[E-marketing] Case5 Jewellworld.com -- Question 1

1.    What factors are favorable/unfavorable to the development of Jewellworld.com’s B2B platform?

Ans:

Jewellworld.com is the first mover of B2B platform in jewellery industry.  There are some favorable factors to stimulate its development, but some unfavorable ones are needed to be overcomed.

 

1)   The favorable factors (opportunities):

i.               To bring buyers and sellers together online.

ii.             To meet potential partners.

iii.            To gather business contacts

iv.           Jewellery is mature and informational product, which is easy to adjust the designs and features through Internet.

v.             To place orders online no matter what time and area it is.

vi.           Most small jewellery retailers in Hong Kong did not have security surveillance systems. Jewellworld acts as expert in setting up a security surveillances system for jewellers.

vii.          Jewellery is experience goods, and Hong Kong is the best transaction platform.

 

2)   The unfavorable factors (threats):

i.               The jewellery industry in Hong Kong is very traditional.  Only half of the Jewellworld members were avid users of the B2B platform.

ii.             Some members didn’t even have the computer.

iii.            Some members didn’t know how to take and upload the electronic photos of their products.

iv.           Given the keen competition in the industry, some felt strongly that design was the only competitive edge they had, and they didn’t want their designs to be copied too quickly by others.

[E-marketing] Case5 Jewellworld.com -- Question 2

2.    Are Jewellworld.com’s competitive advantages sustainable? Can they be leveraged?

Ans:

Jewellworld.com’s competitive advantages include:

1)   B2B jewellery portal.

i.               Be the first mover.

ii.             Provide shopping basket.

iii.            Provide “Photo courier” as a tool to help its customers uploading their product pictures.

iv.           Develop a web-conferencing tool to help its customers to communicate with selected companies for protecting the strength of design ability for jewellers.

v.             Provide a web-based security surveillance system to service the jewellers.

vi.           Provide training videos.

vii.          Provide diamond inventory system to update latest information every day.

 

2)   Internet-technology consultancy specialising in jewellery industry.

i.               Assist its members to tap into the world of e-business.

ii.             Offer web design, production services and web hosting services.

iii.            Provide computer network solutions to jewellers, like hard ware and software recommendations, system evaluations, network integration design, computing equipment purchase, internet working, system training, system implementation, maintenance schemes, etc.

 

3)   Communication and information platform for the jewellery industry

i.               The members center

ii.             The industry bulletin board

iii.            The price list

iv.           The business information

v.             The jewellery classroom

vi.           Others like chat-room, web-mail, recruitment, direct sale platform, etc.

 

We think most of Jewellworld.com’s advantages are sustainable, except the internet-technology part, which is easy to be replaced by other professional information technology company.  However, Jewellworld.com is the first mover of B2B platform in jewellery industry, it should emphasize its strength to expand its unique experiences and to leverage itself as the leader in jewellery market.

[E-marketing] Case5 Jewellworld.com -- Question 3

3.    What other directions could Jewellworld.com explore but not?

Ans:

Basically, Jewellworld.com tends to be a traditional jewellery company now.  We suggest it could consider to affiliate with other related corporations to increase its fashionable image, to segment different markets to appeal more consumer base and to expand its marketplace to more countries. Let’s take a look at more details as follows:

 

1)   Affiliate with other industries. As jewellery is the emblem of power and status of a person, jewellworld.com can do some affiliation with other products to create the precious and fashionable market. Here are some examples.

i.               Clothing

ii.             Leather, ex: belt, bags

iii.            Watches

iv.           Accessories for men and women

v.             Other products in our daily lives, such as 3C products such as computers, cell phones and dinnerware, etc.

 

2)   Segment market through different product lines by different designs. Here are some classified suggestions.

i.               Age

ii.             Gender

iii.            Social and economic status

iv.           Price

v.             Festivals, like mother’s day, Christmas, New year, etc.

vi.           Personal anniversaries, like wedding, birthday, graduations, etc.

vii.          Other specific groups

 

3)   Expand the market in either Chinese living area or not and try to change the products’ design and style to fit some non-Chinese descents.

[E-marketing] Case5 Jewellworld.com -- Question 4

4.    Evaluate the options presented in the case.  Is there any other meaningful options?

Ans:

According to the case, there are two options. IT support and re-packaging the web-based services, which is easy to be copied for the former, but not for the latter. Besides, Jewellworld is a jewellery store, but not a IT store. It should keep its core value on re-packaging jewellery services and try to provide a higher level of customized services, to segment the different customers and different geographic areas to make itself as a jewellery market leader. Since no sufficient human resources, we don’t suggest Jewellworld to support on-site IT services but could consider offering round-the-clock support hotline.

