Developing an E-Business Strategy - Example

Developing an e business strategy Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Goals and Objectives 3 Understanding the Target Market 6 Planning and Research 8 Infrastructure Development 8 Conclusion 9 Reference List 10 Introduction The paper focuses on the development of an online store, CareStore4Pets.com. The online store aims to act as a one shop store for pet lovers in terms of generating different types of products and pet care solutions. The online store aims to generate effective value through the generation of niche ideas for the pets in terms of celebrating birthday through the generation of attractive food stuffs like pizza and cakes. As a one stop shop the online store also helps in providing effective psychological and veterinary care for the pets. Generation of healthcare and entertainment solutions for the pets based on a single platform reflects of the enhanced care and focus that the online pet store tends to share with the pet owners. Value additions are also offered to the customers in terms of generating solutions for the creation of home salons for the pets. The home salons can be generated in terms of incorporating the views of dedicated pet and hair style experts. A premium category of services can also be generated where in the order of the clients the salon experts can reach the doors of the customers to generate needed care for the pets. The online store has in built links with other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These links contribute in encouraging the client community to generate news feeds, comments, videos and posts of different events like birthday celebration and grooming of their pets. This strategy would enable in generating large scale awareness about the services offered by the online store relating to taking care of the domestic pets. Goals and Objectives The goals and objectives for developing the CareStore4Pets.com can be generated as follows. The first goal and objective relates to selling of a large number of products and service solutions for helping in taking care of the pets. It aims to channelizing entertainment and grooming solutions and products for helping in enticing the pets at home. CareStore4Pets.com would require the development of online catalogues to reflect on the different packages for generating holistic care for the pets. The second goal and objective of the online business is to help focus on the creation of a social community for pet lovers and carers in terms of encouraging the client base to generate feeds, views and videos on their Facebook wall. Use of YouTube also contributes in helping in the sharing of videos among social communities. On the physical level, the online store can effectively focus on linking its services with other charity firms, veterinary organizations and also with other pet care firms. Spontaneous level of interaction developed along these sources would contribute in the development of community networks. The third goal and objective of the online business is to help focus on the development of an effective customer service portal for encouraging the clients to generate their grievances and problems. Along with the same the business also focuses on generation of a hotline number and also electronic mailing system to generate services to its clients on a 24x7 fashion. The fifth goal and objective for CareStore4Pets.com relates to the development of an effective online presence. The company aims to enhance its market share and brand awareness in the virtual marketplace through encouraging the flow of larger visitor and consumer traffic to its website. This is achievable in terms of creation of blogs along with social media marketing activities through Facebook and Twitter. Different types of promotional events can be organised by the online store both on the virtual and physical platform to generate considerable awareness for the online store for pets. Enhanced participation in pet shows in the form of sponsorship would further contribute in meeting this objective. The development of the goals and objectives on the above accord for CareStore4Pets.com requires the identification of at least two critical success factors (CSFs) for each of the different goals. For the first goal, the CSFs relate to the development of online catalogues to help the clients in selecting the different products and service packs for their pets. It also consists of adding impulse buying items on the list like dog collars, foods items for the pets and also in helping the customers avail coupons for pet shows. The development of marketing activities by CareStore4Pets.com through use of social media platforms contributes in generating large scale penetration for the company in the target market. Development of applications related to desktop and mobile interfaces rightly contributes in helping create media awareness of the online company among target communities. Use of such social media platforms for awareness generation contributes in reducing promotional and marketing cost. Generation of customer services by CareStore4Pets.com on a 24x7 fashion contributes in retaining customers and in developing sustained relationships with them. It also enables the company to gain effective recommendations and suggestions from the customers to enhance their services and products for the pets. Generation of promotional and marketing events based on virtual and physical platform contributes in helping CareStore4Pets.com gain a larger number of customers to visit their site for ordering products and services. This would contribute in generating greater sales for the products and services of the company. CareStore4Pets.com tends to generate holistic pet care solutions to its client base related to other online pet companies like PetPlanet.co.uk and Pet365.co.uk. This online store aims in generating differentiated product and service offerings in terms of helping its client base to celebrate the birthdays of their pets while also helping in the generation of healthcare and grooming solutions. The other online pet companies like PetPlanet.co.uk and Pet365.co.uk only contribute in the generation of food and other pet products like collars, cages and toys for their pets. It fails to deliver the other product and service offerings as generated by CareStore4Pets.com. This is taken to help the company share a differentiated product or service image in the larger target market. Understanding the Target Market The target population for CareStore4Pets.com would be the customers relating to the United Kingdom market. A mix of people relating to different ethnicities like Asians, Africans, Indians, Caribbean and also other whites tend to constitute the population in United Kingdom. The people falling within the age brackets like 25 to 54 and 54 to 64 years that constitute around 41 and 12 percent of the total population constitute the target market for the online store company in United Kingdom. Further the target market relates to the people that relate to the middle level and comfortable categories of customers. Customer categories relating to the well-off and richer categories also constitute the target population for the products and services generated by CareStore4Pets.com. It is observed that large number of customers tend to conduct their purchases through the use of mobile and desktop based online marketing activities. Consumers tend to