week 10

Personalisation

Personalisation on a  web page can be defined as customisation for a unique individual.  This basically means when someone purchases items or browses for certain items then the website may record this information and use it to up-sell further products that are  similar to the previous product bought or searched.

Personalisation helps to promote products and enables the user to discover items they may not have thought of or be aware of.  There are three different areas of web personalisation they are:

Profile / Group based -

Behaviour based – Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual’s web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual.

Collaboration based – which serves relevant material to customers by combining their own personal preferences with the preferences of like-minded others. Collaborative filtering works well for books, music, video, etc

Google is the first of the “Big Three” search engines to introduce personalised results on a massive scale. The main areas for websites to find out the information on users is by the following, user history, bookmarks, community behaviour and site click-through rate and stickiness, Google is providing results that are specific to what they believe you are searching for.

Currently this service is only available to those who are logged into their Google account.

Amazon.com has been the early adopter of personalisation technology to recommend products to shoppers on its site, based upon their previous purchases. Amazon makes extensive use of Collaborative Filtering in its personalisation technology.

Advantages of Personalisation

1. save time
2. save money
3. better information
4. address ongoing needs, challenges or opportunities

 

The emergence of e-commerce has allowed for the personalisation of clothing as well as the customisation of audio CD’s and downloading of music as well as graphic design for personal websites from the comfort of your own home. Computer companies have been widely regarded as a market leader in made to order desktops or notebooks for high-performance and entertainment needs. Consumers are able to place orders based on product family, usage, price range, processor, and form factors. This customisation ensures that each purchaser can view the merchandise available in order to make an informed decision.

http://searchengineland.com/google-ramps-up-personalized-search-10430

I feel the link above is very useful if you want to know how this area of the market is going to expand within google.

 This image shows the way google will allow you to refine your search through previous use of the site. 

  The image below is my chosen website, refereeworld.com.  

My chosen website only records previous bought items, and do not target the customer with the same items over and over again.  Refereeworld.com would e-mail all the new offers and whats new to all previous buyers.

The website only shows:

Shopping cart with items I want to buy History of what i bought previously

Week 9

Key word search for refereeworld.com

This week we were instructed to use google search engine to find key words for our chosen company.  These key words would be the for the best way to describe the company. 

When searching through google on the different areas of search such as: Insights for search, AD planner, blogs and AD words, nothing appears.  This may be due to refereeworld.com not having a great global base,  however the one area that gave me information was the search for website content and descriptive words or phrases search engines. 

The above image shows the search for web content, the search gave me a few words but nothing i would describe as a useful key word to describe refereeworld.com.   The list below shows a few words and global monthly volume for the words;

Global Monthly Volume

• Referee – 110,000
• Referee shirts – 590
• Referee Jersey – 58
• Referee Equipment – 880
• Umbro Referee kit – 140
• Referee kit – 1300

There may be one or two words that describe what refereeworld.com sells but nothing to describe the e-commerce site.  If i was to choose a phrase it would be referee equipment.

When using the descriptive words or phrase search tool the only  items that appear are the names of two different referees (tom ovrebo and adners frisk), while the word referee has 1,000,000 hits.  I don’t believe this has anything to do with a link to my chosen site, so I won’t include into a list of key words.

Also when typing on the insight tool, no graphs appear.  I feel these search engine tools were useless for refereeworld.com and gave me no information or linked words.

The above image shows the agency tools i used and no information that could help me with this.

All togther I have been very disappionted with my search for key words and can only name a few, which are below:

1. Referee equipment
2. Referee shirts
3. referee jersey
4. umbro referee kit
5. fox 40 whistle

I feel these words do NOT describe refereeworld.com as an e-commerce site.  The only two I would normally use would be referee equipment and referee shirts.  I will leave my list as it is, as this is the only information i found using google search engine tools.

