An On-Offline Revolution

A successful retail supply chain must manage the flows of information, product and funds effectively. Retailers want to show customers all the product variety they have to offer, and customers, in turn, gain from knowing if a specific product is available in stock. While an online retailer can help online customers search through a wide variety of products, it cannot access customers who are not online.

Using the online channel, it also cannot provide sensory information that is only available once a product is seen, touched and felt. In contrast, a small local retailer cannot carry a wide variety of products and is often forced to convince customers to buy what is available.

Imagine a future where the local retailer carries the most popular variants of product, while its online partner carries all the others. The local retailer is linked to the online retailer’s website through a simple store computer. The combination of the local and online retailers is able to provide all the information a customer desires.

6 Factors That Influence Exchange Rates

Aside from factors such as interest rates and inflation, the exchange rate is one of the most important determinants of a country's relative level of economic health. Exchange rates play a vital role in a country's level of trade, which is critical to most every free market economy in the world. For this reason, exchange rates are among the most watched, analyzed and govern-mentally manipulated economic measures. But exchange rates matter on a smaller scale as well: they impact the real return of an investor's portfolio. Here we look at some of the major forces behind exchange rate movements.