...Running head: Proposal for Online Business Expansion Proposal for Online Business Expansion Proposal for Online Business Expansion A1. Viability of Product or Service Umake is a 3D printing company that is currently in the Discovery Phase of business development, and is looking to start mainly with an online presence, then expanding to a brick and mortar. The company is looking to introduce the technology of 3D printing to a market where the technology has been restricted to machine shops and prototyping companies. This will give the public the opportunity to customize, design, and create physical objects from their imagination, with little to no drawing or technical knowledge, at an affordable price. The company will offer a variety of products, for simple customization, including cell phone cases, key chains, and other novelty type items, allowing the customer to add their name or images to the product. Umake’s target market is separated into 3 categories: 1. Hobbyists With the introduction of 3D printing, hobbyists have flocked to the technology to reproduce lost or difficult items needed for their projects. Everything from car enthusiasts to scrap booking, customization is key. 2. Prototyping Inventors, companies, and entrepreneurs, need to produce a product for proof of concept. 3. Students Children ages 10 – 17 are the fastest growing market, other than companies, for cell phones and accessories. This market has the need to customize everything...
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...Proposal for Online Business Expansion for Author Stu Campbell Jeffrey N. Meads Western Governors University Proposal for Online Business Expansion for Author Stu Campbell A1. E-Commerce Solutions During the review of several top payment processing solutions, consideration was given to available options and features, setup costs, monthly costs, transaction costs, and ease of integration into the website and with the requisite customer relationship software solution. Google Checkout was eliminated from consideration because Google has announced that it will be discontinuing its checkout product after November 20th, 2013 (Google Support, 2013). The Authorize.net transaction gateway was eliminated from consideration because it would require the client to establish a separate merchant account (Authorize.Net, 2013). Our selection for a payment processing solution was the PayPal Website Payments Standard. Customers will be able to pay with either their PayPal account or with their Visa, American Express, Mastercard, or Discover credit card. The PayPal Website Payments Standard Integration Guide, pages 323-327, provides a method of using a web form to capture the billing information for each sale on the client's website in HTML input variables, and then pre-filling the PayPal payment form when the customer clicks the "submit payment" button. The payment information transmits to PayPal via the Website Payments Standard form. PayPal will return an Instant Payment...
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...educational programs. CICBC is able to make contributions to rescues both local and national, and avian medical research funding. This is done through a series of successful bird fairs and managed through the board of directors with membership input and approval. CICBC donated more than $10,000.00 for fiscal year 2011 to worthy organizations. None of the other clubs are as generous as CICBC providing donations to local and national organizations. CICBC’s closest caged bird club competitors are in northern Indiana, Chicago and Cincinnati. The nature of the organization is to educate its members and the general public regarding the general welfare and keeping of exotic birds; therefore there is no real competitiveness regarding an online presence. Bird Fever is the only competition for CICBC’s bird fairs; however, CICBC is the actual threat to Bird Fever due to cutting out the middle person between breeder or supplier and the bird fair customer, which allows the customer to purchase bird toys, food and birds at a cost lower than they are able to find at Bird Fever or any other local pet shop or supply company. CICBC is faced with major challenges for the year 2012 and beyond....
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...Proposal for Business Expansion Online Presented to J. Smith Construction Co. J. Smith Construction Company is a small, but talented, general contractor and building company. The company specializes in remodeling and room additions with an emphasis on kitchen and baths. J. Smith has the experience and ability to add residential and commercial building projects, starting from the ground up. It has the personnel and suppliers, in place, to take on several projects, simultaneously. J. Smith has a website built. The basic graphics the company has chosen, the services offered, former customer referrals, pictures of previous jobs completed, contact information, is good. This website is not getting the attention it needs, though, because J. Smith currently does not have any online tools in place to attract a new customer base to it. The company is located in the moderately sized area of Branson, Missouri and has been doing business for about 17 years. The business has held its own for several years, but, a change in location and recessionary times have created a need for growth to survive. An untapped source for growth, Springfield, Missouri, a much larger city than Branson, is about 30 – 40 miles away and should be considered. Due to the recessionary downturn in the economy, marketing funds are limited. Creativity will be needed to stretch available finances. Paying thousands of dollars for ads in a phonebook are costly....
