Baby food company Mead Johnson ties up Chinese e-commerce deal
Mead Johnson, the US infant nutrition company owned by consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser, has linked up with Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com.
The Chinese company said the plan is to create a market strategy to bring a wider range of infant formulas to emerging urban areas.
JD.com said it is a response to the shift in consumption habits of Chinese consumers for maternal and baby products to focus on product quality and suggested the collaboration will make it easier for maternal and baby store owners in China's growing smaller cities to supply their consumers with infant formula from Mead Johnson Nutrition's brands.
To facilitate this, JD.com has developed a mobile internet programme through which store owners can place orders for Mead Johnson products. Maternal and baby goods will be delivered within 48 hours directly from JD's warehouses via the company's in-house nationwide logistics network.
It said the 'vertical integration' will significantly shorten the delivery lead time and help store owners better manage their inventory.
Enda Ryan, CEO of Mead Johnson's operations in Greater China, said: "With the help of JD's innovative smart supply chain and in-house logistics resources, a greater number of consumers in China's emerging urban areas will have more reliable access to our high-quality products.
eCommerce focused on the sales, stock receiving, and counting processes that drive good small business inventory management. But this discussion is incomplete without looking at ways to keep all of that stock organized and readily accessible.
Whether you have a retail store with a small stockroom in the back or an expansive warehouse for your ecommerce business, organization is key to smart inventory management. Even if you operate in a tiny space, it’s good to have organized overstock space so you can take advantage of discounts and deals on quantity purchases.
Tracking sales is a must for any eCommerce business operation and it involves more than just tallying up the totals at the end of the day. A good small business inventory management system also records every order in detail, including each item sold. With a manual system, you’ll record orders by hand or track them within a spreadsheet, then manually adjust the inventory quantities for each item sold.
A small operation can handle this manually as long as inventory reductions are tracked regularly, say at the close of each business day. But as you grow, a POS system will dramatically streamline your operation by automating your inventory reduction with every sale. That means every time you make a sale, each item sold is automatically removed from your inventory records. Plus, each recorded sale lists each item sold. It’s all very tidy.
Inventory management touches many parts of your eCommerce business. When you forgo management, you can’t forecast sales. You can’t efficiently get items to customers when they need them.
It prevents overselling. When inventory isn’t tracked, it can lead to you incorrectly listing available inventory on your site or marketplace. Nothing is worse than telling a customer you can’t ship an item they bought because you actually don’t have it
Whatever your inventory storage method, your stored inventory needs to be well-organized, clearly labeled, and accessible for pulling and inventory counts. This can be done using the boxes goods come in, stacking bins, or even hanging separators for hung apparel. Periodic cycle counts of overstock also help keep track of extra inventory and ensure it’s not lost or misplaced over time.
Sales tax holidays are especially common. Typically, they involve suspending the collection of sales tax on a particular day of the year in order to encourage consumers to buy certain items and help local businesses.
For example, many cities have a tax holiday during the back-to-school season in order to encourage people to shop and to help parents pay less for school supplies.
Tax holidays can take many forms, though. Governments sometimes create tax holidays for new businesses. Developing countries might create tax holidays for foreign companies that relocate to the host country. The overarching idea is to lower the cost of doing business in an effort to encourage economic activity. Why it Matters:
The facts are that internet sales—the majority of which continue to be tax-free—have enjoyed double digit sales growth virtually every year out of the last 15. At the same time, sales at our local stores have been essentially flat after inflation. This is why those who want more taxes to spend have lamented limited sales tax revenue growth. The truth is that the sales tax is virtually 100% avoidable.
Sales tax holidays are supposed to boost business and relieve shoppers, but they are underpublicized, damningly complex and easily manipulated.
Although taxing authorities lose out on tax revenue during a tax holiday, many economists believe that tax holidays actually increase tax revenue over the long term because they help businesses stay in business or grow. Over time, this creates more taxable revenue for the taxing authority and even more tax revenue in the form of payroll and other taxes if those businesses retain or hire employees.
How B2B and B2C Sharing eConomy Change Business Style
Sharing economy refers to a common or communal economy that includes the production, consumption and use of commodities. Sharing economy is based on temporary access instead of ownership, by utilizing the development of technology and the popularity of social media, such as sharing platforms. Sharing space, goods and skills is guided by three principles of: 1) efficient use of resources, 2) crowdsourcing, and 3) communality.
