Information Systems: The Foundation of e-Business, Coursework Example

Introduction

In the last decade, most consumers have shifted their demand and purchasing behaviours and are accustomed to purchasing their needs online. Businesses have also shifted to cater to consumer behaviour change, especially during these uncertain times; thus, it’s significant for companies to connect with their consumers and remain relevant as the global economy changes (Hajarian, et al., 2021). Salesforce survey indicates that more than 85% of consumers carry out online research before making online purchases, especially in websites that take a lion share of 74% and social media adding up to 38% (Guo, Sharma & Rong, 2017, 33). This change calls for businesses to establish a solid online strategy to increase their brand awareness and growth. This research paper covers the importance of digital presence for an organization and how it contributes to the development of business and its associated challenges when establishing an online presence.

Digital presence is essential for an organization since it gives a brand a platform for communicating with its royal consumers, especially in the current technological decade (Luz et al., 2018, 92). Digital presence also offers an opportunity to an organization to set its own narrate regarding its identity as a brand creating differentiation among competitors (Alter, 2002). An organization’s digital presence helps expand since it incorporates areas outside the website and administrative control, such as creating a conversation regarding a brand on social media platforms and online reviews (Muller, 2018, 135). For an organization to be the best forward than its competitors and take a large share of consumers in a competitive market, it should bolster all aspects of its brand online.

Due to advancements in technology in the current decade, there is an enormous opportunity for businesses online; thus, despite an organization’s digital standing, the fact is that customers are currently online. Research conducted in 2019 indicates that approximately 3.8 million Google searches were conducted per minute in that year (Ajina, 2019, 1512). Many of the searches were about getting information regarding local businesses. This data suggests that the internet is a valuable tool for businesses because it provides information and, at the same time broadening the business reaches while enhancing communication with consumers on a global scale.

Fashion Nova Company is an example of a business, in this case utilizing digital presence to enhance its operations and increasing sales. The company operates under five different retail stores in South California. Since most business operations are becoming digitalized, the company has seized this opportunity to use technology and online presence especially social media to enhance business success. The company understands the digital presence increases brand-consumer awareness and strengthens the brand by building up the credibility of its products. To create a strong digital presence, Fashion Nova Company use Instagram as the main advertisement social media handle to facilitate branding as the leading online lifestyle for men and women.

Company Background

Fashion Nova is a specialized lifestyle Company founded in 2006 as a privately owned business managed by Richard Saghian as the CEO.  Fashion Nova is currently the leading quick-to-market apparel and global lifestyle brand. The company specializes in offering a high demand style demand to its customers globally. In 2018, the company earned a title as the number one most searched brand in Google. Fashion Nova is located in Los Angeles, operating under five renowned retail stores within South California. The company’s main products specialize in a collection of men, women, kids, and curves, thus establishing a pop culture phenomenon to reach the staggering social media followers, which is currently over 25 million, including celebrities.

In branding, the company use celebrities to make its product popular and crats awareness since its name has been featured in several songs with celebrities wearing its styles (Bruno, 2020, 15). Some of the stars used by the company to brand its products include; Cardi B and Kylie Jenner and are featured in songs like Tyga, The Game, City Girls, YG, Offset and Saweetie, which are the popular pop hit in the world.

The mission of the company

Working around the clock to offer our customers the world’s hottest styles.

Fashion Nova E-Business model

Fashion Nova company is a Business to Consumer (B2C) business aiming at providing modest stylish dressing to its customers accessible around the world at affordable prices. The company has revolutionized the fashion industry by making its customers part of its successful journey of conversation from concept to delivery (Camargo, 2020). The company’s dominant brands include; Fashion Nova KIDS, Fashion Nova Men and Fashion Nova Women lines which fits everyone regardless of gender, shape and personal style.

Figure.1 Fashion Nova Canvas Model

Fashion Nova Digital Business Status

Fashion Nova maximizes developing technology to incorporate social media in their daily operation, especially marketing of its brand. The company use Instagram as the primary social media to facilitate the branding and main strategy to capture customer attention. The current business market is shifting to online, forcing Fashion Nova to move by technology and establish its online brand in 2013 (Fashion Nova). Fashion Nova has approximately 25million followers on Instagram who includes renowned celebrities, fans and collaborators. Instagram is the current primary connection platform that relates Fashion Nova with its customers, thus the modern marketing strategy (Fashion Nova). No company has used this strategy before, thus making Fashion Nova a unique and loved company by its customers. The use of social media has made the company’s brand identity a presence and a significant source for worldwide shoppers.

