Overtime, both internationally and locally, business have advanced into integrating holiday sales in their profits. Every year customers buy gifts and party favors for the holidays, while business restock and market in order to make sales. The holidays have proven to be one of the busiest times, in which consumers spend the most amount of money compare to the rest of the year. However, the amount of money that people spend depends on prices, which then effects businesses supplies and demands. During the holidays, consumer’s demands tends to increase with the quantity of producer supplies. The demand over the holidays is known to greatly increase, starting from Thanksgiving and then gradually ending around New Years. In Boost Holiday Sales With A Strong Supply Chain: Last-Minute Tips, Steve Sensing said, “With a strong plan and team in place, supply chains can be ready for the demands that come with the extended beginning of the holiday shopping season.” Here, Sensing advises business to “be ready for the demand that” will “[begin with] the holiday season.” This is because demand tends to boom during the …show more content…
Nightmares before Christmas by Bob Tedeschi stated that, “According to Jupiter Communications, the top Internet retailers can each expect to process 58,000 orders each day, and they will have to impress upon warehouse workers the urgency of picking, packing and shipping as if the entire business were at stake.” With increasing demand during the holidays, each business strives to meet the overwhelming requests desired by the customers. Both Sensing and Tedeschi stress the importance of stocking in on supplies. When businesses cannot meet the extensive demand, it can negatively impacts the business and it's future sales: “breakdowns [can] jeopardize [a business's] next year's sales,” (Nightmares before Christmas, Bob
Rudarakanchana, D. (2013). E-Commerce retailers foresee strong holiday sales, amazon besting traditional firms. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/e-commerce-retailers-foresee-strong-holiday-sales-amazon-besting-traditional-firms-1468146
Chain stores, such as K-Mart and Wal-Mart swing their doors wide for all deal seekers at around 6 a.m. Individuals will wake up earlier than necessary, drive to these stores, and camp out prior to the stores opening, if only just to ensure they get the best spot in line. Also near this time, various online deals begin. This means before many people wake up on Thanksgiving morning, sales have already started both in store and online. By this standard, the day’s workers have to get to the store hours before it opens to prepare the store for the surplus of people and the chaos that will soon enfold. People should be getting rest or preparing food for their lunches or dinners, but instead they are shopping or working. Retailers place priority on shopping from the moment people wake up until they go to sleep. There is never an emphasis on family throughout the entire day in these chain stores. The madness occurs throughout the entirety of both days, causing lack of family time in both days of the holiday for patrons and
Christmas has consumed itself. At its conception, it was a fine idea, and I imagine that at one point its execution worked very much as it was intended to. These days, however, its meaning has been perverted; its true purpose ignored and replaced with a purpose imagined by those who merely go through the motions, without actually knowing why they do so.
Imagine having to work on thanksgiving. Not only do those people miss out on Black Friday, but also miss out on time with your family. They also get to go to work more than likely sleep deprived, deal with unpleasant customers, and constant lines. Curtis West worked as a Macy’s employee. In his 24 years of work for them he had to work a total of 19 Black Fridays. He said it wasn’t bad when Black Friday started off, because it usually meant going in at 5 am on Friday. Now for sto...
Accommodating customer requirements in most supply chain arrangement requires a forecast to drive the process. (book page 133) When looking into the definition of forecasting which is projecting what is going to be sold (units, seats, rooms etc) it is also important to take into consideration where and when in order to reach the future goals. (book page 133) Since it is argued that effective supply chain and logistical capacity is an important competitive advantage. (Christopher 2005) Where maximizing the revenue is the key element in hospitality sector and for hotel industry there is an increased attention on effective demand management and forecasting for reservation systems. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207002000110)
Starting the day right after Thanksgiving, everybody’s mind is set on one thing: Shopping. People young and old wake up early in the morning to start their holiday shopping. Everyone is looking for the perfect gift for their family and friends. But nobody cares to think of what the employees at their favorite stores think and feel. Shoppers just come inside and turn the store upside down.
The inventory issue also ties in with transportation problems where accurate lead and delivery times are non-existent. The inventory turnover is not at its full potential because if the DC has merchandise yet the stores are stocked out, the inventory is frozen and will become obsolete.
