INF30029 - Analyzing the Myer Online Shopping Disaster of 2013

This case study delves into the 2013 Myer online shopping disaster, where the company's website crashed during the Boxing Day Sales due to programming glitches and server communication issues. The crash resulted in incomplete transactions, customer dissatisfaction, and significant revenue loss. The report analyzes the background of Myer, the problems encountered, and the business failures that followed. It highlights the impact on Myer's reputation and online presence, along with customer complaints regarding login issues and payment processing errors. The report concludes by recommending that Myer focus on rebuilding its website using agile methodologies, restructuring web technologies, and implementing robust security measures to prevent future incidents and regain customer trust and market share. The analysis emphasizes the importance of technical resilience and customer-centric solutions for online retailers.

Running head: MYERS ONLINE SHOPPING DISASTER
Myers Online Shopping Disaster
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

1MYERS ONLINE SHOPPING DISASTER
Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................2
2. Discussion....................................................................................................................................2
2.1 Background of the Company.................................................................................................2
2.2 The Problem within the Online Shopping Store....................................................................3
2.3 Failure of the Business of Myer.............................................................................................3
2.4 Analysis over the Situation Faced by Myer...........................................................................5
3. Conclusion...................................................................................................................................6
4. Recommendation.........................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

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1. Introduction
This report is based on the website of Myer, which had crashed in the year 2013 due to
some technical problems. Myer is considered as one of the biggest cosmetic retailer in the region
of Australia. The business of Myer is mostly supported by various cosmetic suppliers through the
process of markdown funding, marketing, staffing support and other cosmetic counter fit-outs.
The downtime of the website of Myer had created different kind of problems. It not only affected
the online shoppers but was a huge loss for the owners of the company (Delimiter 2019). The
revenue of the company had dropped suddenly, which was also considered as the most effective
disaster to the company.
This report focuses on the background of the company, the problem that occurred
towards the company and the possible recommendations that could be supported in order to
prevent such kind of future issues. The recommendations drawn would be useful for enhancing
the business structure and ensure a successful marketplace for the company.
2. Discussion
2.1 Background of the Company
Myer is the largest store retailer department in Australia. It holds 67 stores across the
entire country. In the recent years they have also planned to expand their growth by increasing
the number of stores in Australia. The retail sector comprises of the largest number of private
sector employees. This consists of 13,000 members in the team in the entire country
(Myer.com.au 2019). They have also planned to employ more than 2500 new members within
the team in order to support to the growth of their present business. The workforce of the
company comprises of 80% of female members within the team.

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2.2 The Problem within the Online Shopping Store
The retail sector that also has their presence in the online world has been reported to have
failed miserably to keep their online presence as secure as needed. In the previous years, it has
been seen that there have been massive failures that has devastated the online shoppers and have
also made a huge loss towards the business (Rosenmayer et al. 2018). The worst of the online
disasters happened when the website was hit badly in 2013. In this year, the website of Myer had
crashed at the worst possible time. It happened during the Boxing Day Sales.
During this time, nearly 7000 shoppers were simultaneously accessing the website and
this resulted the website to struggle and provide efficient service to each of the users. There was
a programming glitch, which was the primary result that had affected the communication of the
website with their internal servers. The crash of the website had further resulted in incomplete
transactions by the customers (Mail Online 2019). Hence, it was ordered by the CEO that the
website should be taken down for maintenance purpose. During this process of maintenance, the
website was mainly forced to remain in an offline mode for a few days. This further escalated the
issue as partner stores had taken advantage of the downtime of Myer to regain their sales
operations.
2.3 Failure of the Business of Myer
After the crash of the website, it had left the online shoppers to be angry as they could not
complete the transactions and also could not purchase anything from the website. The business
owner of the company was also disappointed about the recent technical difficulties that was
faced by Myer. During the maintenance of the website, Myer had pumped millions of dollars for
the purpose of improve the functionality of the website (Gleeson 2014). They had also ensured

