Preparing It for a New Product Launch

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...