Analyzing GAP's Digital Business: E-Business Models and Strategies

This report analyzes GAP's digital business management and its use of emerging technologies to create value and enhance customer experience. It identifies GAP's e-business model as primarily B2C and B2B, emphasizing cost leadership, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of their online presence. The report explores GAP's competitive and digital business strategies, highlighting their use of social media marketing and recommending the adoption of SEO and content marketing. An examination of customer traffic data leads to suggestions for investing in online analytics tools. Furthermore, the report identifies GAP's e-CRM practices and social network channels, and it assesses the cybersecurity measures in place, emphasizing the importance of e-business ethics compliance. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and recommendations for GAP to enhance its digital business strategies.

Digital Business Management and
Emerging Technology
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Table of Contents
Introduction.....................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Identify the E-business model and Consider E-business concepts and approaches to comment
on specific strengths and weaknesses.........................................................................................3
Identify competitive strategy and digital business strategy the company has followed.............4
Identify their digital marketing strategies...................................................................................5
Discuss the customer traffic data and provide recommendations/suggestions...........................6
Identify the company’s e-CRM and social network channels linked with the website..............6
Identify the cyber security measures the company website has in place discuss if the company
website comply with e-business ethics.......................................................................................7
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................8
References.......................................................................................................................................9
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Introduction
Digital business use various technologies to create new value in different business
models and effective customer's experience for getting a support its core operations. These terms
are helpful for generating different business models and traditional players that are used for
transforming business ideas with different business technologies. With the use of emerging
technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and etc. are used in companies to enhance their
practices in different matters (Arias-Pérez, Velez-Ocampo and Cepeda-Cardona, 2021). The
chosen company and a website for completing this report is GAP and its website is Gap.co.uk. It
is a retail industry and founded in 1969. Its headquartered is in San Francisco, California, US,
but the company serve their services to their valuable customers at worldwide (Gap Inc., 2021).
The main products that the company serve to their customers are Apparel, Accessories and
different type of personal care products. This reports highlights the E-business model which the
chosen company use, its concepts and approaches are identifying throughout the project.
Furthermore, a brief description of competitive strategy will be used to work and make
systematic growth in different manner. In addition to this, digital marketing strategies and a
discussion will conduct for company's specified options. Furthermore, market intelligence
strategies, customer trafficking data, company's E-CRM and social network channels that are
used by the company's website. In last cyber security measures that the company's website and
their compliance with e-business will be discuss in this report.
Main Body
Identify the E-business model and Consider E-business concepts and approaches to comment on
specific strengths and weaknesses
There are different E-business models that are used to make trading of goods and services
in different manners. E-commerce industries are growing in the digital market and with the
developing emerging technologies (Campino, Brochado and Rosa, 2021). The chosen website is
Gap company that deals in retail industry and the company is now shifted to their first digital
strategies and make growth in different matters. E-business simply refers to an approach in more
effective manners that helps the company to become more profitable approach business on
internet. There are mainly four type of e-business models some of them are, B2B, B2C, C2B,
C2C and government administration (Types of E-Commerce, 2021). In context to the Gap
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Website, it is consider that they are working on global business model and style that are used to
work on systematic changes and classified as the cost leadership approaches. This will be related
to different matters and make systematic approaches as effective using of e-commerce models.
The company is mainly focusing on Business to customer and Business to Business models. It
will be helpful for the growth to work and make systematic changes in different type of
industries. Gap try to start their products dealing facilities into the market with both approaches
(Coronavirus strategy: Gap Inc. pushes into B2B e-commerce, 2021).
E-business concepts and approaches
E-business is the administration that is used for conducting business using with internet,
web and intranet. This is used by the companies to complete buying and selling products by
using commercial transaction with the help of internet. The Gap company is working on the
effective strategies and able to work in effective growth in electronic platform. There are
different strength and weakness of the website that a company gain and face respectively
(Dornberger and Schwaferts, 2021).
Strengths: The strength is basically E-commerce website gives a strength to global
market and this will helps in facilitate the development of global retailers. Furthermore, it is cost
effective and time saving for the customers and management team also.
Weaknesses: Security is the biggest challenge for the company, as there are personal and
financial information are provided at e-website. So, this may lead to the develop fraudulent
activities in different manners.