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that online sales functions should be further improved as the company was gaining a huge base
of customers.
In spite of boosting enough efforts into technical aspects, Myer had mostly suffered
technical problems in different busy periods. Heavy customer traffic had mostly triggered to the
website failure for more than half an hour during the annual stocktaking sale (Kiu and Lee 2014)
Myer has mostly tied their business partnership with IBM who is responsible for handling the
technical issues (Frost and Laing 2017). The company officials have always claimed that the
website had mostly crashed due to software errors.
During the Boxing Day Sale, when the website had crashed, it was announced by Myer
that they are in the process of rebuilding the website. The online store of Myer is mainly
powered by IBM WebSphere software (Yaeli et al. 2014). After the crash of the website, the
CEO of the company had reported to Fairfax Media that the internal IT team was in the process
of working furiously with the IBM staff within Australia (Desmond et al. 2014). Their main aim
was to rebuild the website and look into the critical technical issues that are faced.
It has been reported in the media that Myer faced repeated online disaster and system
crashes in every consecutive six months of usage (Ingham, Cadieux and Berrada 2015). In
November, the company had partnered with various other retailers to duplicate the massive sales
of Cyber Monday within USA. On the final day of sales, the website could not accomplish with
the huge traffic of users and thus resulted in huge failure (Craik 2015). It thus resulted in savage
online attacks from the customers who were affected during the crash. In June 2013, the
company again witnessed a breakdown of the website for a time period of 30 minutes before the
sale could start (Chen et al. 2016). The reason was the same as the previous one. It could not
cope up with the huge amount of customer traffic.

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2.4 Analysis over the Situation Faced by Myer
After a proper analysis over the situation faced by Myer, it could be discussed that
although the website could be rebuilt and the systems could be taken into control, it would be a
great loss towards the company. The company would miss the various opportunities that could
otherwise be taken care off if there would had been a huge profits towards the company (Bajwa
et al. 2017). In the highly competitive market, the critical faults could leave a loss towards the
reputation and online presence in the market. The extended downtime of the website was not
only a fault of the server capacity but it could also lead to security issues. The chief executive
had decided to scrap postage fees and again boost the number of online offers that could help
them in regaining their foothold over the online market (Tan, Benbasat and Cenfetelli 2016). It
was reported by the company that the communication breakdown was mainly due to internet
servers and a particular software application that are considered as the root cause of the problem.
As most of the customers had left their transactions to be incomplete, the company had
decided to rerun the Boxing Day stock sale offer. They also offered a certain period of additional
offers and free delivery service. With these kind of innovative offers, the company had tried to
gain the attention of their customers (Xu et al. 2017). They also ensured that such kind of bugs
within the system would be removed within the shortest possible time in order to regain their
business foothold and also ensure that such kind of issues would not happen in the future. With
the huge number of failures that are affecting to the website, it should be the primary
responsibility of Myer to change or redesign some measures that could be effective in building
up a strong solution for the business (Wang, Hsu and Chih 2014). Customer complaints are not
limited to only systems crashes but they range into a large number of issues (Byrne and Shepherd
2015). This include the facts that they cannot log in to their special webpages, make purchases as

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their payments cannot be processed fully. Further analysis over the issue has resulted to the fact
that the internal software errors was due to programming glitches that have a major impact over
the website to get crashed (Coteanu 2017). IBM should take the entire responsibility to redesign
the structure of the website and implement the best kind of technical qualities that would be
helpful for the website to regain their proper status.
3. Conclusion
From the discussions supported in the report over the crash of the Myer website, it could
be concluded that the website crash was a major issue. This issue had been raised due to some
programming glitches that had occurred within the website. The company should hold the entire
responsibility to ensure that their consumers would be provided the best kind of facilities during
such kind of incidents. In this particular case study, it has been focused that the crash of the
website had led to serious implications over the business and had also resulted to loss in the
revenue of the business. During the downtime of the website, there was a lot of opportunity for
partner retail companies to regain their sales and thus gain the attention of customers. Such kind
of incidents during the rush hours could prove to be vital for the business of the company. The
reputation of the company could be put at stake during such kind of incidents.
It was also reported in the media that people from all over Australia were expecting to
purchase their favourite products from Myer after they would have relaunched the website.
Although the website could be relaunched for the users but they still would need to redesign their
website so that they would not face any kind of future problems. Hence, they should implement
the best kind of technical strategies, which could be helpful for the company to regain their
previous status and thus help them in gaining a massive foothold in the highly competitive
market.

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4. Recommendation
Based on the discussed scenario, it could be recommended that Myer should massively
focus on the technical aspects of their website. They should implement the best possible
technical strategies that could be put together to rebuild the website and thus ensure that the
website would be able to hold the massive amount of traffic. The company should make use of
the latest agile methodology of software development to rebuild their website. The web
technologies that are presently been used by the system should be completely restructured and
thus they should ensure that the present system should be able to hold the massive number of
service requests at a single time when a huge number of shopper would place their request. The
security aspects of the website should also be taken care of. Hence, they should also imply the
best form of encryption standards that would be helpful for the business to ensure that the
customers would be able to purchase products in a smooth process.

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