Striving for a stronger digital presence for Fashion Nova has opened various doors to communicate with a wider audience which has provided the organization with a foundation to increase business growth.  Instagram presence has given Fashion Nova a brand an opportunity to boost engagement with its target audience, thus building its credibility and maintaining its reputation (Fashion Nova).

Issues Affecting Fashion Nova’s Digital Strategy

Despite the high reputation of Fashion Nova regarding its success by using digital strategies, the company is facing numerous issues. These issues are preventing the company’s growth of digital business as analyzed in Course Work 1 via the SWOT (Appenix 1) and TOWS analysis (Appendix 2). The major issues affecting the company includes; the accusation from its competitors as being unethical while using social media. For instance, some human rights organizations claim that kids’ pictures posted on their social media handles are not consumable.  Another claim from labour organizations is that the company underpays its workers in their factories, especially in Los Angeles, as they try to outcompete their oversee competitors. Globalization is another challenge facing Fashion Nova’s digital marketing strategies. Due to the development of the global market, border laws, politics, and international policies hinder the company’s effectiveness.

Strategies for Curbing the Challenges

To curb this effect, Fashion Nova has to exploit its stronghold, which is Instagram inhibiting further expansion to other upcoming social media. Fashion Nova has an ultrafast growing fashion that is shipped directly to consumers, lowering its products’ cost price. The lower cost makes it difficult for new entrants to establish a wider market. Most products are relatively cheap and affordable since they cost less than $50, such a more popular company. A variety of styles offered by the company creates strength, thus gaining a competitive advantage as explained in Appendices 1.

Recommendation for Fashion Nova e-Business Expansion

The above highlighted issues affect the expansion of the company. However, for e-business strategies to be effectively implemented, it is recommended that Fashion Nova should lay policies that fit the internal situation and operational policies and programs. The company should also rollout strategies like; use of big data, recheck their internal policies and employ blockchain   technologies as discussed further in the subsequent sub-section.

Use of Big Data

As the marketplace for the company is tremendously expanding, the data volume is also skyrocketing; thus, the company should use modern technology to harness the powers of data science (Delanoy & Kastelnik, 2020, 57).  Big data is the future of e-commerce. It enables organizations to improve decision-making, enhance performance, gain competitive advantage branding products, and make the operational process easy. The use of big data by Fashion Nova will allow effective customer analysis and prompt discovery of actionable insights. Big data encompasses velocity, volume and variety thus will provide useful information regarding customer experiences, financial transactions and competitiveness to reduce the competition posed by a new firm’s entry into the market.  Big data will also help improve operational processes and efficiency.

International Polices

Before expanding and operating into a new market, the company, in collaboration with the marketing team, should investigate working e-commerce policies in the country ( Kabriyant et al., 2021, 417). Big data technology can provide the information to reduce cooperation with state policies regarding internet use and cybersecurity laws.

Blockchain Technologies

The technology use hash encryption to secure the company information (Tavares, Correia & Restivo, 2019, 119). The technology helps provide real-time legit information only, thus reducing the cases of ethical concern about Fashion Nova. Since data is stored in a block, thus giving a clear record of transactions on a database, thus showing the minimum pay per employee within the company concerning their work per hour. This technology will help rebuild the brand and reputation of the company, increasing sales and expansion (Linda, Tuunaine & Rossi, 2017).

