Forget about the outdoor local farmers’ market this season. Spending a few weekend morning hours in the blithering cold is hardly what anyone wants to do these days. Local foodies, don’t despair. A new online retailer is bringing online shoppers a plethora of local foods via the web. The page is called Foodzie.com, by the makers of Etsy.com.
The premise behind Etsy.com was to allow craftsmen and women to post and sell handmade products through individual profile pages, accessed through the Etsy.com website. While the seller could post his/her products for free, Etsy.com would take a percentage cut of each sale. Likewise, Foodzie.com members can post artisanal produce for free, while Foodzie takes 20 percent of each food sale. While this is a high percentage fee compared to other online retailers, this is a significantly lower cut than the traditional supply chain distribution in the food industry, where small-scale farmers receive less than 25% of the final retail price.[1]
In the early 2000’s, strategists talked about disruptive technologies allowing change to the retail distribution model. With the elimination of the traditional “middleman” and the introduction of a virtual portal, this phenomenon allowed for the distribution and sale of goods via the Internet. This re-intermediation has changed the marketing and supply chain landscape, facilitating the idea of “many-to-many” exchanges. In effect, the use of the electronic commerce is aiming to aid a broad scope of retail supply chain activities, such as forecasting and replenishment, price discovery, and clearing.
What does this mean to consumers? For one, it allows for lower retail prices, because farmers are now enjoying larger margins from this direct virtual exchange. As well, it allows consumers access to a larger variety of artisanal goods. Nonetheless, this shift to the virtual world has definitely put a new spin on the term “local”, as consumers in South Carolina can now enjoy the fruits of labor of niche Californian farmers -- all at the click of a button. However, one may wonder of the carbon footprint effects of this new site. Unless sale and exchanges of goods can be consolidated and streamlined, the local UPS man may become busier than ever.
[1] Jang and Liu, “For the Love of Good Food, Entrepreneurship, Sustainability, and Technological Innovation in Localizing the Restaurant Supply Chain”, page 10.
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Excellent integration of IS issues...as an IS academic I loved reading this post..but it left me wondering - what do you think will happen in the future? What next? I look forward to following your blog over time.
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