1. Introduction

People will create and collect information everyday to learn, understand and make decision (Kaye, 1995). However, it appears in variety of platforms, for example, television, website, social media, high street and magazine etc. In 2005, Student Beans (The Beans Group, 2014) established an platform that integrates all the useful information and resources for university students in the UK. It is a hub in the internet for students to search for discount, jobs, articles under the aim of ‘making student life a little more awesome’. Recently year, there are more incoming challengers like UniDays and Student Money Saver founded in 2011 and 2010 respectively. The competitiveness of these information hubs has been increasing. This essay aims to generate a situation analysis for Student Beans (SB) in terms of macro environment, marketing environment and microenvironment.

2. Macro Environment Analysis

According to (Baines, Fill and Page, 2008), external environment is explaining the elements do not affect the companies or organizations, usually in a long-term basis. Moreover, these elements are out of companies or organizations’ control. Although the elements in external environment are out of control, it is crucial to SB to examine and evaluate. Hence, PESTEL will be the tool to examine the external environment.

2.1. PESTEL framework

PESTEL framework is defined as political, economic, social, technological, ecological environment and legal.

Political
The UK Government has restricted the financial loan support (The Guardian, 2014). The outstanding balance of student debt was estimated that government would suffer more than £330 billion by 2044. The solution is still not coming up in terms of providing sustainable student loan system in England.

Economic
The first main concern is the financial situation of university students. According to Office of National Statistics (2014), 52% of people aged 16-24 are satisfy with high level of household income. In addition, Mintel (2014) shows fact of student cost of living in UK. The average monthly expenditure is £669 where food and non-alcoholic drink, dinning and takeaways, leisure activities, clothes and accessories, make-up, electronic goods cost £136, £37, £36, £33, £20 and £13 respectively, refer to appendix 1. These are the elements that could be beneficial through SB discounts redeem and deals.

Social
There are slight changes in share of social networking sites. The share of total visitors of FaceBook has dropped from 65% to 47% while some media sites have increased since 2011 (Mintel, 2014), for example, Pinterest and AskFM. Although there is a decline in visitors in FaceBook, it is still dominating the SNS. According to the facts in Mintel (2014), 80% aged 16+ interviewees used FaceBook past three month and 75% of interviewees use FaceBook at least once a day.

Technological
The emergence of technology has been rapidly developing. The usage of smartphone and tablet has been increasing around the world. There are 31.7 million smartphone users in late 2013 in UK (We are apps, 2013). Additionally, the smartphone user aged 18-24 has increased from 68% to 84% in 2011 and 2013 respectively. Smartphone and tablet could bring huge benefits to users in terms of information and data collection. According to Office of National Statistics (Office for National Statistics, 2014) the Internet usage in mobile phone from 24% to 58% in 2010 and 2014 respectively. Additionally, there is an ascending figures in finding information about goods and services from 58% to 73% in 2007 and 2014 respectively via mobile. Hence, more people can gather information at anytime at any place with Internet coverage
Ecological Environment
It is irrelevant to evaluate the ecological environment since SB is an internet base service provider. The level of influence is not significant.

Legal
According to the UK Government (2014), businesses that provide digital services to consumers have to follow the regulation of VAT in the EU starting from 2015.
The consumer’s country is responsible for the charging rate.

3. Market Analysis

In the market analysis, it will demonstrate in three sections: stakeholder analysis, competitor analysis and Porter’s five forces model.

3.1. Stakeholder analysis

Shareholder is defined as the persons and organizations that have interest in the organization (Gledhill, 2008). In the perspective of SB, university students, Student Beans ambassador, competitors and suppliers are the key stakeholders.

University students take part in a very important role to SB. In SB’s perspective, consumers is the tool to earn money and raise brand awareness. In contrast, consumer treats SB as a platform for them to collect discounts and updated products or services information. As a consequence, SB has to interact with users frequently, for example, using the 400,000 newsletter database to inform users about the latest discount offers and deals. Currently, members will be updated at least once a week by email.

Student Beans ambassador is a bridge between university students and SB. These ambassadors can directly gather information from students to understand what students needs and wants. Moreover, they are responsible for collecting discounts and deals from suppliers in their university city.

As mentioned in the introduction, UniDays and S.M.S are the main competitors in student discount information sector, which will be evaluated in the competitor analysis section below.

Supplier is another crucial stakeholder to SB. The cooperative relationship between SB and suppliers can bring a win-win situation. Supplier could increase customer awareness and sales by offering discount in SB, which is a platform connecting with huge numbers of consumers instantly via smartphone and tablet. In the aspect of SB, the increasing numbers of discounts by suppliers could attract more consumers to connect the information hub, resulting an increase in brand awareness and income.

3.2. Competitor analysis

In SB’s view, UniDays, Student Money Saver (S.M.S) are the two main competitors who are also targeting university students in UK. SB should understand where they are positioning and how to counter competitors’ actions and moves. Therefore, they will be evaluated in terms of engagement methods, unique selling proposition and market positions, refer to appendix 2.

UniDays was founded in 2011 in UK, is another information hub for university students to collect information and discount. Importantly, it expanded to other regions including Ireland, US, Australia, New Zealand and Denmark (Linkedin, 2014), resulting an achievement of four million students hit around the world. Moreover, every four students in UK and Australia, there is an active user in UniDays. The engagement methods to students are mainly base on website, smartphone and tablet app, social media and email. It differentiates itself by rewarding and innovation website design. Students can redeem coupon or voucher every time they refer a friend to join. Furthermore, UniDays website has an innovation design of filter in its search engine, for example, gender, time and alphabetical order. It eases the way how people search according to their preferences.

UniDays is the biggest threat to SB. In terms of targeting market, UniDays has developed their business into another five places, which has larger sizes of customers and suppliers. As a result, the market position has been taken over SB. Other than difference size in targeting markets, customers and suppliers, UniDays differentiates its marketing strategy through the rewarding scheme. Social network provides a platform for students to refer friends to join, which could greatly increase the brand awareness and the sharing of information. Moreover, the UniDays website is relatively user friendly than SB. Base on the facts of market size, promotion methods and innovative design, UniDays is retaining the market leader position in student discount sector.

S.M.S is a UK based website established in 2010 aims to save student money by providing best student deals, discounts and tips (Student Money Saver, 2014). It achieved one millions monthly hit (Linkedin, 2014) and over 240,000 FaceBook fans (FaceBook, 2014). It engages students mainly though website and social media. Although S.M.S has a small targeting market and limited engagement methods, it has a clear objective on finance perspective, which only provides information of the ways to spend and save money smart.

The positions of SB and S.M.S are the quite the same as they are providing similar e-commerce and engagement methods. As a consequence, S.M.S is treated as market follower as it is doing the same thing as marketing leaders without any innovative development and promotion.