br />Introduction
Industries in our modern day are facing tremendous pressures or drivers like society
conformation, technology innovation and market competition. These three forces describe
by Boyett and Boyett, (1995) catalyzed an organization to initiate goodwill responses,
improve their technological platform and invent systems to automate their operational
processes. These are efforts contributed to retain their competitive edge thus preserving
their existence.
In the context of this essay, we will be using the consumer electronics retailing industry as
a focal point for arguments. We will also discuss the following:
Market, Technological and Societal Pressures and how it affects the industry.
The industry responses to these business pressures.
How will the particular industry gain by using Information Technology (IT).
How IT aids in decision-making processes and problem solving situations.
What are these Business Pressures or Drivers
Huber (2004) deduces that the business environment comprises of factors like social,
technological, legal, economic, physical and political. In our discussion, we will be
narrowing our focus to market pressure, technological pressure and societal pressure.
Business pressures could be visualized as surrounding forces that encompass an
organization. An organization needs to retaliate to these forces from undermining its
existence. In particular, market and technological pressures can be subsided through the
deployment of strategic systems or adopting IT as a facilitator. A way to abate Societal
Pressure is to promote and contribute environmental goodwill.
The local consumer electronics retailers are immerse in intensive competition with each
other. With foreign players like Best Denki and Harvey Norman entering the scene due to
globalization, they need to realign their strategies to remain in competition. We will be
extracting scenarios from case studies and publications on these three relevant companies
in our chosen industry; Best Denki, Harvey Norman, and Mega Discount Store (a local
company) on how they react to certain business pressures and demands. Please refer to
references for articles source.
Market Pressures
We will analyze three segregated areas of market pressures. As construe by Turban et al,
(2006: 13-20). They are strong competition and globalization, need for real-time
operations and powerful customers.
1. Strong Competition and Globalization
Local consumer electronics retailers have found themselves entangled in a fragmented
competition. Most of these localized businesses do not engage in major advertising efforts,
they do not incurred high marketing overheads. Hence their popularity is confined. To
substitute that, they rely strongly on personal selling and relationship building with the
neighboring consumers through word of mouth advertising.
Major global players like Harvey Norman (Australia) and Best Denki (Japan) knocking on
