Top of the shops
To many, online shopping means bargain shopping. With household budgets squeezed, more shoppers are heading online. So many of them will be interested in a survey published by Which? this week.
It asked more than 14,000 members about their experiences with 96 different online retailers in 2012. The consumer rights campaigner found that despite 70 per cent of people now shopping online for cheaper prices, good customer service is just as important.
Top of the shops for the third year running was lizearle.com, the natural skincare and cosmetics brand, with a total score of 94 per cent. High street favourite John Lewis took second place and online giant Amazon came third. The survey asked for customer’s ratings for such areas as price, product stock, delivery, website usability and the returns process.
Complaints against the poor performers included delays with deliveries, unreasonable restrictions on refunds, inadequate contact details and unexpected charges at the checkout.
Is this true in the world of professional purchasing? Cost cutting remains one of the top pressures driving procurement, but this doesn’t always mean finding the lowest price.
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Procurement isn’t about the lowest price – it’s about value. Lowest price is such an “old school” way of looking at Procurement. Cost is an important factor but from my circle of procurement / sourcing friends, none of us would base a decision on the lowest cost, unless it delivered the best value overall.
Finding the lowest price isn’t always the solution – especially if one adopts the right strategies to cost cutting. Watch this Supply Chain Strategy adopted by Solving Efeso – http://www.wbresearch.com/logiconeurope/supply-chain-strategy.aspx