Idea and the Business Opportunity - Example

Planning for Opportunity Grade The paper aims to identify a feasible business opportunity, create a viable business plan for that opportunity and last but not the least, selling it to the audience. The business plan will further consist of the marketing plan, financial plan, the HR plan, the operations plan etc. IDEA AND THE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY Before giving an idea to generate a feasible business opportunity it is important to see the global market trend. The global market is constantly looking for convenience and variety as people no longer have leisure time to waste on extra shopping. Another way to look at it is people do not want to spend more as the economic crunch has made the rates of the product extremely high (inflation) and their income insufficient due to which they are constantly looking for more opportunities to earn. Hence we need an idea that will create a business opportunity that is designed according to this trend. Evaluating the trends mentioned above, there is a need to create availability of new and innovative things conveniently and there is a need to either provide the required products at a relatively lower price or provide an opportunity to earn income. By this analysis, the idea of “Offer to the World” is put forward; the idea basically concentrates on providing the products made by the people to the people through a website. While the idea may sound similar to the e-bay concept but it is different as the website will provide the opportunity for the person to create his or her own virtual store in whatever way he or she decides. The idea will also be designed in a way that it will offer personalization with lower costs. “OFFER TO THE WORLD” PITCH FOR THE INVESTORS, VENTURE CAPITALISTS AND ANGEL INVESTORS According to Nielson’s research, the world online population has greatly concentrated over the trend of online shopping. The trend increased from 10 % in 2006 to 40% of the global online population in 2008 and as of today it will be much higher than 40%. Since this trend is constantly in its growth stage, there is a huge business opportunity by providing people or in our case customers with the opportunity to create their own personalized virtual shops (Nielson | What People Watch | What People Buy, 2012). The business will earn money through three features. The first feature will be the opportunity via membership which will gain periodic payments weekly, monthly or annually as per the subscriber’s preference. The second feature will be the earning opportunity by offering a premium membership that will enable the subscriber to create his own personalized virtual shop. The third feature will be through commission, i.e. a certain percentage of the products’ sale. By these three earning opportunities, it is expected that the breakeven can be achieved in a year’s time and positive cash flows and operating income will be generated in the 2nd year that will ensure the company’s profitability. BUSINESS PLAN FOR “OFFER TO THE WORLD” This section of the report will discuss how the idea will be translated into an actual profitable business. The section takes off with what the business actually aims to do. Business Mission The mission is, “Earning profits by enabling people to showcase their talent, in the form of either products or services, to the whole world by creating their own personalized virtual shops.” Business Vision The vision is, “Enabling a global market place for people that enables them to directly earn incomes and that enables us to indirectly earn profits.” Strengths and Core Competencies The strengths of the business will include the gaining trends in the online shopping, constantly growing need for change and innovation and the constantly growing need of gaining a larger market segment. The core competency of the company will be its ability to provide a personalized virtual shop experience to the customer at a reasonable price. Challenges The challenges that are likely to be faced by us are limited to only one factor. Will people be accepting the new idea and refer to us as their source of selling talents? Briefly the challenge is related to the customer acquisition. However this can be catered to by developing a strong marketing plan. Since the customer acquisition responsibility comes under the marketing department, it is through the marketing plan that the challenge will be addressed. Industry Analysis The industry that the business will be operating will be the e commerce industry. The industry has been introduced all over the world but is not well penetrated into by businesses mainly because of the reason that during the introductory period of e commerce businesses were unable to acquire customers, or develop a trust worthy relationship with them. Thus, even though the industry is gaining trends these days, the factor of instability still remains. The business model will determine whether the company can survive or make its place in the industry or not (Laudon & Traver, 2011). MARKETING PLAN The marketing plan aims to analyze the market and then develop a marketing strategy based on the analysis carried out. In the end the marketing mix will be created to provide the feasibility of the plan (Kotler & Keller, 2011). Market Analysis Market Description The market that Offer to the World is dealing with at the moment is virtual market by virtual it is meant that the prospects and the customers are present but are not in direct or face to face contact with the company. Market Size The size of the market is huge and indescribable as the size is not limited to the geographical boundaries. Since it is a virtual market, the size is as big as the world! Target Segment Our generalized targeted segment is a set of all those people who are internet users. Since we will be acting as an intermediary between our customers and their customers, it is important to understand that we have no limitations pertaining to the customer demographics, they pay us and we will help them getting paid. So even if a teenager has a product or a service to sell, he or she can create his own virtual shop via Offer to the world, and be exposed to a global market (Kotler & Keller, 2011). Market Growth Potential Market Growth potential is extremely high because it is the era of internet. All those internet surfers that aren’t in favour of online shopping right now are showing