purchase both high and low value items through the use of internet as an effective marketing platform. Neeps Inc. acts as an online marketing store in United Kingdom that attracts large number of customers to conduct purchases in an online fashion (International Monetary Fund, 2011). Designing of the marketing and promotional platform for the social media marketing activity requires the development of specific contents for the different types of social media platforms like Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter. It also requires the development of an effective team to contribute in the reviewing of posts and viewer traffic along such social media channels. Generation of informative contents are required to be made relating to the different social media sites like Facebook. An effective mix of different types of contents relating to videos and other feeds are required to be generated in Facebook to help in attracting the customers. Further the company can also focus on the development of contents relating to forums and blogs to help in generating effective contents pertaining to product launches and events (Maya, 2013). Evidences relating to the number of likes and posts generated in the different social networking platforms are required to be tracked. A large number of posts and likes gained relating to the contents would indicate on the level of interest of the customers to the product or services generated. Similarly the number of followers generated relating to the different contents reflects on the level of interest of consumers for purchasing the product. Use of a tool like Google Analytics would contribute in understanding the growth in consumer traffic related to the company website of CareStore4Pets.com. It helps in tracking customers based on IP addresses. Categorisation of customers based on use of different types of browsers, operating systems and also related to different geographical locations can also be tracked by use of Goggle Analytics. The above process contributes in segmenting the customers and also in rating the number of new and repeated visitors to the different sites. Other metrics like number of referrers that tend to visit the sites from getting linked through other sites and also bouncers that tend to quit the site after visiting only single or limited pages are employed in use of Google Analytics (Farney & McHale, 2013). Planning and Research One of the effective business models relates to the Advertising Based Model that encourages the activity of other external advertisers through the use of their web and online channels. The external advertisers tend to generate their advertisements based on the use of the website and the e-commerce sites for their products and services and in turn generate payment to the companies. This business model tends to generate potential shortcomings in terms of reduction of the demands of the products and services which in turn affects the advertising activity and revenue generation (Tuten, 2008). Another business model relates to the Direct Marketing model that works based on the generation of electronic mails to a large number of users. This model being a cost effective model earns greater effectiveness. In many cases however it is observed that these electronic mails are regarded by the customers as Spam and are often discarded (Gary, 2000). E-Mall tends to be another potential business model that encourages the other e-commerce companies operating in the like category to market their products and services through the use of their website. Though the above model contributes in both revenue generation and a larger market for attracting the customers yet its lack of popularity reflects a potential drawback (Vermaat, 2012). Infrastructure Development Different types of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like MSN and ISP.com can be used in that the same helps in providing dial up access to user bases located across international economies. It also helps in generating protection from malware and spyware activity while also generating low dial up rates. CareStore4Pets.com needs to focus on the incorporation of Full-Services Providers as potential Logistics Service Providers. These service providers like Maersk Logistics operate based on both the traditional platform incorporating air or freight services while also tracking the inventory movement based on an integrated platform on internet (Lun et al., 2010). Use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) interface can be effectively employed by CareStore4Pets.com to help in communicating with other channel partners like vendors, suppliers and also payment channels. The e-commerce sites require the tracking of effective information relating to the customers in terms of consumer preferences and sensitivity of customers to price changes. Creating a data repository helps in future decision making activities (Bidgoli, 2006). Revenue would be gathered by CareStore4Pets.com through the use of the Advertising Model. Use of the model would help in attracting external advertisers to use their web medium for advertising products and services against compensation (Schneider, 2014). Integration on the Information Technology platform would contribute in helping the company conduct its service with support of other agents like suppliers, logistics and also the medium for collection of payments. Exchange of information along such parties would enable in generating the right quality of product or service to the customer in due time (Epstein, 2004). Conclusion The paper reflects on the creation of an effective online store like CareStore4Pets.com that aims to deliver high quality services to its customers in terms of entertaining the pets through different types of product and service offerings. Services related to grooming, healthcare and also birthday celebrations of the pets contribute in differentiating its services from other companies in the related sector. Reference List Bidgoli, H., 2006. Handbook of Information Security, Key Concepts, Infrastructure, Standards, and Protocols. United Kingdom: John Wiley and Sons. Epstein, M.J., 2004. Implementing E-commerce Strategies: A Guide to Corporate Success after the Dot.com Bust. United Kingdom: Greenwood Publishing Group. Farney, T. & McHale, N., 2013. Web Analytics Strategies for Information Professionals: A LITA Guide. United States: American Library Association. Gary, A., 2000. Marketing: An Introduction. New Delhi: Pearson Education India. International Monetary Fund, 2011. United Kingdom: 2011 Article Iv Consultation-Staff Report; Staff Supplement; Staff Statement; Public Information Notice on the Executive Board Discussion; and Statement by the Executive Director for the United Kingdom. United Kingdom : International Monetary Fund. Lun, Y.H., Lai, K.H. and Cheng, T.C.E., 2010. Shipping and Logistics Management. Germany: Springer Science & Business Media. Maya, L., 2013. Profit from Mobile Social Media Revolution: Learn How to Engage Social Media and Triple Your Profits. United Kingdom: eBookIt.com. Schneider, G., 2014. Electronic Commerce. United States: Cengage Learning. Tuten, T.L., 2008. Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 World. United Kingdom: Greenwood Publishing Group. Vermaat, M., 2012. Enhanced Discovering Computers, Complete: Your Interactive Guide to the Digital World, 2013 Edition. 13th ed. United States: Cenagage Learning. Read More