Circuit City: a model of online retail which technology and wrong management killed its lifespan

Table of content 

Executive summary………………………………………………………….3

Description of the business………………………………………………….4 

Description of the industry………………………………………………….5 

Technology Plan……………………………………………………………5 

Marketing Plan……………………………………………………………...6 

Financial Plan…………………………………………………………….....7 

Organizational Plan…………………………………………………………7 

Operations Plan………………………………………………………………8 

Summary …………………………………………………………………….8 

References…………………………………………………………………..9 

Executive Summary 

The United State consumer electronics (CE) retailing industry has experienced severe fluctuation in the previous decade. The continuous forces of product innovation, as well as technological change, has progressively reshaped the CE market topography making the whole CE retail businesses to meet challenges head-on across various edges. The issues facing consumer electronics retail businesses include the initiation of the economic and refined American consumer population as a result of the great recession — the weakening pricing clashes between three distinctive retail trade designs, discount, pure-play versus the online retail. The online retailer enjoyed a substantial competitive gain owing to reduced overhead and tax regulations that have not hindered the new policies of the retail market — lastly the continuous changes and demands by the millennial which relates to customer preferences. 

Consequently, the Consumer Electronic retailers are left seeking a haven for their trap. In the recent past, the economic failure of one of largest player Consumer Electronic retailers Circuit City, and the slower exorbitant growth of other main players. T he Consumer Electronics retailers or divisions of businesses, for instance, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, etc. needs a re-evaluation and re-alignment of their strategies to cope with the new realities of the retail industry (Tidd & Bessant, 2014) . . 

Description of the business 

Circuit City Corporation is a privately owned American online consumer electronics retail business, owned by Ronny Shmoel in 2016 as part of an asset of the brands and trademark rights bought from Systemax. From 2009 the Circuit City Corporation earlier operated as the CircuitCity.com website up to 2012, when it merged with the TigerDirect brand. Originally Samuel Wurtzel founded Circuit City in 1949 as the Wards Company ( Little, Go, & Shuk-Ching Poon, 2017). The initial business carried out its operation across America and established as a home electronics retail model in the 1970s. After several successful purchases, the Ward Company extended to the NYSE where it changed its brand name to Circuit City Stores Inc.

Mission Statement of Circuit City

“To make sure that we are all working in the same direction, each of us must live and breathe Circuit City's values and use them as a guidepost for our actions and decisions Hisrich & Kearney, 2013).”  

Respect: Circuit City values their associates . They expect that each associate show respect and value effort, knowledge, and the diversity that others bring.  

Teach: The product experiences should be a learning point for those around them to benefit from these lessons (Tidd & Bessant, 2014) . 

Engage: the business creates an environment that engages their associates and invests their ideas in the future of the business. 

Simplify  Use your fresh perspective to look, ask, and learn (Eesley & Miller, 2017). We never stop looking at the way we approach our business and ways to simplify processes.  

Maintaining high integrity  We expect all of our associates to maintain the highest of ethical standards. Our integrity must never be compromised . Integrity is the foundation on which all other values are placed .  

Also, the Business Model, the Circuit City, Integrates into its business is retail and Bricks-and-clicks model. Circuit City that has both online and offline presence authorize clients to buy goods from the physical locations at the same time place the order online (Tidd & Bessant, 2014) . This model gives flexibility to the business since it is present online for customers who cannot access the brick-and-mortar stores. It also purchases products from the distributors and directly sells it the customers 

Description of the industry 

The Circuit City back in the day was like the present Amazon. The brick and motor store had a very bright future until the emergence of new business in the near end of 20th century the with much better strategies than the Circuit City. The Circuit City could not keep up the pace of the advancing business who capitalized the technology to their advantage. Considering these new competitors had the same business model as Circuit City. The latest trend of the retailers of consumer electronic is p ersonalization which will also live into the future ( Little, Go, & Shuk-Ching Poon, 2017) . In essence, personalization enables customers to build products experience and tailor them to the conclusive specification. Amazon will remain on top of the competitive light for as long as possible because it understands the modern consumer's interest on the products thus ensure that the consumer has lifelong experience with the products and services it offers.