Week 7

Cloud computing is when a host delivers a service over the Internet.  Running an e-commerce business using ‘cloud computing’ helps make it easier to do business with customers by simplifying interactions and driving down transaction costs. Also building your application in the cloud is five times faster, a company can move their branding initiative into a selling platform and start taking orders in a few short weeks.

A cloud service has three distinctive characteristics which set it apart from traditional hosting.

• It is sold on demand, most often by the minute or hour
• It is elastic which allows a user to have as much or as little of a service at any given time
• It is managed by the provider meaning users need nothing but a computer with internet access

It is possible for a cloud to be private or public. A public cloud generally sells services to anyone over the internet. At present, Amazon is the largest public cloud provider. A private cloud is a network or data centre supplying services to a limited number of people. A virtual private cloud is when a service provider uses the resources of a public cloud to create their private cloud. The main aim of cloud computing is to provide easy access to computing resources and IT services, whether public or private.

Problems and benefits to Cloud Computing:

As with every technical / computing experience there is advantages and disadvantages.  The problems and benefits of cloud computing are shown below:

Benefits of Cloud Computing:

• One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing is that small / medium sized business’  can aveal of the setup straight away without having to administer and implement it directly.
• There is no capital expenditure, no need for servers, and there will be the joy of unlimited capacity, bandwidth and increased security.
• There will be fewer maintenances issues to be dealt with internally.
• Administrators and users won’t have to worry about storage capactiy and backups.
• End Users will not have to be tied to the traditional workstation method with technology such as PDA’s and iPhone’s etc.  This will give them a constant platform with them where ever they happen to be.
• Companies can purchase different services from the cloud when needed without having to upgrade hardware or software packages etc.

Problems with Cloud Computing:

• Cloud Computing puts data outside the company, which can alerting to companies for security and privacy.
• The Data Protection act in the United Kingdom says all personal and financial data held of a UK citizen should not be moved to servers outside the UK.  How can companies be sure that the data they have in the cloud is held within a data center in the United Kingdom?
• Cloud computing is completely relient on an internet connection.  Internet connections are not yet totally stable everywhere in the world and espically on wireless broadband etc.
• All the talk about using applications and services from the cloud is very nice and good, but the fine print is worrying that cloud computing suppliers like Google and Microsoft can terminate applications if they see fit to do so?

Week 6

Supply chain management  is the control of materials, information, and finances as they move in a process from supplier to manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer.  The different concepts that are involved are:

Push vs pull supply models

Vertical integration vs disintegration vs virtual integration

Evidence of value networks

Evidence of efficiencies in supply chain

In my opinion the strategy that Refereeworld.com use is both push and pull strategy.  The PUSH strategy is the same as most high street stores and retailers, but ultimatley this is what retialing in e-commerce only consists of also.  The product is being pushed onto the customer with various brands and new styles being highlighted throughout the companies website.  Production and distribution are usually  based on long term strategies.  The push strategy is used to optimize the production process for cost and efficiency.

The value networks of Refereeworld.com include different activities and processess throughout internal boundaries, such as customer support and and processing.  External network values include suppliers and customers.

Refereeworld.com uses E-commerce to make the business more efficient.  It can maximise profit and increase sales by doing so.  The website is updated regularly with new products, new trends and new sales.  The newsletter that they offer is also a way of advertising using the Internet as you are entered into their mailing list.  This keeps you up to date with when the latest products available.  Using electronics and E-commerce can also cut costs as less paper is needed.  Everything can be stored on computers instead of file systems which also makes them easier to access.

Orders taken over the Internet can be immediatly processed and shipped to the delivery address.  This usually cuts the supply chain and decreases inventories.

However, I can argue that Refereeworld.com used the PULL strategy.  It is a virtual organisation, meaning it only uses information and communications technology to run their business, which allows it to operate without any defined physical boundaries. However being  virtual organisation also means that it has to rely on ‘pull’ operations. This reliance on pull means that they would find it difficult at times in trying to forecast how much stock they would require, and it is even more so difficult for them to meet deadlines when orders are placed at holiday periods as they have to deliver to the customer’s door.

