Casadellibro.com

In 2001 Planeta Group, from Spain, decided to lunch a new project on the web called Casadellibro.com. Their idea was to become world leaders in the Spanish book market. They were expecting an important growth in their sales, but due to the world situation with the dot.com crash and 9/11 terrorist attack their priorities changed. Know they are facing a situation in which cost control and loss reduction is their primary objective. Given to this, being in the middle of lunching their new venture has taken them to the edge to make a critical decision on whether using their old high maintenance platform or buying a new inexpensive one in order to have a successful venture.

When taking the first steps to create Casadellibro.com the company was very enthusiastic with the new venture and decided to get the most advanced platform at the time. This platform had the best components but wasn’t integrated, regardless to the efforts of the consultants. Nevertheless, this platform was costumed designed and prepared to handle the growth of the company, but the high maintenance costs contrasted the new goals of the company to reduce costs. But if any changes had o be made to rescale the platform for growth in the company more problems would have to be taken into consideration. The lack of integration is a big problem for dynamic businesses such as this one, that are vulnerable to new technologies that can make their business simpler and more profitable.

As the market environment changed Planeta Group decided to look for a new option in the market to reduce their operation costs. They came up with an inexpensive Microsoft Platform fully integrated that offered them the possibility to reduce their cost and therefore reduce losses. Changing into this new platform involved accepting a loss in the previous investment on the old platform and loss of time adapting all their systems to the new platform.

The operation costs to implement a new platform, involved training personal, instalation problems, and time loss. New technologies never fit perfectly, there are always unexpected situations that have to be taken into consideration before making critical changes. But after implementing the whole system there is no doubt that operational costs are going to be reduced, permitting Casadellibro.com to have an advantage to reduce their prices and be more competitive in the mature market in which they are. However, if the growth happened to be higher than expected the new platform would have to be rescaled and redesigned to meet their needs, which means spending more money and loosing more time.

Therefore, by taking into consideration the existing crisis in the market to expect growth is not realistic. But to reduce their costs is a problem they have to face in the present regardless to any change in the market. The company has their leverage on books and has to be able to sell as many as they can to meet their obligations. For this reason I consider that bringing new technology to their operations is an investment that will turn into future growth. The new integrated systems are inexpensive and easy to rescale, because Microsoft focuses on making their products simple and efficient to their customers. As for the other platform they can sell it and reduce their losses. At the moment the market is slowing down making it a good time to invest in a better service, so that when the market peaks they can overlap the competition. Is always better to solve small problems while they are small, because as they get big everything gets more complicated.

TESCO case

In the beginning of the 20th century grocery stores were very small and had low inventories. Therefore, to purchase goods customers had to wait to be attended. This concept changed when TESCO arrived into the market and turned it into a self-service process in which customers could pick goods from the shelves. By using this strategy of serving customer needs success came for TESCO in the following years.

Attending the customer’s needs is a hard task. To get the customers data considering their high transit in the store became one of TESCO’s goals in order to get customers to be loyal to the store. Their first attempt was using the Green Shield Stamps that were given to customers if they spend more than $10. As when customers returned to the store they could use it to purchase more goods. Using this stamps TESCO managed to give discounts to the customers, by lowering prices without incurring in illegal activities.

Several years later TESCO came up with a loyalty card that could be used by the customers to get a discount. In order to put this idea into practice they had to change the entire infrastructure in the stores, so that loyalty cards could be passed and obtain the data from each customer. After installing this system they managed to control data related to their customers and therefore find out their needs and interests. This new technology made them achieve their goal of serving the customer needs, and was a mayor impulse to become the number one retail store in the United Kingdom.

The previous success innovating with technologies related to gather information from the customers. Lead them invest in the Internet to attract customers with physical and time limitations. Venturing in the e-market brought them many positives outcomes, as they reduced the costs of the operation and were able to reach to a larger market. But still customer’s lack of trust, makes them prefer choosing their own goods.

I consider that TESCO has been able to succeed in getting a big market share by implementing innovative techniques to gather information about their customers. This technology has helped by simplifying the methods and making it easier for the interpretation of information. By using technology and the implementation of innovatory campaigns TESCO has managed to be successful in the UK. For these reasons I consider that the correct implementation of technology in the retail business will help these companies understand better where they are standing, therefore take decisions regarding their future strategy of the company.