Technology Plan 

Circuit City as online retail will mostly utilize the internet to conduct its business from marketing, product promotion, payment of goods and for customer inquiries. The business has to be constantly up to date with the rapidly changing technology to address all it needs. In today revived Circuit City business, the manager has to conduct technology comparison to see which best suit the business. Of course the businesses today may adopt a complete online approach, this makes the business inflexible as not all consumers use the internet to place orders, others would want to visit the store physically (Tidd & Bessant, 2014) . Thus it all goes down to preferences. The revive Circuit City still have plenty of room for improvement as per it commercialization requirement the business can decide to diversify its products and also come up with a unique private label that would boost their brand identity. Also to be included in the technology plan the business ought to have learned from their past mistake so their priority is seeking technology that will enhance users experience and be also more interactive with its customers. 

Marketing Plan 

As the Circuit City mostly relied on the online retailing, it should consider the market segment. The business needs to conduct a sort of market research to identify their market segmentation (Hisrich & Kearney, 2013). Considering that technology affects the consumer segmentation differently, the online shopper are mostly the younger population whereas the older population who do not constantly use the internet will prefer visiting the shops physically. The one pricing strategy that the Circuit employed is one step forward to promote their product as it captures consumer loyalty. With no differing prices on the manner they shop customer, the business promotes itself both online and in the stores. Additionally, Circuit city carried out its sale promotion in a various way, for instance, discounted coupons, promo-codes and employed tagline as a form of advertisement for their products. 

Financial Plan 

The revived Circuit City is just almost like a new business except for its brand name which remained after being sold to a new owner. The Sources of Circuit city funding is majorly from the retail sales and the second sources arise from its subsidiaries. The net income of the business is further used to fund other projects to improve brands which form a cycle within the business. 

Organizational Plan 

The Circuit City has presently acquired private ownership which was bought from the previous owner, its previous status being a public incorporated company. The new manager of Circuit City Ronny Shmoel has a specialization in marketing and retailing background (Eesley & Miller, 2017). Like other staffs in different businesses, the roles and responsibilities of employees in Circuit City is to run the in-house activities. As online retail, it contains department under which employees work for instance the marketing department we have, website managers, content writers who write marketing communication and customer care (Hisrich & Kearney, 2013). All these employees under marketing ensure the marketing and publicity concerns of the business are at par . The organizational structure of Circuit City is a functional structure which is bureaucratic nature where each department has a manager in a specific field. The business structure is divided into the company specialty .

Operations Plan 

The company carried its operation mostly as a homegrown based business in the United States and only extended it internationally to the Canadian markets. The operation thus displays there is a larger room for business expansion and spread globally to Latin, Asian African markets ( Little, Go, & Shuk-Ching Poon, 2017). The business as online retail has its product and services flow from the online market to the physical store and also their national landline which facilitate the flow of order. 

Summary 

Circuit City is just but a model of online retail which technology and wrong management killed its lifespan. Other business may fall into the same trap if they go ahead to overlook the challenges it experienced. To compete in the global scale, the manager should ensure that the business health is compact to remain in the business. In a nutshell, Consumer Electronics retailers should embrace innovativeness to create corporate functional models that match with their needs, and also it must consider the business future. Circuit City in a way lost its focus as it concentrated too much on worries of the new technology, forgetting other important aspects of the business, for instance, consumer experience and employees commitment.

References

Hisrich, R. D., & Kearney, C. (2013).  Managing innovation and entrepreneurship . Sage Publications. 

Little, S. E., Go, F. M., & Shuk-Ching Poon, T. (2017). Global innovation and entrepreneurship.  Cham: Palgrave Macmillan . 

Tidd, J., & Bessant, J. (2014).  Strategic innovation management . John Wiley & Sons. 

Eesley, C., & Miller, W. (2017). Impact: Stanford University's Economic Impact via Innovation and Entrepreneurship.