United Parcel Service is a package delivery company. Headquartered in Georgia, United
States, UPS delivers more than 15 million packages a day to 6.1 million customers in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. UPS is well known for its ground package delivery. Nowadays, UPS also operates its own airline based in Louisville, Kentucky where its Worldport air hub is also located. Question 1: What do you think about the 3 opportunities mentioned (globalization, ecommerce, scm)? During the late of the 1990s, Globalization and supply chain management became more and more important and the e-commerce appeared at the same time. Companies had to establish the different strategies to get more profits and develop more markets. It was a period that was full of opportunities of growth and possibilities of failure. Among the three opportunities, e-commerce is the most important one to which we should pay much more attention. Because it constitutes a new way to enhance direct communication between the providers and the buyers which becomes omnipresent in all companies, no matter local or international. UPS’s strategy is a good choice because the online B2C sales are such a big market and UPS was the first comer in this domain: the preferred shipper for online commerce and a pioneer on returns on the web. Globalization is also very important to be taken into account, especially for activities which can be delocalized. For package delivery industry, the local to local delivery is not very affected by delocalization, but the international delivery is. DHL is a good example and leader in this domain. For this point, UPS strategy was not very good at the beginning, because it focused on the U.S. domestic market instead of developing its international network. Noticing that international trade was growing, UPS decided to turn a part of its strategy to non-US markets, in order to avoid losing too much market share. Finally, UPS achieved to develop its network,