Identify competitive strategy and digital business strategy the company has followed
Competitive strategy
Competitive strategy is refereed to make a long term plan for the specific growth to gain
competitive advantage over the different competitors. Gap Inc. use effective competitive strategy
in different manner that is useful for growing market and strength in various perspective. They
include porter's competitive strategies: Cost leadership: Thus suits for the large organisation, as there are the company can
produce big volume products at low costs. It will be helpful for the company to gain high
amount of profit by providing their products and services at low costs. Differentiation leadership strategy: It requires identifying a unique quality that makes a
significant for the growth of company in an appropriate manner. It allow the company to
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make differentiation within their products range and gain profit (Kraft, Helm and
Dowling, 2021).
 Focus strategy: This segment is further divided into cost focus and differentiation focus
strategy. Cost focus mainly implies their strategy into targetting market with some unique
needs. Whereas, differentiation focus is mainly implies on specific market but their
driving force is unique and specified.
In the context to Gap Inc. they are using cost leadership strategy for gaining more market
segment and attract large number of customers (Gap Inc. Business Strategy and Competitive
Advantage, 2020). But it is recommended that the company can use the differentiation strategy
as it will help the company to build reputation and sell their products to sophisticated customers
who wants to buy their products at moderate price with high fashion clothing.
Digital Business strategy
This is mainly focus on using new and innovative technologies for upgrading the
websites and enhancing the overall performance of the company. With the help of effective
digital business strategy, some of them are content marketing, affirmative marketing and email
marketing. In the context to Gap Inc. it is analysed that the company can use Online selling, Start
B2B business platform and interaction with content marketing. It will help the company to
increase its market share by effective rate and generate more profit (Porsayev, Ratten and
Usmanij, 2021).
Identify their digital marketing strategies
Digital marketing is helpful for the company to focused on the impact of the activities, as
it is essential and helps in growth of the business. Some of the strategies are useful for achiveing
goals and need to accomplish the targets and growth into the market. These strategies are
explained below: Social media marketing: Most of the customers are highly reliant on the social media
platform such as Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. This seems helpful in make
effective growth and achieve appropriate growth in the sales of the company. Content marketing: This allow the company to make appropriate marketing team that
become proactive and create effective assets for the growth of their products. This
increase the footfall of the customers at the company's website.
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 SEO: Search engine optimization is used for improving the website and ranks high in the
search engine results for keywords. It is helpful for the growth of the company and
enhance their basic practices.
Gap Inc. use effective digital marketing strategies that would be helpful for the company.
Gap is using social media marketing for make more appropriate growth in different international
and national platform (Sahut, Iandoli and Teulon, 2021). It is recommended that, company
should use SEO and Content marketing approaches that are helpful for the company to work
effectively and achieve growth in the terms of competitive advantages.
Discuss the customer traffic data and provide recommendations/suggestions
Customer traffic data is also known as mobility of data that can be reveal as consumer
trends that are used to make a strategic decision in the different industries. It will be helpful for
associated to work with different places and make physical stores. Mobility of the data can be
collected via mobile devices and Wi-Fi connections. There are different struggles that is related
to customer traffic data but still this process gains to make an access of enough information to
produce meaningful insight at online platform (Schiavone and et.al., 2021). This is helpful for
perfecting the design of retail outlets, understand the customer's segment and make customer
demographic. Which eventually help the company to determine the best location and need of
customers. Most of the companies are relies on the customer traffic data as it helps the company
to enhance their strategy and work as per the significant growth into the market. For the Gap Inc.
it is recommended that the company should invest in the online websites like SimilarWeb and
get social on the social media to helps the customer's need and demand. It further help the
respective firm to strategies their objective in more effective ways (Market Intelligence &
Audience Research Solutions, 202).
Identify the company’s e-CRM and social network channels linked with the website
E-CRM:
E-CRM is the application that is used for make internet based technologies such as
emails, websites and forums to achieve the CRM objectives of the company. An efficacious E-
CRM practices will be helpful for the company to increase efficiency as well as improve an
interaction with the customers. GAP Inc. increase their E-CRM practices that leads the growth in
different practices and achieve systematic growth in their basic practice. These practices will
help the company to get a better solution, decline cost and losses and enhance the better
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understanding of supply and demand (Tajudeen and et.al., 2021). It is recommended that the
company can improve their customer relation by matching their needs and behaviour with
suitable offers and greater efficiency.
Social network channels:
Social market can be incredibility for make effective tools for business to great and make
systematic changes in business activities. There are different social media channels that are
associated to enhance their working style that will improve the standards and performance of the
company. Some of the channels are:
 Facebook: With more than 2.7 billion users worldwide, Facebook is pretty much ensure
the social media for marketing channels. Many of the business are on this platform and
increase their customer base and achieve targeted market revenue.