It is seen in everything from the hoarding of material objects to the destruction of friendships, both of which are popular themes when regarding the topic of Black Friday shopping. Black Friday has become Black Thursday, a trend which has only shown up within the last decade. The great American holiday that is Thanksgiving is celebrated because of our gratefulness toward all that we have, a holiday that is meant to be spent gathered around a table of our loved ones. However, the retail holiday that consumes the day afterward has begun to overflow into our gatherings, and it is due to the greed of the American people. Were it not for the market’s demand for earlier sales, stores would not open their sales on Thursday nights. Everyone would simply wait until early the next morning to start off on their shopping extravaganzas, and the sales themselves would likely be far less violent as
Understanding the changes in the market and the growth of e-commerce prompted the organization to invest heavily in its supply chain management forecasting and management system. The development of a network of distribution centers and Direct Fulfillment Centers to position the company to capitalize on the growing e-commerce market indicate a strong understanding of the need to adapt to changing market forces. The company spent over $300 million on new distribution center facilities in 2014 alone, and continues to expand to maintain efficiency in product movement (Cassidy,
Holidays have always been known to affect our consumer culture for many years, but how it all began eludes many people and very few studies have been completed on it. Even though some say that the subject is too broad to precisely identify how holidays, especially Christmas, directly affect our market, I have found that people’s values, expectations and rituals related to holidays can cause an excessive amount of spending among our society. Most people are unaware that over the centuries holidays have become such a profitable time of year for industries that they now starting to promote gift ideas on an average of a month and a half ahead of actual holiday dates to meet consumer demands.
Holiday shopping, for me, is a nightmare because of the abundance of crowds, all of the fighting and competitiveness. I believe those last minute shoppers are the worst, they are the ones that are rude and impatient. For some people, with lots of patience, dealing with holiday shoppers is a good experience. For people like me, who has very little patience, it is a dreadful experience. Another aspect of shopping during the holidays is dealing with tired, overworked and frustrated employees. They are just trying to get their jobs done as quickly as possible, so they can go home to their families. Meanwhile, you have those employees that are cheerful and are eager to help the distraught shoppers. Also, during the holidays horrible accidents can occur often at this time of year. I am going to portray the dangers and mishaps that can occur during the holidays. I am not anti-holiday, but the older I get the more I don't have any desire to be exposed to all of the potential chaos.
One method that Toyota can consider is using the price elasticity of demand to determine whether to increase or decrease the sale price of their automobiles. The responsiveness or sensitivity of consumers to a price change is measured by a product's price elasticity of demand (McConnell & Brue, 2004). Market goods can be described as elastic or inelastic goods as change in quantity demanded for that good. If demand is elastic, a decrease in price will increase total revenue. Even though a lower price would generate lower sales revenue per unit, more than enough additional units would be sold to offset lower price (McConnell & Brue, 2004). In a normal market condition, a price increase leads to a decreased demand, and a price decrease leads to increased demand. However, a change in income affecting demand is more complex.
middle of paper ... ... Kharif, Olga. " Online Retailers: An Early Holiday Peak?." BusinessWeek Online (2009): 5.
Customers are quick to fall into the category of “belonging” found in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. They feel as if in order to belong or to feel loved and respected by others they must try to attain what everyone else has or wants. This is especially true during the holiday season when people feel that what they buy reflects how they feel about the people they buy presents for. If you feel that you must purchase a certain present that you know will be out of stock and hard to find, you are better off shopping online or by mail. Shopping online and by mail is becoming the new wave of shopping and it is a smart, convenient, and timesaving process.
One major concern for many businesses is seasonality. Organizations involved in bathing suit industry, ice-cream, medicine, tea and others face this problem very often. There are periods of time when the demand for a particular product is extremely high. Ice cream for example is a seasonal product that sells mainly during the summer. Ski equipment is gear that sells only during the winter season. There are exceptions of course as medicines and tea. Both can be bought and consumed at any time where as, medicines peak sales in winter and tea also. This does not mean though that the products die during the other seasons. However, it is evident that demand drops. In such cases sales drop too, so does revenue and profits, labor force becomes too much in the organization, costs for supporting depreciating machineries increase especially for the production of limited number of goods, expenses for salaries increase and as a whole the business starts going down. Many businesses face this situation nowadays. The question is how to deal with it. One main way of coping with this problem is cutting expenses.