for the E-ZPass such as the payment of parking (mainly for the airports parking). According to the Port Authority of N.Y.C, the payment by E-ZPass Plus reduces the time of the transaction of 15 seconds[11]. It's not a lot but in America, time is money! Even if the company uses some physical agencies as a canal of distribution, most of the transactions are realized on the website. [...]

[...] According to opinion of consumer[8], the range of product are not enough deep (especially for the fresh food). Furthermore, it is impossible for the client to choose the fruits and vegetables. Finally, if a product is not available at the delivery date, Auchan Drive substitutes it by another one. At best, because many consumers complain because some products are sometimes missing when they come back at home Second topic: E-ZPass, USA Introduction The E-ZPass Interagency Group (IAG) is a governmental agency created in 1990 which gathers the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. [...]

[...] The next step is the reception of the E-ZPass tag by the member. To be able to use the service, the client has just to attaches the tag to the windshield of its car. In the toll fitted out an E-ZPass service, an antenna on the overhead structure sends out continually a signal which is able to detect RFID signal; when a driver passes through the toll, he is recognized by its tag. Then, the tag code is send to an external data center which collects the codes. [...]