The benefits of this strategy is that it is fast, inexpensive and is more accurate as it is the customer’s responsibility to be sure of what they are ordering before they confirm their order. Also because the customer would have to pay electronically, it speeds up processing the order.

When an order is placed however, it has to go through various places in the companies supply chain which includes, pricing a product, checking stock, shipping status, and the financial side of things i.e. credit checking a customer. This process does not take long from the customer’s side, but on the companies side it can be a difficult process if things are not in order.

Both give valid reasons why Refereeworld.com can use both Push and Pull strategy.

Week 5

The threat of substitute products

The existence of products outside of the realm of the common product competitors which increases the propensity of customers to switch to alternatives

• buyer propensity to substitute
• relative price performance of substitutes
• buyer switching costs
• perceived level of product differentiation

Basically saying customers can serach any site/shop they want to look for the item they want.  Customers using refereeworld.com can use A&H International and many others to compare price, quality, delivery etc. 

As refereeworld.com is an e-commerce based company it also lends its hand for users to search easily on other sites and compare items.

 

 

The threat of the entry of new competitors

• the existence of barriers to entry (patents, rights, etc.)
• economies of product differences
• brand equity
• switching costs or sunk costs
• capital requirements
• access to distribution
• absolute cost advantages
• learning curve advantages
• expected retaliation by incumbents
• government policies

As refereeworld.com sells branded products such as adidas, umbro etc.  The company obvisoulsy has the rights to sell these products globally and any deals they may offer would be in conjunction with the brand. 

As refereeworld is a German company they have to coinside with German government laws. i.e. in the delivery policies, they cannot deliever to Switzerland and the costs are different for sending to different companies.

Refereeworld do not make their own brand and currently profit from other brands innovation and products. 

Thinking about your industry as a combination of power, entry, and rivalry shows you the limits of your opportunity to add value or increase margin. The opposing forces of supplier power (a few monopoly sources, or a plethora vying for your custom?) and buyer power driven by consumer power (do your customers have a lot of choice, or always go on price?) interact with the the threat from competing firms or competing products in the market (are the barriers to entry high in your industry, or the alternatives to its products limited?)

The intensity of competitive rivalry

• number of competitors
• rate of industry growth
• intermittent industry overcapacity
• exit barriers
• diversity of competitors
• informational complexity and asymmetry
• fixed cost allocation per value added
• level of advertising expense
• Economies of scale
• Sustainable competitive advantage through improvisation

I wouldn’t think refereeworld.com is in any danger of being pushed out of the market nor should it fear any of its competitors outside the countries that they rarely sell within.  Economies of scale enable the company to see if they have potential to expand.  Possibly doing this through expanding their operations they can gain a larger share of the market and overall profits.

The increase in output from Q to Q₂ causes a decrease in the average cost of each unit from c to C₁.

Refereeword.com could well benefit from advertising within national associations which would greatly expand knowledge of this business.

 

The bargaining power of customers

• buyer concentration to firm concentration ratio
• degree of dependency upon existing channels of distribution
• bargaining leverage, particularly in industries with high fixed costs
• buyer volume
• buyer switching costs relative to firm switching costs
• buyer information availability
• ability to backward integrate
• availability of existing substitute products
• buyer price sensitivity
• differential advantage (uniqueness) of industry products
• RFM Analysis

I believe refereeworld.com would not budge on prices if asked to by a customer.  However, if there is a national association that could build a reputation witht he company im sure there could be an agreement made to lower prices.  As A&H International have an affilation with the Irish Football Association, which enables members to get 30% off items. 

RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) analysis is a marketing technique used to determine quantitatively which customers are the best ones by examining how recently a customer has purchased (recency), how often they purchase (frequency), and how much the customer spends (monetary). RFM analysis is based on the marketing axiom that “80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers.”

