Study Finds Oracle Key to 'Customer-Centric' E-Commerce
Majority of the Top 'E-Tailers' Trust Oracle(R) E-Commerce Solutions to Attract, Retain Customers
LOS ANGELES, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Among the "most customer-focused" e-commerce Web sites selected by Patricia Seybold, CEO and founder of the Patricia Seybold Group and author of the BusinessWeek best-selling book "Customers.com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet and Beyond," most rely on Oracle technology to attract and retain customers, according to study results released today at Spring Internet World.
The survey, conducted by Los Altos, Calif.-based Collaborative Research, found that the majority of the Patricia Seybold's "Top 10 Customers.com(R) 1998 Holiday E-Tailers" use Oracle technology for their Internet presence, including eToys, Amazon.com, Lands' End, FragranceNet and Music Boulevard, which has since merged into CDnow. An additional Top Ten E-tailer, Smith & Hawken, runs on an Oracle platform through Yahoo!, the popular Internet portal to which it outsources its e-commerce functionality.
Patricia Seybold released the Top E-Tailers list in January after scrutinizing dozens of online retailers last holiday season on a set of 30 selection criteria to determine those offering the most "customer-centric, complete, and reliable shopping experience." Several of Seybold's selection criteria involved intensive data-management functionality, for which Oracle is the established Internet leader, including storage of payment, billing and shipping information; secure online transaction processing; real time order tracking and management; integration of Web, telephone and retail sales channels; e-mail order confirmation and shipping notification; and broad personalization options.
"To thrive in the information economy, e-tailers must keep an unblinking eye on customer loyalty," said Patricia Seybold. "That means having the technical infrastructure to provide a 360-degree view of the customer relationship."
Becoming a Leading E-Commerce Brand
FragranceNet.com, the world's largest discount fragrance store and one of the Seybold Top Ten E-tailers, relies on an Oracle platform to offer Web shoppers a host of leading-edge features including real time inventory updates, a reminder club system, an online shipping calculator, extensive product searching options and electronic gift certificates and coupons.
"With Oracle, we've had the ability to enhance our store and expand our customer services enormously," said Jason Apfel, president and chief operating officer of FragranceNet.com. "Oracle's platform has brought a level of stability, flexibility and scaleability its competitors just couldn't match, allowing us to grow tremendously over the last year. Simply put, to become a leading e-commerce brand we chose the leading e-commerce technology. We plan on using Oracle well into the future."
Extending a One-to-One Relationship with Customers
Lands' End, a leading direct merchant of clothing, accessories and domestics, is another e-commerce site whose strong customer-focus earned it a place on Seybold's Top Holiday E-tailer list. Lands' End is regarded as an e-commerce pioneer, having launched its site in mid-1995. It is also one of the Web's most notable e-commerce successes: Lands' End's Web sales reached $61 million last year, a threefold increase from the previous year. The direct merchant uses the Oracle platform for Web site content, personalization information and its online shopping basket.
"At Land's End, we approach e-commerce with the same philosophy our founder articulated more than 30 years ago -- what's best for the customer is best for Lands' End," said Ron Frey, Internet business manager at Lands' End. "As a direct merchant, we can extend our one-to-one relationship with customers through the Internet. The Oracle database allows our customers to store their personal credit card and shipping information, making future visits to landsend.com easier."
Building a Better Store
Music Boulevard, another one of the Seybold Top Holiday E-Tailers, completed a merger with CDnow on March 17, 1999, creating the leading global music-focused e-commerce company, known as CDnow, Inc. The company currently operates two online music stores, CDnow and Music Boulevard, which will come together around May 18th for the grand opening of the combined store, which will be called CDnow. The new site will combine the strongest features of the two stores to offer music shoppers the best music store on the Web. CDnow will offer customers the best in choice, convenience, control and customization while discovering and purchasing music.
CDnow will continue to provide extensive functionality to an expanded base of some 1.6 million customers, with Oracle databases tracking purchase histories, storing shipping and billing information and cataloging music preference data. The company's ambitious one-to-one marketing efforts have already begun to pay off with a level of customer loyalty that is the envy of the electronic commerce marketplace: fully 56% of CDnow's sales last quarter came from repeat customers.
"We're building a better music store with every mouseclick," said Mike Krupit, CDnow's vice president of technology and creative services who is overseeing the task of integrating Music Boulevard's data and features with those of CDnow. "Oracle is the data-management backbone enabling us to better understand and serve our customers. We manage every component of our e-commerce cycle on Oracle."
"What's remarkable about this survey's findings is the extent to which the Web's most 'customer-focused' sites are using Oracle to do exactly that -- to gain customer-focus," said Mark Jarvis, senior vice president of Oracle Worldwide Marketing. "Of all the e-commerce sites in the world, these are the best at building customer loyalty, according to industry experts. Overwhelmingly, their technology of choice to help attract and retain customers is Oracle."
For more information about the Patricia Seybold group, call 617-742-5200 or visit psgroup.com.
Oracle Corporation is the world's leading supplier of software for information management, and the world's second largest independent software company. With annual revenues of more than $8.3 billion, the company offers its database, tools and application products, along with related consulting, education, and support services, in more than 145 countries around the world.
For more information about Oracle, please call 650-506-7000. Oracle's Worldwide Web address is (URL) oracle.com.
NOTE: Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE Oracle Corp.
CO: Oracle Corp.
ST: California
IN: CPR MLM REA
SU:
04/14/99 13:00 EDT prnewswire.com
|