Social Media Presence of Fashion Nova

Fashion Nova is one of the ultrafast fashion companies with its competitors like Boohoo and Missguided. The company provides more than 700 new fashion styles by week and is relatively cheap since they cost as low as $50 Fashion Nova). During this era of social media, fashions and new trends are constantly popping up, but Fashion Nova is impactful by far. Fashion Nova has a strong presence on Instagram with more than 25 million followers, including celebrities who market their products more (Sinh & Fung, 2021, 45). Despite being the most searched in Google, the company is also the top-performing fashion brand on Instagram; thus, it has a wider market exposure than its competitors like H&M and Zara combined (Fashion Nova).  Fashion Nova still has a solid social media presence since it has not altered its lower price strategy despite harsh economic conditions increasing its product demand each week (Thommes & Hubner, 2018, 1050).  The company’s digital presence has grown greatly, as shown;

Figure.2: Instagram growth for Fashion Nova

Figure.3: Fashion Nova Digital presence concerning competitors

To create a more social media presence, Fashion Nova Company should also expand its presence on Facebook, which has currently gained attention through page and group creation and provides a link to the seller’s inbox for more information and ordering. The company should also work on social media post timing, for instance, celebrations and events season, to catch more customer attention.

Fashion Nova should also dilute its content and expand to cover other industries like sports to increase its awareness in the contemporary business environment. The desired content mix for the company incorporates;

Figure 4. Fashion Nova content mix

To achieve its goal and implement an effective digital presence, Fashion Nova should lay out its plan by use of SOSTAC framework giving guidelines as shown;

Figure 5. SOSTAC framework

Customer Relationship Management Platform for Fashion Nova

Fashion Nova moves with technology thus has purchased software and digital transformation. The software is used by technology executives who have cloud applications and on-prem by more than 800 employees of Fashion Nova from customer references, press releases, case studies, success stories and testimonials (Fashion Nova).  The company uses Oracle NetSuite One world software for enterprise resource management and Shopify plus its e-business from 2017 (Fashion Nova). In 2016 the company purchased Highjump warehouse management software advantage software for managing its stock related to IT decision making (Silva, 2020).

Fashion Nova has invested in e-CRM procurement applications to manage its customer relations, especially connecting suppliers, manufacturing, and customer delivery. The company has established a solid rapport with diverse groups and individuals representing and embodying the brand (Fashion Nova). The team works around the clock to ensure customers are satisfied by providing the current hottest styles. The team listens to customer complaints and works toward an innovative way to improve and secure delivery of the most coveted types to its customers. The company aims to ensure the surrounding community is always satisfied and is confident and included in crucial decision making.

Performance Management

Performance management is a business model that allows employees and management to achieve organizational goals is a better and structured process for employee development (DeNisi & Murphy, 2017, 421). This model is beneficial since it increases competitiveness, create structural flexibility and increases employees motivation (Scheicher et al., 2018, 2209). The company enhances employee growth by encouraging the best results-oriented employees and facilitating the production (Fashion Nova). Due to this model, the company has the best working and friendly environment for talented employees. For motivation purposes, Fashion Nova provides its employees with lunch and clothing discounts. In general, the company uses a SMART performance management strategy.

The company follows the entire process of performance management, which includes;

1. Planning- at this stage, all groundwork for operation are laid by the management team; this includes business strategy and personal objectives.
2. Monitoring- management ensure achievement of the key functions and set goals in the planning stage. Monitoring is conducted either quarterly or annually.

• Reviewing –management and employees review the concluded year to determine if the set goals like customer satisfaction are met.

1. Rewarding- the company is dedicated to awarding the best performers at the end of the review period. The stage aims to motivate its employees. Rewarding involves promotion and special projects reward.

Figure 6: Smart KPI for Fashion Nova

Reporting

Fashion Nova Company use a balanced scorecard as strategic planning and management system to prioritize its projects, services and products. The balanced scorecard also helps the company in measuring and monitoring its progress towards a strategic target. This strategy helps in communicating what the company is corresponding to the market.

Figure 7: Fashion Nova balanced scorecard

For future growth and expansion, Fashion Nova should involve all its stakeholders ranging from customers, suppliers and government, to cover various aspects of the business environment.

Conclusion

Fashion Nova operates in a technological and highly competitive era. The company operates under the e-business industry while striving to be competitive by establishing a solid brand and maximizing social media opportunities. The company uses other strategies like pricing to attract millennial target customers. Through technology, the company launched its online stores in 2013, and it has used Instagram as its main marketing social media platform gaining massive followers. Social media presence is the primary strength of Fashion Nova which has helped exploit the ever-growing online market. The strategy used by Fashion Nova has never been used by any other company, thus making it popular, however with various challenges like ethical concerns.

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