Manufacturers, wholesalers and corporate suppliers consistently surprise the market when they enter industries and launch business ventures traditionally dominated by B2C. First, it was the concept of eCommerce, now expected to surpass the value of B2C online retail. Soon after, B2B began taking hold of social media, Big Data, wearable technology and, most recently, the on-demand mobile application market.
Now, experts say B2B is approaching its next frontier: the sharing economy.
At its core, the sharing economy is about a lack of true ownership, allowing goods, services and information to be shared between two or more individuals. It is fundamentally a P2P business model.
Today, however, the corporate advantages of the sharing economy are providing companies with resources that would have otherwise been far less accessible. From sharing data to sharing office space, the sharing economy is expanding as a B2B business model.
B2B sharing economy has grown from almost nothing to a pool of global businesses valued in the billions of dollars. The concept—people using technology to find and purchase one another’s extra resources—represents a triumph of trust and crowdsourcing. Peer-to-peer financial firms such as Lending Club, transportation services such as Uber, and lodging brokerages such as Airbnb have all rapidly taken off, using Internet-based platforms to connect people directly without highly paid intermediaries. It’s no wonder investors are so intrigued, and the rest of us are a little enervated by all the hype.
Sharing economy platforms and applications are already being used widely in the B2C markets, such as Über and Airbnb, but sharing economy solutions for the B2B markets still includes a lot of potential. The principles of sharing economy are being utilized in the B2B markets for instance by sharing machinery in agriculture and forestry. In addition, other tangible assets, such as equipment, raw materials, office space and warehouses can be shared between companies. Intangible shared assets include for instance companies' brainpower, knowledge and intellectual capital.
The potential here is not just to garner ideas from outside inventors through open innovation. Nor is it to open up a platform for third-party developers to introduce ancillary products and software, as computer companies have done for decades. The real potential is for new platforms to evolve that offer a segment of a company’s intellectual property base to the world at large, so that others may do things with it, and the patent holder may profit.
In the current form of this relationship, the two parties collaborate to bring innovations to market. The Chinese appliance company Haier, for example, invites inventors from outside the company to propose innovations they could produce together. But collaboration might not always be necessary. A company with a patent for a new type of battery technology, for instance, might choose not to develop it, but by placing the battery technology on an exchange, the company could make a connection to another company with a complementary technology that would otherwise never have been made.
The sharing economy is built on a simple premise: People who have extra capacity can make money by selling it to other people who need it, without a middleman to siphon off much of the value. Within the past decade, several businesses based on this concept have sprouted up from nothing and turned into billion-dollar enterprises.
For B2C businesses, ecommerce represents an opportunity to gather information that informs decisions on product features, pricing and promotion. The opportunity to gather data is also available to B2B businesses, but in a relationship-centric world, the first objective is to increase value to customers.
In a B2C businesses, once an ecommerce solution is in operation, self-service ordering on line allows customers over an endless geography to place orders with little marginal cost to the B2C provider.
In a B2B setting, similar benefits can be achieved by making a simple portion of the overall offering available as a “starter” or “entry level offer” for prospective customers. Current customers may value an option of buying simple product extensions or contract renewals online. The efficiency of these simple on line transactions is a benefit to both the B2B business and to its customers.
In B2C businesses, customers have access to information about products, their personal information on file, their order history, and other related information. That’s a great start, but many B2B businesses have the opportunity to deliver more value by providing more information such as maintenance and service records, contract and correspondence history, information about customer installations, product roadmaps, and lead time.
On business to business portal many manufacturers, wholesale suppliers, exporters, traders etc. are registered to do online business trade. The business leads are converted into real deals. Those who are experienced professionals, able to provide spontaneous solution and are able to understand the business requirement can highly succeed in Business to Business marketplaces.
In some cases, such as installation maintenance locations, customers may get value from maintaining the information themselves. B2B businesses can use these information resources to efficiently differentiate and personalize their customers experience.
Oil
change business opportunity is an advisable investment for any
entrepreneur. There are over 4,000 companies and they bring in about $4
billion in revenue. This number is climbing annually as car owners are
keeping their cars for longer before buying a new one.
Filling Station Business
If
you are looking towards starting a business in the oil and gas
industry, one of your options is to open a filling station. Filling
station business is highly thriving and profitable-particularly if you
have chains of filling stations that are located in strategic traffic
prone locations. A filling station is a place where premium motor
spirit, diesel, cooking gas and kerosene et al are retailed.