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...E.COMMERCE REPORT BUSINESS MODULE ABOUT (www.ebay.com):- Introduction: Founded on 1995 by Pierre Omidyar, eBay was considered a pioneer in the online auction industry whereby people are brought together on a local, national and international basis to serve the purpose of creating a person-to-person community where ever individual could have an equal access through the same medium which is the Internet. eBay offers wide varieties of products and services for bargain hunters, hobbyists and collectors and sellers, changing the way people engage in trading hence eBay had changed the face of e-commerce from its inception. Today, eBay is continuously the brand preference with over 39 market presence and with $60 billion of the total value of sold items on the site’s trading platform. eBay’s Business Model eBay’s business model was based on creating and maintaining a person-to-person trading community. After implementing their model, eBay has been able to build strategic partnerships, continue to make innovative changes and improvements, and monitor its internal and external environments for possible future opportunities. This has given them the prestige of being the world’s largest online auction company. eBay’s business model was based on creating and maintaining a person-to-person trading community. This allows buyers to easily search for what they want to purchase. It also allows sellers to post their items minutes after they have registered. There are a few specific...
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...Case study of eBay As an efficient and flexible sales channel, online auction businesses are becoming an internationally successful phenomenon. People can use auction sites as a market to conduct sales, to liquidate unwanted inventory, as well as to reaching markets that would otherwise be too expensive to reach. However, there are potential problems with feedback systems in the OAM, in other word, seller incentives to provide high quality products under the case of asymmetric information, for example buyers are not able to discern product quality prior to making their purchase decisions while sellers are aware of the quality of their product offerings, as a result dishonest or low-quality sellers will drive honest and high-quality sellers out of market. Obviously, beside the transaction cost of determining the required good is available on the market, which has the lowest price, there are other transaction costs within the online auction business for both sellers and buyers. From seller’s perspective, their decision on the which auction service to use are depended on following factors: cost of listing an auction item and the chance that a product will be sold. In the case of eBay and Yahoo!Auction, eBay charges sellers both listing fee and a percentage commission of the item sold. Yahoo!Auction, on the other hand, offers free listing. However, Yahoo!Auction suffers from a much lower successful transaction probability than eBay. Thus, a seller should trade off between balance...
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...your business? Would you like to become part of a new research group specifically designed to find out what really works on eBay and other online marketplaces? Are you a retailer or manufacturer who would like to start to utilize eBay? http://www.marketingexperiments.com/research_call.cfm UPCOMING RESEARCH BRIEFS 1. 2005 Marketing Blueprint 2. Testing Free Trial Offers 3. Effective PPC Campaign Tracking 4. Planning Your Merchandising Calendar in 2005 Topic: eBay Stores — What is an eBay Store and how can it be used as an effective sales tool? We recently released the audio recording of our clinic on this topic. You can listen to a recording of this clinic here: Windows Media Audio: http://meclabs.com/cgi-bin/pl/pl.cgi?c2w RealMedia: http://meclabs.com/cgi-bin/pl/pl.cgi?c2r Marketing Experiments.Com A Division of Digital Trust Inc. – eBay Stores - Page 1 of 10 © Digital Trust Inc. All rights reserved - 2005 This research brief will answer the following questions: 1. What is an eBay Store? 2. How effective is an eBay Store as a sales channel? 3. How can an eBay Store be optimized? (10 Key Techniques) 1. What is an eBay Store? Clear your mind of any notion you have about how eBay works, what it does, who shops there, and what you know about it. eBay has evolved over the past 10 years and it is more than just an auction site. In fact, billions of dollars in fixed-priced items sell there each year. What started as a virtual flea market is now a thriving online marketplace...