When purchasing with refereeworld.com they know when you last bought an item, as it appears on your area, and also in an e-mail if you buy a new item. 

Vertically integrated companies are united through a hierarchy with a common owner. Usually each member of the hierarchy produces a different product or (market-specific) service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need. It is contrasted with horizontal integration.

The bargaining power of suppliers

supplier switching costs relative to firm switching costs

degree of differentiation of inputs

presence of substitute inputs

supplier concentration to firm concentration ratio

employee solidarity (e.g. labor unions)

This can be the same for a single customer buying. i.e. the switching, enlabes companies to contact other stores to see if they could sell them the same product any cheaper. 

supplier concentration to firm concentration ratio can be defined as: “It is the percentage of total market sales accounted for by a given number of leading firms.”

Criticisms of the 5 Force model

Porter’s framework has been challenged by other academics and strategists such as Stewart Neill, also the likes of Kevin P. Coyne and Somu Subramaniam have stated that three dubious assumptions underlie the five forces:

• That buyers, competitors, and suppliers are unrelated and do not interact and collude.
• That the source of value is structural advantage (creating barriers to entry).
• That uncertainty is low, allowing participants in a market to plan for and respond to competitive behavior.

Week 4

Q7.  Purchasing from the site.

Refereeworld.com has the usual policies for purchasing, through, payments, delivery, returns, customs clearance and order method.  The site gives the customer six different ways of paying (cash on delievery, paypal, cheque, crediy/debit card, invoice and pre-payment), there is only one change in these for one country, which is Switzerland, were they cannot pay by debit or invoice.  There is a lost of different costs for every part of the world, for the amounts that shipping and packaging will cost, i.e. UK £10.91, Iceland £25.45 etc.

The company despatches the goods ordered within 24 hours.  No additional charge for this accelerated service.  However if there will be a delay in delivering, the fee will be waived.

If the customer is not entirely satisfied for whatever reason,  goods can be returned unused and in the original packaging within 30 days of the date of delivery.  These goods may be exchanged immediately or alternatively will refund you the entire price of purchase. 

One the website itself it does not give any substancial information about terms and conditions, and only tell about the service provided.  Although there a different contact support addresses that can be contacted i.e. order@refereeworld.com and service@refereeworld.com, while also having a contact enquiry page, with telephone numbers, and contact form. 

One of the competition websites http://www.referee-equipment.co.uk/terms.aspx, which is A&H International.  The give 100% Risk Free Guarantee, Return Postage, Legal Statement, Badging, etc.

A&H International also have a privacy policy containing visitor information and cookies.  This is a benefit to customers on this site as refereeworld.com do NOT give any information at all. 

Comparing the two, refereeworld.com basically do not give any information on what they do on protecting customer info.  While A&H give all the info a customer wants to know about security and protection.

 

Q8.  Registration process for refereeworld.com

The process of registering on refereeworld.com is quite simple and consists of only one page, with the basic information i.e. personal details, home details.  Although when ordering you have to fill in you payments details i.e. card details and address details will already be there.

Data encryption refers to mathematical calculations and algorithmic schemes that transform plaintext into cyphertext, a form that is non-readable to unauthorized parties. The recipient of an encrypted message uses a key which triggers the algorithm mechanism to decrypt the data, transforming it to the original plaintext version.  

Before the internet, data encryption was seldom used by the public as it was more of a military security tool. With the prevalence of online shopping, banking and other services, even basic home users are now aware of data encryption. 

Today’s web browsers automatically encrypt text when making a connection to a secure server. This prevents intruders from listening in on private communications. Even if they are able to capture the message, encryption allows them to only view scrambled text or what many call unreadable gibberish. Upon arrival, the data is decrypted, allowing the intended recipient to view the message in its original form.

 

Q9.  Cookies

refereeworld.com says :
We use cookies to keep track of what you have in your cart. They cannot harm your computer and they do not contain any personal or private information. You must accept cookies to shop with us.