a trend of being a part of online shopping a few years from now. Thus the market growth potential is extremely high. Internet is becoming more of a necessity with every passing minute. Barriers to Entry No such barriers to entry. Industry Rivalry or Competition There are no direct competitors but there are a lot of indirect competitors such as e-bay, Amazon, etc. Devising a Marketing Strategy Value Proposition The value is created by offering three main benefits and solutions for the customers that are low cost memberships, personalized virtual shop and free training of how to manage and create the shop. Branding Offer to the world will brand itself mainly through its website. The business name Offer to the world, depicts that anything can be offered to the whole world through this website. The slogan will be, create and personalize your very own virtual shop. Strategy The business will target the young creative minds and offer them a student or a teenage package as per their affordability when the market captures the idea, people of all ages can come and sell their products or services through Offer to the World. Marketing Mix Product Virtual market place for customers i.e. providing the opportunity to create personalized virtual shops. Initially three brands will fall under the offer to the world brand, Creative Youngsters, My Talent Showcased and Buying Essentials. Price The price will differ from brand to brand. Per month payments will be taken as provided in the table below however annual payments will be discounted. Creative Youngsters My Talent Showcased Buying Essentials Membership Fee 3 $ per month 8$ per month 5 $ per month Premium Membership 7$ per month 12$ per month 10$ per month Commission on Sales 5% commission on every sale 10% commission on every sale 7% commission on every sale Promotion The promotion is going to be done via social networks such as Facebook, twitter, MySpace and electronic media. However the promotion will include low cost but effective promotional techniques such as guerrilla marketing. Placement Since we are offering a virtual product and a service, the placement will be done on the internet. HUMAN RESOURCE PLAN Since the company is a virtual interface, there will be limited staffing requirements in the HR plan. The Employees will be divided in three departments, marketing, finance and human resource. Initially, the finance department will consist of only two employees, the marketing department will consist of 5 employees, the operations department will consist of 3 employees and the human resource department will consist of 2 employees. Total requirement for the staffing within the company will be of 12 employees. The company will concentrate on motivating the employees intrinsically as well as extrinsically. Proper career development and succession planning will be done in favour of the employees. It is ultimately the employees of the company that build on the company’s core competencies (Mathis, 2011). OPERATIONAL PLAN The company has a virtual interface thus all its operations will be virtually managed. However, each department is going to have a representative to take care of the respective operations. Finance department will take care of the acquiring payments from the virtual interface to the company’s conventional bank account. The marketing department will have two people focusing on the marketing operations both virtual and non virtual. Hence there is no separate operations department. The operations of the company will be carried out by the respective departments. FINANCIAL PLAN The financial plan will cater to the money related requirements of the business. The initial investment required will be that of 20000 $. Since it is a virtual market place, we will not be required to set up certain infra structure to have our business’s existence. Thus the initial investment will help cover up the initial expenses of designing a website, enabling e-procurement, e-auction, and electronic payments on it. Apart from this, a budget of 5000$ will be allocated to the marketing department so that they can promote the business effectively and efficiently. The total expected profits in the first year will be null as the company will break even in the first year since the gaining acceptability of e commerce in the market depicts the higher rate of customer acquisition for “offer to the world”. However 2nd year onwards the business will start gaining profits and is expected to ultimately give greater returns. CONCLUSION Every business has to develop a plan according to its needs. In conventional businesses a separate operational plan has to be created because a separate operations department exists. However in contemporary organizations, where e commerce is taking place, businesses require less stress upon certain plans. Ecommerce has enabled businesses to move beyond wasting resources on all the extra departments that can be well integrated. In a business like “offer to the world”, the success will depend upon the product or the service, which in this case is the virtual market place and the marketing of the product or the service. The product or service will be created through outsourcing it to professional website developers while the marketing will be done by the company’s marketing department. Hence the profitability of the business will depend upon how well it is marketed which is the reason why the marketing plan has been developed in such a detail. It is important to note that even though the marketing plan has provided a generic marketing strategy, but the strategy is going to differ along with the different sub brands. Thus for each sub brand the marketing department is going to allocate a certain part of their budget and work on the brand’s promotion accordingly. REFERENCES Barringer, B. R. & Ireland, D. (2011). Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures. 4th ed. Prentice Hall. Bygrave, W. D. (2010). Enterpreneurship. 2nd ed. Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated. Kotler, P. & Keller, K. (2011). MArketing Management.:Prentice Hall. Laudon, K. & Traver, C. G. (2011). E-Commerce 2012. New Edition ed.Prentice Hall . Mathis, R. L. (2011). Human Resource Management: Essential Perspectives. 6th ed. Cengage Learning. Nielson | What People Watch | What People Buy (2012). [internet] Available at: http://www.nielsen.com/content/corporate/us/en.html. Accessed on 10th March 2012. Read More