"Victoria's Secret, you're murdering my budget!" Proclaims regular customer Cyanne after making another online purchase from her favorite retail store. When asked to rank the company's website, the shopper admits "4.5 stars. It would have been 5 stars if I'd stopped bleeding from the last shipping charge. Victoria's Secret online is a complete addiction!" (Cyanne 1). This testimonial is merely a small sample of the extensive number of lingerie connoisseurs who shop Victoria's Secret via the Internet. This highly profitable enterprise was the first to come to mind when prompted to select a company for analysis. Reporting on the growth of Victoria's Secret's broad spectrum of offerings as an effect of the Internet is made simple, due largely from personal experience in shopping through this medium.
             Easily the highest grossing lingerie company in the world, Victoria's Secret caters to shoppers in over 91 countries. The Ohio based company reportedly drew in over a million visitors to their website after their first ever fashion show webcast in 1999. (Krochmal 2). On average, the women's apparel company hosts approximately 212,000 viewers online per week. Nine out of ten shoppers are women, however, after the initial broadcast of the first annual fashion show, fifty-two percent of the visitors were male, each spending an average of ten minutes on the site (Krochmal 2). Men are exceedingly becoming more loyal gift shoppers compared to recent times.
             Although primarily catalog sales account for the majority of the company's revenue, significant portions of income result from in store sales and online services. The existing marketing mix sales force is heavily concentrated on promotion and product aspects. Conveniently, many retail store locations exist multinationally, accentuating the place aspect of the mix as well. One main weakness viewed by...