Internet and e-commerce Case Studies

The internet has enabled some new online Business Models to emerge. Internet and e-commerce case studies, projects and assignments.

Social media ad campaign

Within Internet marketing, one of the more effective marketing methods is promoting on social media. Today, for any business to be successful, it needs to have a strong presence on social media. People no longer look for products and services only through google search; it is becoming increasingly normal to buy things based on recommendations on social media networks.

Popularity of Social Media Marketing

Social media platforms are designed to be more visual in nature and do a great job of narrating the story of a brand.  These platforms are a great way to tell the audience about the brand, offer the right set of tools to cultivate relationship and can also be used to drive social media traffic to the website.

Businesses today use social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn to promote their business. Social Media Marketing is an effective method to get attention to one’s business, generate more sales and also strengthen the relationship with existing customers.

Keeping a close ear on what’s being said on social media, brands can also better understand what people in general think about their brand.

Wherever people form communities, word-of-mouth marketing does wonders to a good product or service. People love to share. If your business caters to one of their greatest needs or wants, they will most probably tell the whole world about it. They would be your best and most convincing marketing agents, which you aren’t even paying.

Social media offers the possibility of very narrow segmenting of your target group. This is very useful for your marketing campaigns, because you’ll get a much better ROI when you target your best buyer. You know her profile from your past sales reports, and now you can talk directly to her, using the language she understands and resonates with, on Facebook, for instance.

Big PR agencies realized this need and developed special social media departments, to provide exclusively social media marketing and PR services to their customers.

Young People Turn to Social media (Not TV) for News

Probably this is happening faster than what experts were anticipating. Social Media, and not television, is turning out to be the main source of news for most youngsters as well as women.

So Facebook (and other social media sites) is also becoming the place to consume news.

Here are some of the findings of surveys that were conducted recently.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism research, based on a YouGov survey of about 50,000 people across 26 countries, suggests:

1. 28% of the 18-to-24-year-olds surveyed, cited social media as their main news source, compared with 24% for TV.
2. 51% of people with online access use social media as a news source.
3. Facebook is used by 44% of people to watch news, followed by YouTube and Twitter.

As has been the trend in recent years, most used a smartphone to access ‘news’, and they were more likely to go to a social media site than head to a news website or app.

MBA assignment question / case study on social media campaign.

Q. A well-known university is launching a master’s degree in sports management in Mumbai. The campaign running on digital and social media is to direct them to take admission for a 2 year course.
a) List down the metrics that will define success of this campaign on social media, If Facebook was one of the major platform to promote the course.
b) Design a social media ad campaign keeping in mind the parameters to make an effective landing page

Define Social Media and explain how these companies use Social Media to increase their business? Is it a wise choice to use social media to connect with customers?

Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing involves sending a commercial message to a group of people on a list (that a company builds by capturing email-ids). Email marketing is still widely used and its a great tool for building customer relationships to help you generate leads and sales.

Capturing emails of the visitors who come to a company’s website can be a good marketing tactic as it allows the company to promote its products even days or weeks after the visitor had visited the website. When done properly, email marketing can help sell more products, and you can even direct them back to the website.

Here are the things to keep in mind before executing a email marketing campaign:

• What you want to achieve (goals)?
  Typical goals would be boosting engagement with existing subscribers, segmenting your subscribers so you can send more targeted email marketing campaigns, promote products/services
• Understand Email Types
  • Promotional emails: talks about offers and sales.
  • Relational emails: deliver what you’ve promised, like a weekly newsletter, a free gift, relevant information, and so on.
  • Transactional emails: Subscriber signup confirmations, Welcome messages, Order or purchase confirmations, Acknowledgements of changes to subscriber information
• Know Your Audience
• Plan Emails and Followups

Email Marketing Campaign: Example

The focus of e-mail marketing is to capture leads.

Create a landing page that will capture email-id. Those who come after clicking the paid ad (to get the discount coupon) will directly come on this landing page.

Once the person subscribes, they will be sent an email with the discount code for their purchase.

In general, it is a good idea to capture emails of visitors on the website.Have a link to the Landing page (the landing page will reside on your website) on the side-bar on the page where people can clearly see it, to build your list.

So, a company like Kathmandu Holdings could entice visitors on the website to signup by offering a 5-part newsletter that will teach ‘how to survive skills when outdoors/in the wild”.

A link to the landing page could be placed somewhere at the top of the Home Page saying ‘subscribe’ to our newsletter and learn “life-saving survival skills”.

Capture the email ids and send them the information in 5-parts over different days.

Through those emails, Kathmandu can also educate the subscribers about the company and its products.

MBA assignment questions and case studies on Email Marketing Campaign:

Q. You have to execute an email campaign for a MakeMyTrip promoting their 9 day summer package to Manali. This has to go to their existing database with the intention to generate leads to promote their Manali Trip. Mention the main aspects that the brand should keep in mind while designing the email communication. Create a mock emailer to promote the package and mention 3 important metrics that should be measured to calculate the effectiveness of the campaign

Academic Questions

Question: Sell tennis rackets outside the United States

Your company manufactures and sells tennis rackets and would like to start selling outside the United States. You are in charge of developing a global Web strategy and the first countries you are thinking of targeting are Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, and Japan.

1. Using the statistics in the CIA World Fact Book, which of these countries would you target first? Provide rationale.

As we surf through CIA World Fact Book the Country having almost all factors positive is China. We know China is the fastest growing economy in world, it have largest population and diversified people communities. The unemployment rate in China is very low 4% (as of 2012) so their Per Capita Income is good so is their purchasing power. It is obvious to target any product on China and I would prefer choosing it too.

2.What criteria did you use?

The factors/criteria to make above decision are the GDP Per Capita $12,900 (2014 est.), GDP Purchasing Power Parity $17.62 trillion (2014 est.) and the Literacy rate of 94%. It is obvious the interest and involvement of people on Sports activities is dependent on their education level and development index factors like PPP, GDP etc. So the figures are very much suggestive to choose China as first target.

3.What other considerations should you address in your Web strategy?

The other considerations needed in web strategies is the population growth rate, Sport attachment of people, local working hour policy, internet connection availability, multilingual support on the application etc.

Academic Projects / Assignment on E-Business

Question: You are required to apply the business model canvas to 3 innovative online businesses.

You are required to identify 3 online businesses that you feel are particularly innovative (so not well established companies like Tesco online, Amazon, Alibaba, Uber, Airbnb etc.) and write a report applying the 9 aspects of the business canvas to the 3 companies. The three examples you identify should not all be from the same country. They should also be from organisations that are of a different size (i.e. not all from 3 large organisations or 3 small organisations).

The assignment assesses your ability to be articulate, informed and to apply the business model canvas to three real businesses demonstrating an awareness and understanding of the range of issues and factors involved. The business report will be assessed on the basis of:

• Clear and logical discussion of the application of the Business Model Canvas to 3 businesses. It must include all 9 aspects of the canvas but most importantly the Core Value Proposition, the Sources and Methods of Revenue Generation and the Costs of Revenue Generation stating any assumptions that you make.
• Understanding of business model concepts
• Identification and use of three appropriate innovative online businesses that are from different countries and sizes of organisations

 

The businesses need to be innovative and therefore NOT from the ones that are widely known about and have been around for many years like Alibaba, Amazon, Google, Yahoo etc.