E-business@ Grainger

3 Pages 865 Words

E-business @ Grainger
The Internet is growing exponentially and many businesses are throwing up web sites looking to secure their share of E-commerce. Some of these companies have "brick and mortar" establishments and some only exist in the digital world. In either case, their marketing efforts will most likely determine the success of their Internet site. The marketing effort or strategy for their Internet site will most likely be significantly different from that of their "brick and mortar" site. Grainger Industrial Supply is a company that for the past 70+ years has built its business through its "brick and mortar" sites. In 1995, Grainger moved into the digital world and established grainger.com. In 1996 Grainger began taking orders online and fully immersed itself in e-commerce. Still, it was not until 1998 that the company recognized the need for different marketing strategies for the traditional branch based business and the new digital based one.
Grainger Industrial Supply started business in the 1920's selling products through a catalog and over the last 70+ years has steadily grown. The catalog, which once held 100 items now, contains over 81,000 items only a fraction of the total number available for purchase. To support the growing business over 370 branches nation wide have been established along with 10 distribution centers to keep the product flowing. Grainger's marketing strategy for this business has been to grow sales through catalog purchases and personal selling. Approximately 732,000 catalogs were mailed to customers in 1999 and more than 1,800 full time outside sales representatives carry the message to customers that Grainger Industrial Supply is ready to find solutions to their maintenance, repair, and operating (MRO) needs (Grainger, Inc., 2000). Another 10,000 branch based employees stand ready to help the 2.1 million customers in complete their transactions. While direct mailing of the catalog and personal...