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...Trident University Mark Washington Module 1 Case Assignment BUS 401: International Business Dr. Portuese 5 DEC 2011 Why does E-Bay have problems in its Asian Markets? The situation in Asia is somewhat ironic given that in the U.S. Yahoo and eBay have forged An alliance to protect their dominance in the $12.5 billion online advertising market against Google. But in Asia, the eBay-Yahoo rivalry is ferocious (BusinessWeek.com, 5/26/06, Tech Titans Take Sides). Yes, Yahoo is a big reason that E-bay globalization in the Asian market isn’t successful. Though yahoo has some responsibility in EBAY unsuccessful Asian Market, EBay has lack the ability to conform its business model to the Asian market. EBay inability to tailor its product to the Asian Market has also been a major reason for their failure in the Asian Market. In major markets like Japan, Korea and China, Yahoo subsidiary have outperformed EBay. EBay has a simple business model of drawing revenue from passing information between seller and buyer, which require no necessity to have inventory or ship goods. This business model was embraced by foreign markets including UK, France, Germany and surely became a leader in e-commerce in the US. This success didn’t translate to the Asian Market. The reason is due to neglect of the four P’s concept, adoption, standardization, and entry time and entry market. EBay begin its entry into the Asian market in Japan, but missed...
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...Online Auction Online Auction Ebay is an online auction service that allows people to sell merchandise and potential buyers to place bids on a variety of items. The length of a auction can last anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks. While the auction is going on people are all making bids on the merchandise that they are interested in buying. At the end of the auction the person with the highest bid has won the item. The items that are on Ebay range from trading cards to automobiles. In order to buy or sell anything on Ebay a person has to create a profile and after this is done then they can began the process of either buying or selling. Some of the advantages of using Ebay are that it is an online marketplace where you can buy things from all over the world, without leaving your home. You can get things that you would never think anyone would bother to sell, and you can get them cheaply. The search engine allows you to find things that you weren’t even actually looking for. Not only that, but you can send money quickly and electronically to almost all of these sellers, without worrying about currency conversion or exchange rates or anything else. Now some of the disadvantages of using Ebay are that some people never really thought about how much it cost to send even the smallest thing to the other side of the world. The prices sometimes are very high and it will make people think twice about using Ebay. Then another thing is that Ebay is packed...
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...Key Strategic Decisions: Several aspects of eBay have been specifically designed to support an almost freestanding economy (2000; 2003). eBay built a free market. As a facilitator, users are allowed to decide what they want to sell, encouraging continuous growth. The users or citizens are the ones who control the direction of the site. eBay created a legal system that promotes self-governance. The auction site devised a feedback forum to let users rate one another to discourage fraud. The users are constantly educated; eBay teaches people how to use the site. eBay also has its own banking system. eBay has been bounded by two things: a clear mission to be the world's largest person-to-person online auction company, and a focused strategy with five key elements expanding the user base, strengthening the eBay brand, broadening the trading platform by increasing product categories and promoting new ones, Fostering community affinity and enhancing site features and functionality. The arrival of Meg Whitman ( President and CEO of eBay since 1998) marked a watershed in the effort to build brand recognition at eBay. The company's early growth relied strictly on word of mouth. But as an old hand at consumer product marketing, Whitman made branding one of her first initiatives. In a series of meetings with the senior management team, she broke the problem into two parts. The first was clarifying what eBay stood for. In their judgment, it was a personal trading...
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...2002 Founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll, the eBay online marketplace was developed in order to provide individuals a place to sell goods and services. eBay became a phenomenon that attracted some 10 million auctions in its first three years. This success provided eBay the necessary foundation to complete an initial public offering (IPO) in 1998. eBay’s online auction concept is relatively simple. Sellers register with eBay and use its suite of online tools to place nearly any item up for sale. Buyers navigate eBay’s vast array of categories or use search functionality to find goods or services that they wish to bid on. Once the auction is won, the buyer may use PayPal, the online payment service, to complete the transaction. Perhaps the most powerful part of the eBay process lies with the feedback scores that are given by both buyer and seller following the completion of the transaction. Feedback scores are public information and allow other buyers and sellers to determine whether a person is worthy of doing business with or not. A negative feedback on eBay is akin to having a bad credit score with a bank. By providing a marketplace for “new and scarce goods, end-of-life products, and used and vintage items,” eBay provides a valuable service in which they attempt to “make inefficient markets more efficient.[1]” While other Internet business models have failed in recent years, eBay’s business is thriving. In 2002, with more than 61 million registered users...