Except the options for B2B services, Jewellworld could consider B2C model to involve the one-to-one market and create more opportunities for the jewellery industry. Some additional services are addressed as follows:

 

1)   Provide direct services and customized orders between jewellers and customers.

2)   Provide latest jewellery design or exhibit information, jewellery purchasing knowledge, price lists, etc..

3)   Conduct some seasoning festival product events or exhibitions.

4)   Provide online shopping, ordering and transactions.

5)   Charge commissions from co-operations when transactions are counted, to increase its profits.

6)   Provide the recycle and redesign services for old jewellery.

7)   Provide secondhand jewellery auction market.

8)   Provide the preserving knowledge of the jewellery.

[E-marketing] Case4 MedNet.com -- Question 1

1.   If Internet media is so measurable, how can Heather Yates and Bill Bishop be in such a predicament?

Ans: 

People always get lost in “numbers”. Both of CPM and CTR are indicators of evaluating internet traffic. However, they do not account for profit to a company. Although the website traffic and the numbers of click-through measure either the brand awareness or the effects of advertisements, there are other quantitative metrics while we are reviewing the revenue as well as the net income brought by on-line advertisement.

 

MedNet.com to an extent is an information-providing website. People turn to MedNet.com when they are in crisis, such as suffering from uncomfortable symptoms of veiled diseases. Therefore, traditionally speaking, MedNet.com evaluates its on-line profit by eye-balls. The more people browse through MedNet.com, the higher eye-balls of the advertisers of MedNet.com would have. With such a business model, MedNet.com charges advertising fees from the advertisers based on the CPM of the advertisement, which may be higher than counting advertisement fees according to CTR as Marvel provides.

 

Nevertheless, as we mentioned higher CPM or CTR are not equivalent to higher profit. As the website traffic indicators, CPM and CTR represent how many people went through the website and click for the material fit for their interest. Concerning for the profit evaluation, however, CPM and CTR are not adequately enough. We shall put more emphasis on the cost-efficiency issue. For example, apart from CPM and CTR, the ROI (Return on investment) of on-line advertising should also be taken into consideration.

 

For example, MedNet.com can serve or ask its advertisers by using coupon as a tool, like Windham did in this case, to trace back the utilization rate of on-line advertisement. Each coupon is printed with a printed barcode generated from the original website. When consumers use the coupon during purchasing medical goods, the bar code will be transferred into database to make records. Therefore, MedNet.com can analyze the barcode utilization records to realize how many people really click into their on-line advertisement and, most importantly, make a consumption behavior.

 

Taking account for this kind of whole investment and the real profit generating from on-line advertisement, we can then measure the effects of Internet media like MedNet.com, Marvel or Cholesterol.com provide.

[E-marketing] Case4 MedNet.com -- Question 2

2.   What does an advertiser want? Sales leads, brand awareness? What are the best metrics for measuring these?

Ans: 

First of all, we will limit the boundary as products that use on-line advertising as a marketing strategy. For a brand new product, pursuing brand awareness in the marketplace would be regarded as the most important task. On the other hand, for a product that lasted long in the market, how to increase the sales leads outweigh all other attributes. Here we use various metrics to measure the two different kinds of product life cycles. The following chart concludes our measurement for the performance of an advertiser want based on different object.

a.)   Newly-Entry Product

As a new member in the marketplace, a newly-entry product shall attract magnificent consumer attention to distinguish itself from other existing competitors. Therefore, the first priority is to make a strong brand awareness base. On-line advertising is regarded as an efficient way to broad the brand awareness with the expansion of Internet.

 

However, we shall have some indicators and figures to evaluate whether the on-line advertisement works. We use four indicators to measure the performance of on-line advertisement:

 

01.)CPM(Cost-per-thousand impression)

CPM is used for measuring the number of people who actually saw an online advertisement.  One advertising impression meant that one visitor requested from a Web server a page that has a specific advertisement on it.  For new product’s awareness, CPM is the best metric for a advertiser.

 

02.)CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

   CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online-advertising campaign. CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if the banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and one person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1%.

 

03.)PageView

PageView means a request to load a single page of an Internet site. If there are any advertisements on the page, the advertisers would be interested in the number of page views to determine their expected revenue from the advertisements. The higher PageView that page is, the more on-line traffic it has.

 

04.)PageRank

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents. High PageRank means that the page has a brilliant network with other web pages, which would attract more on-line browsing.

 

b.)   Mature Product

A mature product lasted long in the marketplace. Therefore, it has a fundamental base of brand awareness and consumers. The on-line marketing strategy of a mature product is to outperform other competitors by cutting their sales leads. When advertisers want to make on-line publicity for that kind of product, we think that two indicators should be utilized:

 

01.)CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

CTR can prove the consumers being led to the product by clicking the ad, which may stimulate the consumption behavior.