Oil and Gas Servicing Company
If
you are looking towards starting a business in the oil and gas
industry, a business that is profitable and thriving and one that
requires engineering skills, then one of your options is to start an oil
and gas servicing company. Major oil companies around the globe like
Mobil, Shell, Agip, Chevron and Texaco, amongst others, rely on oil
servicing companies such as Halliburton, Schlumberger and Transocean et
al, for maintenance and servicing jobs.
Retailing of Cooking Gas
Retailing
of cooking gas is yet thriving and profitable oil and gas related
business that an entrepreneur who is looking towards starting a business
should consider starting. This type of business is suitable in
countries where gas is not supplied to apartments via a structures pipe
system. All you need to get this type of business started is a shop
located in a residential estate, gas cylinders and supply of gas
directly from a gas plant.
Market Natural Gas
You can apply for a license to become a natural gas accredited independent marketer. Over time, natural gas marketers have become an important component in this industry because of the role they play between natural gas producers and the available market for natural gas. They could serve as the middle man between the producer and the direct end users or between the producers and retailers or other distribution companies. One good thing about marketing natural gas is that the price is no longer regulated as it used to be, the price is actually set by available market forces like demand and supply.
Lubrication Oil Retail Shop
Sale of Engine Oil, Break Fluid and Hydraulic Oil et al, is a profitable and highly thriving business venture an entrepreneur who is interested in making money from the oil and gas business value chain should consider. The fact that vehicle owners subject their vehicles for servicing at regular intervals creates markets for lubrication oil products. In recent time, there is an increase in the lubrication oil production sector as it is one business you can readily go into with the hope of making great profit.
Manufacturing Cooking Gas Cylinders
Another profitable and thriving oil and gas related business that an entrepreneur who is looking towards investing in the industry should consider starting is to go into the manufacturing of cooking gas cylinders. There is indeed a large market for cooking gas cylinder. As a matter of fact, households no longer rely on just one cylinder; they prefer to have one or more backups.
Health and Safety Trainings for Oil and Gas Workers
Another thriving and profitable business in the value chain of the oil and gas industry that an aspiring entrepreneur who is interested in starting a business in the industry should consider starting is health and safety training for oil and gas workers. If you have the required background (experience and qualifications) to train on health and safety, then you should consider starting an organization that trains oil and gas workforce.
Gas and Petroleum Pipeline Security Business
Gas and petroleum pipeline security business is yet another thriving and profitable business venture that an entrepreneur who is looking towards starting a business in the oil and gas industry should consider starting. The truth is that oil and gas pipelines can be vandalized by oil bunkers if the pipelines are not well secured by security experts.
Customized Oil and Gas Software Applications
Developing and selling of oil and gas software applications is yet another cool way of making money from the business value chain in the industry. If you are a software developer, then you should consider developing customized software applications for the oil and gas industry, software applications that will help simplify processes in the industry. You can as well work with your client to develop tailored software application that suits perfectly into their business.
For businesses, online reviews are one of the best direct channels for customer feedback. So, encourage your customers to go to your Google Places listing and review your business. When you receive a high number of positive reviews, your business will start showing in the local search results in Google, which means you will get a lot of traffic to your website.
For small businesses, online reviews bring the benefit of social proof to the table—they help increase (or decrease) the degree of trust felt for an unfamiliar business based on feedback from other people with similar needs.
Ratings and reviews are a huge conversion factor, more influential for getting users to click through and make a purchase than business citations or most other elements of local SEO. If your search result has 4.5 stars and 18 reviews (compared to fewer for your competitors), that’s strong social proof that your product or service is trustworthy. But besides increasing users’ trust, recent search innovations have created new reasons that SEO-minded local businesses need reviews and ratings.
Customer reviews don’t influence just people.
Another factor about reviews is the influence they exert on where your business is listed in search engine results.
There are multiple sources for this finding, but let’s start with the most authoritative research - review signals ranked fifth among the most important search-engine ranking factors.
Encourage your customers to leave reviews using a soft-sell approach. You could make suggestions in your newsletter, ask customers after a satisfactory experience, or put up review-site logos in your place of business.
Set up a simple system for connecting with customers through regular social media or email contact. A local bakery, for instance, has a clipboard to get people’s names and email addresses for its newsletter. Get involved with social media, reach out to customers, and be responsive to their ideas. Being visible on the web can set your business apart.
However, if you’re just starting out, your business may not have had the time or resources to be concerned about Google reviews. To help you level the playing field against other businesses in the area.