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...digital media and the internet together with strategic decisions taken by its management team have supported ebay's continued growth ?????? Introduction eBay is an online auction and shopping website where people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide. It is managed by eBay Inc., an American Internet company. Millions of people are brought together by eBay everyday on a local, national and international basis using an array of websites that focus on commerce, payments and communications. From eBay’s origin as a home business founded by Omidyar, the company has become the world's leading auction market and one of a handful of major dotcom companies to actually turn a profit. The best thing about eBay's vision is that it has eliminated many of the inefficiencies of traditional person-to-person commerce. It provides a place where buyers and sellers can conveniently meet, exchange information about goods and prices, and transact sales at minimum costs. Digital Media and Internet: Internet is the key to success of online auction sites such as eBay. eBay introduced several crucial innovations for the internet. One was the model of online auctions bringing together buyers and sellers to establish prices for goods and services that had never been marketed before. The online auction model developed by eBay...
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...website features that eBay adds that are not found on unregulated OAMs that merely link buyers and sellers? Be specific. When eBay started its business in 1995, online auction got new head starts in many ways. EBay has refined its online auction model by creating a global platform, a model that connects to people, person to person marketplace on the Internet. Before eBay, auctions were limited to garage sales, collectibles shows, flea markets and in-store sales. Some of the “COOL” that makes eBay stand out are it’s varied buying formats and secure and more accessible payment methods. Some of them being Auction-style format which provides options of bidding. Moreover, eBay also features an option called Buy it Now which literally lets the customer buy the product right away without waiting for a long time. Other feature that’s not seen in unregulated OAMs is Motor classifieds, which basically lets a customer find a vehicle that they choose so they can see it online before they purchase it. 3. Two unique features that add value to OAMs, I think will include more secure payment systems and reliable ordering. EBay has been uniquely able to partner up with Banks like Wells Fargo to enhance their payment processing system. For a global payment method, PayPal has always been an integral part of eBay. EBay is a registered online business model unlike other unregulated websites. It features real product and real seller on the other end. EBay never hesitates to take the accounts down...
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...in the Online Auction Industry Prepared for: Dr. Patrick Kreiser Prepared By: Katelynn Coghlan Tommy Pauley Patrick Scott October 26, 2005 There is no doubt that eBay holds the power in the online auction industry. An analysis of the key factors of their company was compiled to find out what the eBay strategy is, and how they are doing financially. Also an internal analysis of their strengths and weaknesses and an external analysis of their opportunities and threats have been provided. Finally, a strength assessment of the main competitors in the online auction industry has been determined to see how strong each competitor is. From its beginning in a San Francisco living room, eBay has grown to be in a league by itself. Analysis of eBay’s Strategy and Business Model Before eBay could begin to compete in the online auction industry a strategy and business model needed to be developed (Appendix A). eBay had to define the businesses they would be competing in and how they would compete in those specific businesses. They also needed to define how they would be a successful service to their customers. Corporate level strategy eBay’s corporate level strategy was to become a diversified business. They wanted to diversify not only the products they offered but also their customer base and global reach. By using the eBay service you can find virtually anything you are looking for. Business Level...
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...e-commerce website, most notably eBay. eBay.com has become the world’s largest online marketplace, that enable individuals to buy and sell practically anything including books, antiques, collectibles, electronics, home furnishing, sporting goods and memorabilia, and move and DVDs to nearly every country on earth (Trites &Bortiz, 2003). It operates on a global scale, with its headquarter located in San Jose, California. It was founded in September 1995 by Pierre Omidyar as one of his hobbies, yet to realize he developed a revolutionary new ecommerce model (Trites &Bortiz, 2003). eBay did not follow in the same stepping stones as other ecommerce did at the time. At the time of its establishment, eBay acted as an intermediary between buyers and sellers, unlike others who focused on selling goods and services (Trites &Bortiz, 2003). Since it first started, eBay has achieved numerous milestones for its time duration in the business. It has an established community consisting of tens of millions of registered from every corner of the earth (eBay, 2013). In addition, eBay is globalized to operate localized sites in over 20 countries, including Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and India (eBay, 2013). eBay was successful during its establishment due to the fact it was the ‘right idea at the right time’, combining the business of auctioning through the means of the internet. Due to its business structure as an intermediary between buyers and sellers, it did not have to...
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