 

02.)PageRank

As we mentioned before, high PageRank represents the page has a great network with the other web pages, which would attract more on-line browsing. 

[E-marketing] Case4 MedNet.com -- Question 3

3.   What specific consumer behaviors determine whether or not a business model produces the results an advertiser wants?

Ans: 

In the MedNet.com case, we think there are three business models – those of MedNet.com, Marvel and Cholesterol.com. These three websites target on different kinds of customers and make profits through various ways. In order to clearly classify these three business models, we will use a chart to show the conclusion of our discussion. 

 

Web Site	Brand Image	Consumer Behavior	Business Model
MedNet.com	a.) Professional Information b.) Trust-worthy c.) Up-to-Date database d.) Excellent navigation e.) General Problem solving	a.) Search for information when they are in crisis b.) High return rate c.) Intended to purchase product on-line d.) Search health-related knowledge for their family members e.) Not knowing of what disease they are suffering from	a.) Impression business model b.) Provide free health-related information on-line c.) Charge fees from pharmaceutical firms for on-line advertising d.) Charge for CPM e.) Fully monetizing its available inventory of eyeballs
Marvel	a.)  General Information b.)  Search engine function	a.)  Browse for general health-keeping information. b.)  Use Marvel as a starting point for information searching	a.)  Alternative advertising model b.)  Free navigation display is provided c.)   Make profit through on-line advertisement d.)  Charge by CPC/CTR
Cholesterol.com	a.)  Interactive Platform b.)  Professional Knowledge c.)   Trust-worthy d.)  Customized e.)  Internationalized f.)    Specific Problem solving	a.)  Deeply knowing the disease they have been incurred with b.)  Seek for specific demand satisfying	a.)  High-profit audience targeted b.)  Focused on customers with chronic conditions c.)   Personalized therapy package as tailored health recommendation to each visitor’s specifications d.)  Internationalized therapy tour is provided

 

 

[E-marketing] Case4 MedNet.com -- Question 4

4.   What steps can MedNet take to address emerging competitive threats?

Ans: 

  Living in such a highly competitive society, everything changes rapidly, so does the on-line advertising industry. For MedNet.com, there are many emerging competitors among the marketplace now. In hope to prolong the sustention of MedNet.com, more managers of MedNet.com have come out with many ideas.

 

First of all, they manage to charge fees for the on-line material reading. Nevertheless, it disobeys the goals of MedNet.com, which aims to provide free on-line health-related knowledge.

  The executive managers also took the idea of on-line diagnosis into consideration. However, this idea has two disadvantages. One is that consumers might feel uncomfortable for MedNet.com to keep their personal profiles. The other is that diagnosing conditions and prescribing treatments for visitors were at risk of violating both state and federal government regulations. Besides, the diagnostic, prescriptive function is already provided by Cholestrol.com. If MedNet.com uses such a strategy, it will not have any niches in the current market.

 

With the strong base of integrity, trustworthiness and navigation of medical information, we suggest MedNet.com should keep its track on the strength of its professional image and emphasize the authority of the information they provided, to earn the reliability and profitability from consumers. MedNet could consider helping other healthcare-related corporations to build up their websites to enlarge its income source, so that it can be less dependent on advertising revenues. By contracting, MedNet.com can create the opportunities to display its linkage or advertisements on the corporations’ websites. On the other hand, those healthcare-related corporations could also post their banners on MedNet.com’s website to attract great on-line traffic. In this way, both MedNet.com and those healthcare-related corporations are benefited, to create a win-win strategy.

 

Moreover, MedNet should offer some new statistical method, like we mentioned generating coupon on question 1, to prove the performance of advertisement on it.

 

In brief, MedNet could consider some futher strategies except the advertisement to address emerging competitive threats as follows:

 

1)       Professional information: Cooperate with more medical experts to generate the authority information.

2)         Customization: Create 2-ways interactive communication channels for the visitors to answer  some commen medical problems regardless personal secrets or medical ethics for the retention of the current customers.

3)        Web development: Custom-designed websites for healthcare professionals based on its extensive image database and content library.

4)        Web management: Including hosting & site management based on MedNet’s advanced technology.

5)   Visibility services: Help corporations to index their website on popular search portals, like google, yahoo, etc., to extend the public awareness.  Visibility Services could cover Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  MedNet can design and manage SEO keywords and SEM campaigns to achieve company goals for search engine visibility.

6)  Measuring performance: Conducting some advertisement campaign to present MedNet’s performance on the revenues of advertisers.