Office depot operating environment Office depot deals with sales of office furniture, computers and their software. It also gives services such as printing photocopying, mailing services and reproduction of documents. Customers of office depot range from small business enterprises to individuals not disregarding large business establishments 1 . It accomplishes its sale via more than 1000 established office stores, direct mails, B2B e-commerce, through forces of sales and internet sites. “Office depot operates under Deport® the office place®, Viking office products®, Viking direct®, and for 4sure.com brand names” (Lee 2006, 143). It started in Florida with its first branch located in Fort Lauderdale in 1986 2 . Later years since then saw it expand even into the international markets like Israel, Columbia and Canada. It also merged with other market stationary leaders like “Wilson stationary and printing company and Eastman office Products Corporation with a consequence of their acquisition in 1994. The growth was later escalated by merging of office deport with Viking conferring it with tag of leading provider in products and services for offices after staples. The operating environment for office depot is characterized by competition in market share, product lines and technological deployment in execution of the business activities and managerial organization. Office Depot’s Changing Environment The incredible growth of office depot demanded ardent changes in the manner in which it handled its business matters. As result in 1998, “office deport began to leverage e-commerce aggressively, launching the first of number of new websites, www.officedepot.com” (Lee 2006, 143). Furthermore, in 1999 it opened its very first United Kingdom e-commerce site in Europe: www.viking-direct.co.uk 3 . This accomplishment saw it expand both the magnitude and range of products offered to the customers. The step-down of David Fuente as the CEO in 2000 welcomed attempts to make office depot a subtle shopping, investing and working place under the captainship of Nelson as the new CEO 4 . The new CEO facilitated incorporation of new mechanisms to increase the depots retail and international market share. One of such attempts was to deploy e-commerce marketing strategies immensely. The changes to shift from the conventional marketing strategies, were no choice for office depot since its competitors both small sized and large sized had already adopted the e-commerce techniques. The technique provided their customers with modest of shopping under one stop for various range of products. The changes sort by the office depot were thus driven by the intension to keep at pace with competitors since the competitors changes amicably threatened to erode off the office depot’s market share. E-commerce also “was rapidly shifting the balance of powers among competitive forces in the office supplies industry” (Lee 2006, 144). Following the launch of e-commerce by one of the office depot’s competitor: office max, in 1995, office depot felt that it was being left behind in the adoption of e- commerce, something that was expected to in a blast alter the traditional marketing strategies especially the moment the custom