Submitted by: Submitted by landaprince
Views: 50
Words: 3121
Pages: 13
Category: Science and Technology
Date Submitted: 03/02/2015 12:08 PM
v27
© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).
DOI 10.1002/jcaf.21780
feature
article
Royce D. Burnett, Mark Friedman, and Andre Prince
On Tuesday,
September 13,
2011, Target’s
website crashed several
times throughout
the day in the
midst of their highly
anticipated “Missoni
for Target” collection
product launch.
Shortly after the 6:00
a.m. product launch, online
customers were greeted by
Target’s mascot bulldog and an
alarming message: “We are suddenly
extremely popular. You
may not be able to access our
site momentarily due to unusually
high traffic. Please stay
here and we’ll try to get you in
as soon as we can!”1 When a
website crash occurs, the fallout
is tremendous and widespread.
First, resources are instantly
rerouted, which could result in
operating inefficiencies. Second,
communication lines become
overloaded and telephone and/
or data lines freeze. The result:
information transfers come to
a standstill. Finally, and probably
most important, customers
are disappointed and countless
sales opportunities are lost.
For retail and service-oriented
companies, the loss of the IT
services is only the beginning of
the storm that will brew. Using
Target as an example, the ensuing
results relative to customer
impact were tremendous, especially
when one considers the
errors that occurred during this
“blackout” time. For instance,
those customers who were able
to place orders during the short
blip when the website was working
were universally affected.
For example, one customer
ordered about $300 worth of
merchandise and received an
e-mail with the expected ship
dates. However, the next day
she was informed that three of
the items she had ordered were
not available for the estimated
ship date and that she would not
be charged until they were on
the way, yet, she was already
charged for the entire order.2
Firms may believe this is an
isolated...