In my last post I wrote about the issues that some of the large retailers had, in order to cope with the online demand on Black Friday. I also questioned the ability of the same retailers to deliver on time.

It was reported that M&S was Hit By Pre-Christmas Online Delivery Delays and that  “share price has fallen 3% as investors fear overall sales will be affected”.

Unfortunately, M&S aren’t an isolated case, as written by Zoe Wood in the Guardian, Christmas shopping surge puts retailers under strain online. In this article, we learn that Tesco Direct, Debenhams, and many other retailers are trying to clear the backlog of orders whilst impacting the delivery date of new orders.

Taking in consideration the entire commerce chain, including delivering on the retailer’s commitments:

Should the retailers be taking orders when they can’t deliver one time ?

A purchase isn’t just made of the item sold. Especially when everyone can compare online. The product is made of the online experience, the quality of the communication during the sale process until and after delivery, the delivery itself (timing, product condition, item missing) and the after sale services such as customer services and guarantee (for example John Lewis offers free extension guarantees).

Should the retailers adapt their online stock levels to their actual capacity to deliver on time and on quality? Or the other way around, should they adapt their delivery capacity to meet the demand? In other words, does it make sense to sell 100 items when they know that they can deliver only 50 on time and on quality?. Customers get frustrated.

The question is, would you accept as a customer to be informed during the online shopping process that your items can’t be delivered in store on time, potentially too late for xmas? Or is it an accepted inconvenience that the rebate offsets?

They are  number of lessons to be learnt from the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.  In particular, the operating costs incurred in order to minimise the delivery delays, coupled with the reduced margin and the impact on the delivery chain during the following days and weeks.

Overall, £810m was spent online just on Black Friday. It will be interesting  to know the total amount spent online until Christmas, hence the real impact on the bottom line for the entire peak trading period.