 Instagram: It is a visually oriented social media platform where a company can upgrade
their new offers to this platform and achieve systematic growth. With the help of social
media platform, audience can work as per the audience and make content to achieve
higher profit (Wielgos, Homburg and Kuehnl, 2021).
There are so many other channels like YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and many more. Gap
Inc. are using Instagram and Facebook for the growth in their social media channels. It is
recommended to the company should analyse effectively different platform and achieve growth
by attracting more customers.
Identify the cyber security measures the company website has in place discuss if the company
website comply with e-business ethics
Cyber security measures to make a structure, process and practices that are used to make
effective design and protect online networks, programme, unauthorised access and damages. It
helps in measuring the performance to keep information safe and secure from damages. It is
basically helpful for different hardware and software along with informative on internet. For the
GAP INC. it is important for them to take effective measures related to cyber security such as
making strong passwords, get selective control access, Put on a firewall, use security software
and monitor the intrusion (Campino, Brochado and Rosa, 2021). All of these make a strengthen
progress and achieve the e-business ethics and apply to the market. These business ethics are
associated to the platform and achieve appropriate growth in retail industry and develop the
strategic information with appropriate information.
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Conclusion
From the above report, it has been analysed that e-commerce industries are very helpful
for the growth of market and make appropriate approaches to use digital technologies. With the
help of digital marketing tools, the company can make appropriate actions furthermore enhance
the sales and revenue generation to work effectively into the market. It is analysed that different
e-business models are used and evaluated for working effectively into the digital industry.
Furthermore, most of the companies use competitive strategies and digital business targetted to
enhance their performance and achieve targeted objectives. Moreover, it is determined that most
of the companies use different digital marketing strategies like SMO, PPC, Digital platform and
many more. In addition to this, customer traffic data and its importance are analysed within the
report that helps the company to improvise their performance and sales. In last, E-CRM, social
networking channels and cyber security methods are analysed for the appropriate growth of the
company in digital business platform.
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References
Books & Journals
Arias-Pérez, J., Velez-Ocampo, J. and Cepeda-Cardona, J., 2021. Strategic orientation toward
digitalization to improve innovation capability: why knowledge acquisition and
exploitation through external embeddedness matter. Journal of Knowledge
Management.
Campino, J., Brochado, A. and Rosa, Á., 2021. Digital Business transformation in the banking
sector. In Research Anthology on Concepts, Applications, and Challenges of FinTech
(pp. 186-215). IGI Global.
Dornberger, R. and Schwaferts, D., 2021. Digital Innovation and Digital Business
Transformation in the Age of Digital Change. In New Trends in Business Information
Systems and Technology (pp. 1-13). Springer, Cham.
Kraft, P., Helm, R. and Dowling, M., 2021. New business models with Industrie 4.0 in the
German Mittelstand. International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management,
21(1), pp.47-68.
Porsayev, G., The Emerging Business Models in the Digital Economy. International Journal on
Orange Technologies, 2(12), pp.3-6.
Ratten, V. and Usmanij, P., 2021. Entrepreneurship education: Time for a change in research
direction?. The International Journal of Management Education, 19(1), p.100367.
Sahut, J.M., Iandoli, L. and Teulon, F., 2021. The age of digital entrepreneurship. Small
Business Economics, 56(3), pp.1159-1169.
Schiavone, F., Mancini, D., Leone, D. and Lavorato, D., 2021. Digital business models and
ridesharing for value co-creation in healthcare: A multi-stakeholder ecosystem analysis.
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 166, p.120647.
Tajudeen, F.P., Nadarajah, D., Jaafar, N.I. and Sulaiman, A., 2021. The impact of digitalisation
vision and information technology on organisations' innovation. European Journal of
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Wielgos, D.M., Homburg, C. and Kuehnl, C., 2021. Digital business capability: its impact on
firm and customer performance. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, pp.1-28.
Online
Coronavirus strategy: Gap Inc. pushes into B2B e-commerce, 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2020/07/30/coronavirus-strategy-gap-inc-
pushes-into-b2b-ecommerce/>.
Gap Inc. Business Strategy and Competitive Advantage, 2020. [Online]. Available through:
<https://research-methodology.net/gap-inc-business-strategy-and-competitive-
advantage/>.
Gap Inc., 2021. [Online]. Available through: <https://www.gapinc.com/en-us/>.
Market Intelligence & Audience Research Solutions, 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.similarweb.com/corp/research/>.
Types of E-Commerce, 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.indiafilings.com/learn/types-of-e-commerce/>.
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