The main purpose of cookies is to identify users and possibly prepare customized Web pages for them. When you enter a Web site using cookies, you may be asked to fill out a form providing such information as your name and interests. This information is packaged into a cookie and sent to your Web browser which stores it for later use. The next time you go to the same Web site, your browser will send the cookie to the Web server. The server can use this information to present you with custom Web pages. So, for example, instead of seeing just a generic welcome page you might see a welcome page with your name on it.

The name cookie derives from UNIX objects called magic cookies. These are tokens that are attached to a user or program and change depending on the areas entered by the user or program.

Week 3

Q4.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/refereeworld.com -  This website shows how refereeworld.com is ranked 184,025 in germanys list of websites used.  It also shows the main countries that use the site, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium and Spain. 

Refereeworld.com users come from these countries:

• 33.9% Germany
• 19.3% United Kingdom
• 10.9% Belgium
• 6.8% Spain
• 28.6% OTHER

This shows that the website has a specific target market and these would be the only people to use this site.  Furthermore the target market may not even know this site exists, and some sort of established advertising campaign could do wonders for the sites popularity.  However, the site is obviously making profit, otherwise it would not have been able to stay working for ten years now.

Trafficestimate.com estimates around 6100 views on refereeworld.com within the last 30days, compare this to 107,300 that visited acasports.co.uk.  That is a considerable difference and ultimatly shows refereeworld.com is not a wel known site.

Monthly Uniques as measured by Compete

All the sites show this same graph on unique users, and tells us that the use of the site seems to be within certain periods i.e. December to Feburary and June to September. 

 

Q5. The process in purchasing on refereeworld.com are as follows :  

• Type in the e-mail address which communicates with the servers returns with the “get” communication and the page is available to the user.
• The user searches the site for the items they want, this is done through the HTML and graphics files.
• The user them picks what items they want to purchase and this is stored in the trolly which enables the user to buy any items within, this is stored through a database of all the items available.
• This will then promt the user to fill out their details and billing information, this will be stored within the sites transaction log file.
• This will then be processed by staff in the warehouse and sent out using a delivery company.
• This company then communicates with another delivery company within the country the user resids and this company will then inturn deliver the final package to your door.

Q6. New Channels to market

E-commerce is getting bigger and bigger every day and over the past few years there has been an enormous boost in ease and way customers can shop and buy.  Using mobile devices and interactive television have enabled people to shop at the tip of there finger.  For refereeworld.com this could enhance the reputation of the site as using interactive television would enable a wider audience and ease for customer purchase.  This could be done through channels that exsist solely for selling goods, and if refereeworld.com could strike up some sort of advertising time with one of these comanpies then this could greatly improve the sites popularity and use.  This inturn would improve the sites reputation for customer relationships, secure ordering, and shows another way of suppy chain management.

Strategic plans would need ot be looked at, as the company would need to think about the long term vision of the company and how to develop the business into a more profitable business.

• Suitability (would it work?)
• Feasibility (can it be made to work?)
• Acceptability (will they work it?)

The above bullet points enable the company to evaluate if using television would be the right way to go forward.

Suitability

Suitability deals with the overall rationale of the strategy. The key point to consider is whether the strategy would address the key strategic issues underlined by the organisation’s strategic position.

• Does it make economic sense?
• Would the organization obtain economies of scale, economies of scope or experience economy?
• Would it be suitable in terms of environment and capabilities?

Tools that can be used to evaluate suitability include:

• Ranking strategic options
• Decision tree 
• What-if analysis

 Feasibility

Feasibility is concerned with the resources required to implement the strategy are available, can be developed or obtained. Resources include funding, people, time and information.

Tools that can be used to evaluate feasibility include:

• cashflow analysis and forecasting
• break-even analysis
• resource deployment analysis

Acceptability

Acceptability is concerned with the expectations of the identified stakeholders (mainly shareholders, employees and customers) with the expected performance outcomes, which can be return, risk and stakeholder reactions.

