E-Business Implementation: A Case Study of River Island's Strategy

This report provides a proposal focusing on the e-business procedures of River Island, a fashion and retail company based in the UK. It explores the implementation of digital transformation within the company and investigates the importance of e-business in creating a competitive advantage in the international environment. The report covers essential activities such as gathering information on political, social, and legal aspects before designing and implementing an e-business strategy. It also evaluates various e-business strategies and models, recommending the B2C model and social media strategies for enhancing brand awareness and increasing profitability. The analysis includes a discussion of the costs and benefits of different technologies and approaches used by e-business firms, along with an implementation plan using project management techniques like Scrum and Sprints. The report concludes by justifying the benefits and opportunities provided by e-commerce, both nationally and internationally.

E-business of River Island

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Executive summary
In this paper, a proposal has been provided that demonstrates the importance of e-business and
information in the global environment. For this reason, the River Island Company of the UK has
been choosing, and in accordance with this company, the implementation of digital
transformation will be discussed. In addition, the paper will provide the importance of e-business
procedure for developing competitive advantage of the firm in the international environment.
Besides this, some major activities like information regarding the ruling party, social class and
legal rules and regulations should be collected by the organization before designing and
implementing the e-business strategy. Moreover, some recommendations are provided on the
basis of different business strategies and a model that should be suitable for a company.

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Table of Contents
Proposal focus.............................................................................................................................................3
Justification of the proposal.........................................................................................................................6
Implementation plan....................................................................................................................................7
References.................................................................................................................................................10

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Proposal focus
The main aim of this proposal is to demonstrate the e-business procedure of the River Island
Company which is a fashion and retail industry present in London, United Kingdom. The
company serve the worldwide people with the help of e-business strategy and therefore the
process that makes the firm in one of the leading position is also another motive of this proposal.
In addition, the proposal also helps in demonstrating the implementation of the e-business
strategy by the River Island firm of the United Kingdom.
The objectives of this proposal are as follows:
 To implement the digital transformation of the River Island firm of the United Kingdom
 To investigate the importance of e-business for creating a competitive advantage of this
River Island firm
 To evaluate the e-business strategies and models that essential for the River Island
Company in the United States
River Island is a leading fashion brand the UK that possess about 350 stores across the country
and with the help of e-business strategy the firm serve in all locations of this country. In addition,
the e-business strategy also helps the firm to increase their business in the global environment
and therefore in the present day it operates internationally throughout Europe, Asia, Middle East
and Ireland (Carayannis, Sindakis and Walter, 2015). After reviewing the company e-business
strategies, it is evaluated that both e-business and information provides a huge competitive
advantage of this firm in the international market. It is seen that River Island falls into the
category of B2C (Business to Consumer) e-business and therefore advances in communication
technology and information provides a wide range of electronic applications and business models
(Spieth, Schneckenberg and Ricart, 2014).
With the help of these applications, the organization provides a competitive advantage by
creating efficiencies and cost reductions respectively. Besides this, with the help of an
information system the River Island firm can reduce the costs of business procedures or shift the
cost of doing business that eventually reduces the operating costs of the firm. Therefore, this cost
leadership aspect will provide a competitive advantage of the firm in the global market and River
Island thereby uses this e-business industry to gain a leading position in the market both

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nationally and internationally. Apart from this, by following e-business strategy, the River Island
Company can establish their brand in the foreign market and innovate their products in
accordance with the new market (Soto-Acosta, Popa and Palacios-Marqués, 2016). This
innovative approach helps the firm to create a position among the consumer base of this
respective, and thereby it creates a competitive advantage of this firm in the international market.
E-business strategy is the procedure by which a company sells their products or services through
online and for this proper design and planning should be important for a particular firm. In order
to create an information and e-business strategy, the firm should create a sophisticated
management system and a strategy that eventually combines the elements necessary for the
business. Therefore for designing and implementing an information and e-business strategy, the
firm River Island takes into account on the various aspects that before starting their e-business in
the global market (Arora, Arora and Sivakumar, 2016). Hence, in accordance with the political
environment the firm collect information about the current ruling party of the country and also
the political impact on the e-commerce market. In other words, regarding the legal environment,
the firm has to know about the rules and regulations related to the e-commerce market, and after
starting the business, they have to follow all legal rules of the respective country (Wiengarten,
Bhakoo, and Gimenez, 2015).
Apart from this, the firm should collect information about the consumer needs of the particular
country where they are going to expand their online e-business procedure. Also, the management
team should collect information about the social class as well as the social environment, and in
accordance with that, they should innovate their services. Lastly, they should maintain an ethical
relation with the consumers of the new country so that it easily build the trust of the consumer
groups on the respective firm (Tamayo-Torres et al., 2016). Hence, it is clear that before
designing and implementing an information and e-business strategy both in the local and
international market, the firm should be aware of these respective factors.
In the today's environment internet is constantly evolving that provides huge benefits to the e-
business market, and therefore several e-business strategies are evolving that proven successful
to drive revenue and also to promote the company both through offline and online mode
(Palacios-Marqués, Soto-Acosta, and Merigó, 2015). Therefore the e-business strategies that
should be followed by a firm are as follows:

