Analysis of the French E-Commerce Website Cdiscount

Introduction

As an introduction of this paper, I will first explain why I have chosen “Cdiscount” as my topic to write this assignment related to e-business.

After graduating from high school, I studied IT for one year and did an internship as a commissioned salesman in high-tech products. Then, I chose studying business management. When I was a second year student, I did a second internship in one of the shopping center of the “Geant Casino” French superstore chain. Since I was still highly interested in high-tech products, I have been part of the management team of the hi-tech products department. While I was working there, a huge shift was about to happen. An agreement with Cdiscount, which was a subsidiary of the “Casino group” for almost 10 years, has been signed. At that time, Cdiscount was the major e-commerce website for hi-tech product in France. Although price of products bought online from customers were cheaper than in retail store, there was no way for them to avoid paying delivery fees, which were sometimes quite high for heavy products. Moreover, private carrier companies, such as DHL or TNT, delivered those products straight to the customer’s house. This added another issue: people were usually not home during weekdays, when deliveryman passed to deliver their purchase.

Those two issues, namely the cost of delivery for a single product and the delivery schedule from carriers that was not very convenient for buyers, raised an idea within the Casino group.

“Why do not we use our own ​trucks to bring the products bought online to the shopping centers?” Then the customer would have two different choices: pick up the product in the shopping center or still ask for a delivery at home. In both cases the delivery fee would be cheaper.

This solution was not only interesting on the customer side, but also on the Casino side. Both would save money with this concept. The delivery process would not be outsourced anymore from Geant Casino. And at this time it was very appropriate. Sales in store were indeed going down due to the huge increase of the sales from e-commerce. The delivery trucks owned by Geant Casino that were used to transport products from the global purchasing organization of the group to every shopping center were often half loaded. Transporting the products from Cdiscount was therefore a good solution to fill the trucks and of course reduce the global operational costs of the Casino group.

It has thus been decided to increase synergies between the two subsidiaries. Hi-tech products from both companies would now be stored at the same place, transported together from a common staff, and then unloaded in shopping center’s warehouses. Lastly, there would be 3 alternatives to get rid of them: from a purchase done in store - or online, if we assume the customer picks up the products in store - or from an online