Strategic management: La Redoute

Résumé du document

La Redoute is a French home shopping website that started as a small family business in 1873. It launched itself as mail-order sales, as early as 1922. They expanded to become leaders in their field taking on the French market, as well as some others European countries. Its success is a combined effort of technological innovations, anticipation to needs, logistical reactivity, and dynamism of manpower. In this regard, this combination takes La Redoute to the first place. La Redoute has had for long the ability to respond efficiently to market expectations and to its consumers. For many years, the wide variety of goods offered in its catalogues has been available at affordable prices, keeping its technology up-to-date in the manufacturing of its products. The benefit gained from the favorable tendency of the development of the mail-order sales business, have allowed them to dominate and be the leader in their field.

Extraits

[...] Technological The e-commerce The internet and the innovation it give to the commerce industry have been lately huge. It gives the industry news tools of communication, new way to market their customers, new ways to segment their targets, and new channel of distribution. The reassure of payment The payments through internet remain a major issue and stay for a lot of the consumer is a restraint. In the last years, various conditions of electronic payment on Internet were implemented. The payment by the bank card is the way the most used on Internet. [...]

[...] In this regards, this combination brings La Redoute to first place. Indeed, La Redoute has had for long the ability to respond efficiently to markets' expectations and to its consumers. For many years, the wide variety of goods offered in its catalogues at affordable prices, keeping its technology up-to-date in the manufacturing of its products and the benefit gained from the favourable tendency of the development of the mail- order sales business, have allowed them to dominate and be the leader in their field. [...]

[...] It will be the point of a new departure of a “complicity" and a "proximity” with the customers. A. La Redoute Stores There are 22 stores in France and services such as final alteration of articles, pink tags for sales are proposed. C. La Redoute Website The creation of the internet site made it possible to make more attractive the purchase with various ways of presenting the product. Moreover, the consumer avoids a physical displacement and all the disadvantages that are included and so he can carry out his purchases within its everyday life. [...]

[...] Only 80% of the products of the catalogue are referred there. Moreover, to this percentage are added of articles especially manufactured for the web. D. Group performances Finance Sales volume growth and profitability Source : http://www.dfcg.com/images/echanges/2484-P50A51.pdf First of all we can observe in this graph the constant growth of the business volume and profitability since 2000 until now on. The figures went down twice over this period, once in 2001 and a second time in 2006. These low results were provoked by wrong strategies choices, external or internal environmental effects. [...]

[...] They are mostly specialized so customers can identify themselves to them which are a good way to get new customers. In fact everybody can launch his own company online to sell original clothes. Segmentation of the french demand 78% of french consumed in 2007 through that kind of companies so this market became huge (almost 20 billion euros for 2007!) but who are that customers? Evolution of the profiles The arrival of internet changed the profile of customers. In fact before the average customer was mostly rural and aged (40 years old). [...]