As retail goes through a fundamental shift into the digital world, I believe Ocado's model and the high standards of customer service it provides will see it emerge as a powerful online player.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
More and more, more and more digital, in particular, I think you'll see in our stores next year, as we start combining these digital products and they interface with each other, you'll see that represented in Wal-Mart.
Online business models are still evolving. New and different products and services pop up every day. This gives rise to supporting products and services. A business can make substantial profit by helping others execute their plans for making money.
While stores continue to be a very important part of our business, there is no mistaking the fact that the customers' shopping preference, measured by both traffic and sales, continues to move to a virtual experience.
With lower start-up costs and a vastly expanded market for online services, the result is a global economy that for the first time will be fully digitally wired-the dream of every cyber-visionary of the early 1990s, finally delivered, a full generation later.
A shift toward access and service would deepen the big-box retailer's relationship to customers and win their loyalty. A service focus would bring more rewarding, frequent, and lasting contact with grateful customers.
When I first started doing work on how the Internet is affecting commerce, like a lot of people, I was really excited by this nearly perfect market.
We've been delivering cloud-based services for over a decade, with more than 30 million Intuit customers using offerings across a variety of desktop and mobile devices. The benefits are clear: online experiences are simply better for customer.
The Internet rewards scale; by trading higher up-front costs for lower marginal cost, market leaders can invest in better technology and service. As a result, there is nothing online that is both great in quality and small in scale. Amazon wasn't originally a better bookstore than the small shops we mourn, but it is now.
We all know how the Internet has changed the lives of consumers: it's changed how we communicate, how we shop, how we meet people. It's changed things for businesses too.
Being able to compete for consumers' attention and dollars over the preciousness of access is a thing of the past. Everyone is using the Internet to globally market a product.