like Safeway competes with Walmart for grocery sale, and Walmart competes all other department stores and grocery stores.
At this level, even computer system is down for one hour, it could mount millions dollars loss because if the store orders can not reach to warehouse, warehouse workers and drivers still get paid, and when the system is up, the cmpany has to pay over time for those workers. So if the purchasing price for one item is $1, and selling price is $10, there are so many factors will eat out the $9 margin. I can list some of the departments involved, merchandiser, buyer, IT, HR, landlord, warehouse, marketing, pricing, transportation, even outside vendor, like IBM, Oracle, HP, Microsoft etc. All of these will get a hand of that $9.
