Defining Your EBusiness Idea

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Defining Your E-Business Idea

• Chapter 2

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The Entrepreneur

• Someone who assumes the risks of starting and
  running their own business
• An entrepreneur needs
• Leadership abilities
• High energy personality
• Self-confidence
• High levels of organizational skills
• Ability to act
• Will working for yourself allow you to work less?

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The Entrepreneurial Process
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E-Business Success Factors

• The network effect
• Scalability
• Innovative Web marketing ideas
• Ease of entry into (electronic) markets
• Adaptability to change

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The Network Effect

• The greater the number of nodes (participants)
  the greater the value of the network
• Telephone example
• Internet example
• Metcalf law of network power
• Power of the network number of nodes2 or N2
• NetMind, NetZero, ThirdVoice

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Scalability

• The ability of your idea to continue to function
  regardless of size
• Big problem, both technically and general
  business
• Can refer to the ability of a server or
• Internet service to support increased loads
• AllAdvantage

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Innovative Web Marketing Ideas

• Use the power of the Web and Internet to leverage
  new ideas.
• Hotmail gave away free e-mail accounts that used
  a Web interface and was linked to a site. (p. 46)
• Viral Marketing

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Hotmail
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Ease of Entry Into Markets

• The Internet opened up access to markets by
  lowering barriers to entry.
• Good ideas can be cloned.
• Advantage frequently goes to first mover (first
  to market).
• Ebay was a first mover.

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Ebay Auction Site
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Adaptability to Change

• Internet and Web Technologies facilitate rapid
  change in business models.
• New products or services
• New features
• Amazon.com started in books, added other products
  and more recently added auctions to their
  product/service mix

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Amazon.com
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Exploiting E-Business Advantages

• Expand the market
• Acquire greater business visibility
• Maximize customer relationships and improve
  responsiveness
• Create new services
• Reduce costs

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Expand the Market

• Reach more customers
• Lower location and time barrier
• Ticketmaster
• Does your idea take advantage of the Internet to
  expand your market?

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Acquire Greater Visibility

• Early days, simply an online brochure
• The Internet allows companies to get their name,
  products, or services exposed to more customers
  than ever before.
• Use or outsource distribution to others.
• Find distributors for eToys and Pier1
• Half.com what did they do?
• How your e-business idea could use the Internet
  to gain greater business visibility?

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Maximize Customer Relationships

• Build one-on-one relationships with customers.
• What are your regular sites? Why?
• Use technology to build and sustain links with
  customers.
• Southwest Airlines

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Improve Responsiveness

• Use technology to respond more quickly or
  effectively to customer needs and inquiries.
• Use services such as parcel tracking and delivery
  confirmation
• Allow for on-line purchases

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Create New Services

• The Web allows for expansion and refinement of
  traditional business
• Add new products quickly
• TrailBreaker gone!
• Does your business idea provide a new, unique or
  revamped product/service suited to the Internet
  environment?

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Reduce Costs

• The Internet can lower costs of doing business by
  lowering
• Distribution costs
• Marketing costs
• Reduce info gathering costs - 1 to 1 cent
• Thoughts on info gathering (phone , please?)
• Tech support online

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Foodlocker.com
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Grocery Works.com