• Return deals with the benefits expected by the stakeholders (financial and non-financial). For example, shareholders would expect the increase of their wealth, employees would expect improvement in their careers and customers would expect better value for money.
• Risk deals with the probability and consequences of failure of a strategy (financial and non-financial).
• Stakeholder reactions deals with anticipating the likely reaction of stakeholders. Shareholders could oppose the issuing of new shares, employees and unions could oppose outsourcing for fear of losing their jobs, customers could have concerns over a merger with regards to quality and support.

Tools that can be used to evaluate acceptability include:

• what-if analysis
• stakeholder mapping

WEEK 2

1. Chosen Buisness

The website I have chosen is refereeworld.com.  The website itself is only and e-commerce based company and only distributes through the site.  The site has two target markets, football referee’s and handball referees, this is what the site bases its products on but im sure other sporting referee’s use the site.  The company pride themselves on being a specilist in refereeing equipment.  The company is based in Germany and delivers all over the world.  There are other sites that provide this service such as refkit.co.uk, acasports.co.uk and A & H International.  I am not sure what the quality of these sites are but im sure UK based referees would know these companies better.

 

 

2. Desk research

I could not find any information on refereeworld.com, this may be due to the company being a specific and small based international company.  I can guess that none of the referee equipment companies would ever feature in any top 100 best selling companies. 

I was unable to find amount of staff although they do recruit staff all over the world to promote their brand.  Improving market share would be very difficult as they have only one overall target market, and generally understand the customers wants and needs.

The company itself probably does make a reasonable profit as it has been in business for some time, they can continue to product the high quality goods the customer wants, while also constantly having offers and sales to entice the customer.

 

3. Understanding of how business works

The business is only an e-commerce company.   The way i believe the company to work si that, a customer can register to use the site, this allows them to create a “cart” for goods provided.  The customer searches the site for the equipment they need and can make an order by using the order form.  This will prompt the user to put in there home and bank details and the process for buying, sending and recieving the equipment can begin.  The order form is sent back to the customer and this tells of a gestimate time the purchase will arrive. 

http://www.refereeworld.com/catalog/create_account.php - link for registration

http://www.refereeworld.com/catalog/shopping_cart.php -  link for shopping cart

http://www.refereeworld.com/catalog/checkout_payment.php -  link for payment methods

http://www.refereeworld.com/catalog/checkout_confirmation.php - link for total bill

Below is a link to the chain map for my chosen website:

 

Statistics on Internet usage in the UK

Internet Usage and Population Statistics:

   

YEAR	Users	Population	% Pop.	Usage Source
2000	15,400,000	58,789,194	26.2 %	ITU
2005	35,807,929	59,889,407	59.8 %	Nielsen Net//Ratings
2007	38,512,837	60,363,602	63.8 %	Nielsen//NR
2009	48,755,000	61,113,205	79.8 %	Nielsen Online

This shows the link between internet usage and the size of the population within the UK.  It shows how from the year 2000 the population has grown slightly while the need and use for the internet has grown enphatically.  This could be due to the fact tha businessess these days generally relay on computer use to store details, calculate and find info to enhance their business progress.  This is not just within the computer world but across all aspects of the business world. 

Internet usage is emormous within the e-commerce world i.e. international trade is the exchange of goods and services across international boundaries or territories.  Every country uses trade whether it is through food, drink, organic produce or raw materials. Therefore the use of the internet enables companies to advertise, buy and sell goods throughout the world.  This is relevant to my research because it shows how the use of the internet has grown not just for companies but for everyone.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/inta0806.pdf

The above link shows the national statistics for the UK.  It gives a number of different reasons and suggestions why a person uses the internet and how it use of internet is grown.

All in all e-commerce has enhanced the popularity of the use of internet throught the UK and the world.  So combining the great rise in the use of the internet within homes and businessess, e-commerce has linked greatly with it also.

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