What is Brick and Click?

Evaluate the use of e-commerce in a ‘brick and click’ organisation (D1)

A brick and click store allows the customer to either shop at their physical store or their online store.

Brick

A brick organisation is a store in a high street that you can physically walk into. Some brick organisations tend to also have an online site so they can be there for customers 24/7.

Without a brick option for the business; the store would be able to sell to a broader range of customers. However, none of these customers can go to the brick store to assess the quality and size of the products, they would only be able to assess it through the product description and image which sometimes can be wrong and misleading.

Click

A click organisation is an e-commerce site that requires you to click to interact with the online store. An example of a click organisation is play.com and amazon; they deal with customers online and not actually in a store. They are still open 24/7 and accept payment all day everyday even if no one is at work.

Advantage

• Don’t have to travel to the store.
• Instant access 24/7.
• Be in a comfort of your own home.

Disadvantage

• You cannot assess the product physically so you know the size/material etc.
• You may have to wait longer to get it delivered.
• Product description may be misleading; size/quality may not be the same.
• You need to connect to the internet.

Without a click option for the business; the store would only be available to local customers. However, you won’t need to pay maintenance on delivering the products.

Cuckoo

Cuckoo is a small business selling clocks and watches. But hoping to become a brick and click business. These are the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a brick and click organisation from previously being a brick organisation:

Advantage

There are several advantages of Cuckoo becoming an e-commerce business. For customers, they can access their website whenever they want to and browse through the list of products, compare prices with different products and pick the one that suits the customer and pay for it instantly using a wide range of payment options from such as credit card or PayPal. Since there is no need for a physical store, Cuckoo can save on one of the biggest cost overheads that retailers have to bear. Since there are no shelf size or store size limitations, e-commerce businesses are able to list many different items that you may have trouble looking for in a physical shop. Some e-commerce sites have deals and coupons that you can use if you choose to shop at Cuckoo every time.

Disadvantage

In addition to the advantages that are present in e-commerce, it also brings disadvantages to. While e-commerce offers efficiency and cost savings, you typically can’t see or touch the products before you buy them. This may lead to more returns from customers because they cannot look closely at the clocks or other products that Cuckoo sell which means that do not know what they are buying to some extent. An increase in product returns takes time and money away from other business activities. Customers may go elsewhere if they aren’t satisfied with their online purchases or the online buying experience. In addition to this, when you purchase a product from Cuckoo, it may take a long time to get to you and there could be other delivery issues that link into this such as; broken product or the size is not what you expected. Also, e-commerce can only be accessed through a device such as a computer or a smartphone. Not only do you need a device, but you also need an internet connection to access their website.

Recommendation

I recommend that Cuckoo should become an e-commerce business. They would be able to sell more products to a wide range of customers from across the globe and around the clock. In addition to this, Cuckoo as a business would make more profit from selling more products and the cost to maintain the website is not a lot compared to the maintenance cost of a brick store.