Overstock.com E-Business

1. a. Name and purpose of the system. The e-commerce system chosen is the Overstock.com. Overstock.com is an online retailer offering a broad variety of high-quality, branded name goods at discount prices, including bedding, home decor, appliances, watches, jewellery, electronics, sporting goods, clothing and shoes. At the beginning, Overstock.com sold surplus and returned merchandise on an online E-commerce marketplace and liquidating the inventories of the failed dot-com companies at below-wholesale prices (Drummond, 2006). Recently, it has expanded to sell new merchandise and also offering manufacturers, distributors and other retailers an alternative sales channel for liquidating their inventory. In addition to its direct retail sales, Overstock.com has also offered online auctions on its website. The company’s major competitors are eBay and Amazon.com (Mann, 2005).
b. The e-Marketplace. Overstock.com is considered as a private e-marketplace that is owned by a single company. In a sell-side e-marketplace, such as Overstock.com will sell either standard or customised products to individuals (B2C) or to business (B2B), this type of selling is considered to be one-to-many (Turban, King, Lee, Liang & Turban, 2010). Overstock.com uses the Internet to create a more efficient market for liquidation, closeout and other discount merchandise by providing consumers and businesses with quick and convenient access to high-quality, brand-name merchandise at discount prices. Besides that, Overstock.com operates the part of their website as an online auctions business, a marketplace for the buying and selling of goods and services-as well as online sites for listing cars and real estate for sale (Mann, 2005). Overstock.com is an example of virtual e-tailers that sell directly to consumers over the Internet without maintaining a physical sales channel. Virtual e-tailers have the advantage of low overhead costs and streamlined process (Turban et al., 2010). General