MENEAME. NET

The cyber market has been growing through the last decade in Spain. A good example is MENEAME.NET which is web page that was created by entrepreneurs that enjoy programming, but hesitate to create a business plan to gain profit out of there product. Therefore in this brief essay I will make certain recommendations to turn this project to be economically sounding, presuming that I’m acting as the companies Business Development Manager

In 2005 Meneame.net developed a web page that pioneered in the Spanish cyber market. The constant transit growth through the years is a demonstration of its success within a market that had not being explored by local entrepreneurs. Been the pioneers in the aforementioned market gave them a great impulse in the beginning of their project. But creating their product using an open source makes them vulnerable to competition. Barriers to enter the market are very low, and they are facing a big difference between the visitors on the web page and the visitors that return it, as it can be seen in exhibit 1. The company also has indirect competition from web pages with a similar product that are aimed for the US market and will eventually expand into international markets with a very strong brand.

For the previous reasons I would recommend Meneame.net to enlarge the amount of subscribed customers in order to create loyalty for his product and to sell space for advertisement by using Absense, which is a Google product designed to place advertisement on different pages in the web. When using Absense they can take advantage of the amount of people that visit their web page and therefore make a profit out of it. I’ll also recommend exploring ways of making the product unique, so that they can keep their pioneer status for a longer period of time. If the company agrees too take this tasks into practice they will be able to maintain a highly visited web page on the internet, and make a great profit out of it.

French Vichy Cosmetics

Case: France Vichy Cosmetics

Due to the use of an innovative way of advertising for a new anti-aging product concerns have grown within the bloggers community. Hence, Vichy’s Blog credibility has been questioned by one of the most important newspapers in France, regarding the brands truthfulness and stating that  “brands that try to hide as authors do not have credibility”.

As it is stated in the case, Blogs are playing a very important role for companies marketing brands in the USA. They are used to experience direct feedback from their buyers regarding different segments. However blogs have evolved and created certain rules that must be followed by the bloggers. The first and most important rule is the necessary transparency; therefore the owners of blogs have to be known. Another important rule is that companies that own blogs should never give information related to the company. Companies have experienced a challenge to follow this rules considering that they are a limitation for their interactive marketing strategy. Anyway there are many successful examples in marketing campaigns were the creation of a Blog was taken into account.

In the case under analysis Vichy France in coordination of a very important marketing agency decided to look for an innovative way to advertise their new product. So they decided to create a Blog named “Diary of my Skin” were a woman, called Claire shared her worries about her skin with those who interacted in the blog. This blog went against the main rules shared by the bloggers community, lacking transparency and using an inexistent person to share experiences on the blog. Anyway this strategy was considered to be the latest trend in interactive marketing on an article published in May, taking into consideration how innovative Vichy was by using a blog as advertisement.

As a consequence, the bloggers community confronted the campaign by giving negative opinions about how Vichy had used the blog for a purpose that went against transparency and linking the company by using key words. Important bloggers like Benoit Drouillat said that the dialogue was programmed and anticipated, and that it didn’t fool woman consumers. Another critic Julien Menichini stated that there was a fraud, I assume due to the violation of transparency. Considering the critics and most of all Benoit Drouillat I consider that the objective of advertising the new product was not accomplished, because woman consumers were not getting the message, and the brand credibility in the market got questioned.

Therefore, Vichy France has to focus on improving the brands credibility. By creating a new strategy that can influence the consumer directly and indirectly so that the real quality of the product can be appreciated. Leaving no doubt about the brands quality and positioning in that segment of the market. Regarding the Blog it must be eliminated to reduce the tension with the bloggers community. Nevertheless, it can be part of their new strategy if it really shares the consumer’s thoughts and has transparency, in order to gain respect from their interactive costumers and the bloggers community in case of future projects. Given that blogs are a great channel between the customer and the product. Therefore, the company can always use a blog to increase their data on the reception the product has within the customers by relating it to the brands web page.