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Hosting of marketplace
Many e-business companies have become successful by hosting a site in the marketplace through
online stores and auctions procedures. The strategy is mainly based on offering sales on the
various products or services of the respective firm (Yeh, Lee, and Pai, 2015). Therefore, with the
help of this strategy, the firm not only increase the sales rate but it also promotes their brand in
the selected marketplace.
Turnkey businesses
The business functions constitute the pre-existing template of its respective company. By
following this strategy, the website offers their products at certain discounts in accordance with
the people of the particular city (Kurucz et al., 2017). Therefore, this strategy possesses a stiff
competition in the market.
Ad-supported content
Some websites develop their e-business process through frequent and content updates, blogs and
similar informative sites and this involves the selling advertisement of their respective product
and services (Soomro, Shah, and Ahmed, 2016). Hence, this indirect e-business strategy also
provides huge success in selling the product or services in the respective market.
Social media
Most of the e-commerce firm advertise their products or services in the social media content so
that the consumer should easily know about their brand. The advertisement is given in such a
manner that it creates a broad scope with a cultural, geographical and interest-based theme
(Kurucz et al., 2017). Therefore with the help of this strategy, the firm can easily promote their
e-commerce business to the consumer groups of the particular country.
There are four types of e-commerce model, and all of them has respective characteristics in the
e-business procedures.
Business to business (B2B) - This model demonstrates all electronic dealings and transactions
between organization and producer dealings with retailers and conventional wholesalers
(Soomro, Shah and Ahmed, 2016).

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Business to Consumer (B2C) – This model defines the relationship and transactions between
businesses and customers through the online procedure (Pedersen, Gwozdz and Hvass, 2018).
With the help of the internet, the companies sales their products and services to the consumer
base of the nation.
Consumer to Consumer (C2C) - The model consists of electronic transactions of goods and
services between third party members (Cortimiglia, Ghezzi and Frank, 2016). This procedure is
simply defined when old items are bought and sold through online media from one consumer to
other.
Business to Administration (B2A) – The model constitutes the e-commerce transactions
between organizations and public administration (Pedersen, Gwozdz and Hvass, 2018). It
constitutes various services like fiscal measures, social security, employment and legal
documents.
Among all these e-business strategies and models, it is recommended that a firm should use the
easiest strategy and attractive e-business model that provides huge benefits to the firm. In the
present day all business are related to the consumer base, and therefore, the e-commerce
company should use business to consumer (B2C) model so that they can easily increase their
profitability in the corresponding market.
Also, it is also recommended that by using social media e-business strategy the firm can easily
promote their brand among the consumer base of the particular country. In the world of
technology, people often use social media to communicate with their families, friends and closed
ones. Therefore choosing this platform for enhancing brand awareness is considered to be the
best approach for the e-commerce firm.
Justification of the proposal
After reviewing the proposal, it is evaluated that the e-commerce business provides various
benefits as well as opportunities to the firm both nationally and internationally (Cortimiglia,
Ghezzi and Frank, 2016). Therefore a table is drawn that summarizes the costs and benefits of
using e-business procedure by a firm through nationally and internationally respectively.

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New technology or approach Benefits and costs
Communication technology and
information
Advancement in communication technologies and
information provides a wide range of electronic
applications and business models that helpful for the
firm to create efficiencies and reduce operating costs
Information system It enhances the cost leadership aspect and thereby
provides huge benefits to the firm in maintaining their
position in the market. To innovate the technology of
the information system a cost of 3000 to 6521 dollars
should be required by the firm
Marketplace hosting This strategy helped the e-commerce brand to
promote their firm in the selected market and provides
a huge advantage to attract a large number of the
consumer base
Ad-supported content Advertisement through contents and blogs help the
firm to establish their position among the consumer
base that eventually helps in enhancing their business
growth, and it involves a low-cost rate in comparison
to the offline promoting procedure
Social media With the help of social media, the firm promotes their
products and services among consumer of the
particular city and thereby successful in gaining
targeted customer attention. The advertisement
includes the low cost of price in comparison to doing
advertisement through offline mode
Table 1: The costs and benefits of the new technology or approach used by e-business firm
Implementation plan
Project management techniques are the process that helps the firm to innovate their methods,
technologies and skills for managing the projects efficiently. The project management
technologies that should be applied to plan the implementation of information and e-business
strategy are scrum and sprint techniques (Saebi and Foss, 2015). Scrum is considered as the agile

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process that focuses only on delivering the highest business value in considering the shortest
period. This project techniques repeatedly and rapidly update their working software once every
two weeks of a month. Due to this reason, these techniques help the e-business companies to set
their priorities and thereby organize in such a manner that it delivers the products or services in
respect to the priorities (Soomro, Shah and Ahmed, 2016).
Another benefit of applying this project management techniques is that no specific engineering
procedures are required for updating the software, and thereby it creates an agile environment for
delivering the projects. In addition, another project management technique known as the sprints
is also useful to plan the implementation of an information and e-business strategy by a firm
(Altamony et al., 2016). This technique is considered as a part of sprints project that analogous to
extreme interactions of programming procedure. With the help of this technique, the products or
services of the e-commerce firm had been coded, designed and tested so that after its application
no negative impact will thereby occur on the company business procedure. Therefore, both these
techniques will help in planning the information and e-business strategy of the e-commerce firm.
Apart from this, using these techniques can cause various risks for the firm and therefore proper
risks assessment is necessary for information and e-business implementation procedure. One of
the risks assessment is that the firm only should work on certain software that after upgrading
automatically cannot cause any hindrance in the working procedure (Talet, Mat-Zin and Houari,
2014). In addition, the design and code that are used for the sprints techniques should be
carefully checked so that no wrong code or design will take place and thereby the risks should
reduce.
Some recommendations that should be used for the digital business are as follows:
It is recommended that the digital strategic plan should be upgraded in accordance with the
current market needs. With the advancement of technology consumer needs is changing,
therefore, to cope up with their behavior it is necessary that the firm should update their strategic
plan with more efficient, tactics and channels that can provide a positive impact on their business
outcomes.
Another recommendation is that digital businesses should integrate new technologies and options
so that they can adopt the changing environment of the world. In order to adopt the changing

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consumer trends, newer technologies should be used so that it eventually increases the
creditability, importance, transparency and value of the firm in a particular country.

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References
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