The Letter Case
In the letter written from the CEO of wine.com to its customers and suppliers, he mainly intends to respond to some negative comments about the website. From my standpoint, his letter is very effective and will attain its goals of eliminating some bad effects originated form those false comments. Also, this letter is published on the blog of wine.com and it absolutely will raise potential stakeholders’ interests and attention.
First of all, the CEO uses answers to three questions, which are “Is Wine.com for sale; Is Wine.com struggling and If Wine.com is doing fine, what’s up with this blog post?” to respond to those negative and false comments. The most important part of this blog post is to address the question: “Is Wine.com struggling?”. From my standpoint, the CEO is very honest and open. He first acknowledges that fact that wine is a special and challenging. His honesty and sincerity establish a relationship with readers.
Secondly, the CEO adopts a very effective strategy to show the company’s well being by listing a lot of numbers. From my perspective, numbers are very essential and more convincing than plain texts. He uses historical and present data to show that the company is growing and expanding by providing a lot of numbers. Numbers are more persuasive than words since numbers will not be fabricated and will give stakeholders a more direct view of the company’s well being. For example, the CEO mentions that the breakeven point has dropped to $45 million from over $200 million in revenue (Bergsund). Also, he mentions that “Over the last four years, website traffic grew 2.4 times to over 15.6 million visits. Bottles sold and shipped nearly doubled to 2.7 million. Lifetime customer value grew 50%. And revenue grew 70% to $75 million. All while inventory turns increased to 12 times and net fulfillment cost per order dropped by 75%” (Bergsund). All these data supports the CEO’s position that Wine.com is doing well. Moreover,