LT1 Communication Consultants wants to thank Tate Limited for the opportunity to expand their market presence through the addition of a new electronic commerce unit. Adding an EC unit to an existing business model is a start-up function that is best addressed through the following steps:
• Identify the consumer need in the marketplace
• Investigate the opportunity
• Determine the ability to meet the need
Tate Limited wishes to augment its current brick-and-mortar, retail business model with an EC unit. As was addressed earlier with LT1’s assessment of Tate’s design team communication model, your primary competitors (Columbia Sportswear and The North Face) have already addressed the need for collaborative communications within their design teams. It should come as no surprise that Tate Limited is trailing its competitors in overall sales.
Product quality is not in question. Tate’s outerwear designs are leading edge and rival anything competitors produce. The problem is in their access to a much larger customer base through their Internet sales site as compared to Tate’s reliance on its retail model alone to drive its revenues. LT1 has identified a consumer need that your competitors do not currently meet – using social networking to increase customer loyalty. The first step in our business plan is to increase your company’s website sophistication from that of an informational site with basic interactive features to a fully interactive site as a precursor to launching a transactional site. Tate must first offer its products to online customers so that it can have an Internet presence similar to that of its competitors. Once your Web presence is established, we will enter the second phase of our business plan – social networking.
Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter offer the opportunity for your customers to feel ownership – at the least inclusion – in the lifestyle