Order management for profit on the Internet

To succeed, Internet retailers must make a profit on the goods and services they sell. But e-tailers are still searching for strategies that work. To test current practices, we became “phantom shoppers” and bought a randomly chosen set of CDs from a variety of Internet retailers. Our findings suggest that order management and logistics skills are pivotal for selling profitably on the Internet. In this article, we show how Internet retailers can deploy resources creatively to attract the right shoppers, convert these shoppers into buyers, and improve the chances of repeat purchase while maintaining profit margins.