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MSc eCommerce Practicum 2012 ...
MSc eCommerce Practicum 2012 Matthew Keegan – 11210659 Jamie O’Sullivan – 58593612 Cormac Moran – 11211415 Enda McGuiness – 58317305 Ran Zhang – 11211752 1|Page Supervised by Dr Cathal Gurrin Patrick Mulcahy DCU Business School Assignment Submission Programme: M.Sc. in Electronic Commerce (Business) Project Title: Practicum Group H – iwanthat Business Plan Module Code: CA550 Practicum Coordinator: Dr. Cathal Gurrin Due Date: 20th August 2012 Declaration We the undersigned declare that the project material, which I now submit, is our own work. Any assistance received by way of borrowing from the work of others has been cited and acknowledged within the work. We make this declaration in the knowledge that a breach of the rules pertaining to project submission may carry serious consequences. We are aware that the project will not be accepted unless this form has been handed in along with the project. Cormac Moran 11211415 _______________ Enda McGuinness 58317305 _______________ Jamie O’Sullivan 58593612 _______________ Matthew Keegan 11210659 _______________ Ran Zhang _______________ 2|Page 11211752 Table of Contents Executive Summary............................................................................................................................... 10 Details of financial planning- Grants ................................................................................................. 11 Concept ................................................................................................................................................. 12 Company Structure ............................................................................................................................... 14 Employees (Full Time) ....................................................................................................................... 14 Enda McGuinness - Director of Customer Service and Operations .................................................. 14 Background, Qualifications and Past Experience.......................................................................... 14 Skills and Attributes ...................................................................................................................... 14 Roles and Responsibilities ............................................................................................................. 15 Jamie O’Sullivan - Director of Sales and Marketing .......................................................................... 15 Background, Qualifications and Past Experience.......................................................................... 15 Skills and Attributes ...................................................................................................................... 15 Roles and Responsibilities ............................................................................................................. 15 Founding member external consultants ............................................................................................... 16 Cormac Moran .................................................................................................................................. 16 Skills and Attributes ...................................................................................................................... 16 Roles and Responsibilities ............................................................................................................. 16 Matthew Keegan ............................................................................................................................... 17 Background, Qualifications and Past Experience.......................................................................... 17 Skills and Attributes ...................................................................................................................... 17 Roles and Responsibilities ............................................................................................................. 17 Ran Zhang.......................................................................................................................................... 17 Background, Qualifications and Past Experience.......................................................................... 17 Skills and Attributes ...................................................................................................................... 17 Roles and Responsibilities ............................................................................................................. 17 External IT Consultant - Gary Rafferty .............................................................................................. 18 Advisors ............................................................................................................................................. 18 Never again Get a Gift you don’t want ........................................................................................ 19 Mission .............................................................................................................................................. 19 Vision................................................................................................................................................. 19 Concept Research ................................................................................................................................. 20 Group giving Research ...................................................................................................................... 23 Questionnaire Research .................................................................................................................... 23 3|Page Mobile App Research ........................................................................................................................ 28 Social Media P2P Research ............................................................................................................... 28 Overview of Research ........................................................................................................................... 29 Industry Analysis ................................................................................................................................... 32 Porters 5 Forces .................................................................................................................................... 32 .............................................................................................................................................................. 32 Threat of new entrants - High ........................................................................................................... 32 Threat of substitute services - Low-Medium .................................................................................... 33 Bargaining power of customers – Medium-High .............................................................................. 33 Bargaining power of suppliers - Low-Medium .................................................................................. 33 Intensity of existing competitive rivalry – High ................................................................................ 34 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 34 eBay Group Gifts ............................................................................................................................... 35 The Gifts Project................................................................................................................................ 36 Friend Fund ....................................................................................................................................... 38 Share a Gift........................................................................................................................................ 39 Gift Simple......................................................................................................................................... 40 Lets Gift It .......................................................................................................................................... 41 Social Gift .......................................................................................................................................... 42 Revenue Streams .................................................................................................................................. 43 Iwanthat Value Proposition .................................................................................................................. 47 User Experience ................................................................................................................................ 47 eCommerce Retailer (Widget) .......................................................................................................... 48 Marketing & Entry Strategy .................................................................................................................. 49 Situation Analysis .................................................................................................................................. 49 Users ................................................................................................................................................. 49 Market Trends & Analysis ................................................................................................................. 51 Purchases ...................................................................................................................................... 52 Research ........................................................................................................................................ 53 Wishlist/Bookmarking ................................................................................................................... 54 Group-Gifts.................................................................................................................................... 55 Internet ......................................................................................................................................... 55 Social Media .................................................................................................................................. 55 Browser Plugin/Attachments ........................................................................................................ 55 4|Page Examining the Exterior (PESTEL) ................................................................................................... 56 Marketing 4 C’s ................................................................................................................................. 64 Customer Needs and Wants ......................................................................................................... 64 Cost to Customer .......................................................................................................................... 64 Convenience.................................................................................................................................. 64 Communication ............................................................................................................................. 65 Business Marketing Strategy............................................................................................................. 66 Objectives...................................................................................................................................... 66 Beta Launch 1st November 2012 .................................................................................................. 66 Full Lunch 1st October 2013 ......................................................................................................... 66 Goals ............................................................................................................................................. 66 Audience Selection........................................................................................................................ 67 Audience Attributes ...................................................................................................................... 67 Product Attributes ........................................................................................................................ 68 Marketing Tactics .............................................................................................................................. 68 New Media Publishers .................................................................................................................. 68 PPC Advertising ............................................................................................................................. 69 Individual/Group Solicitation ........................................................................................................ 69 Content ......................................................................................................................................... 69 Website ......................................................................................................................................... 69 Public Speaking ............................................................................................................................. 70 Message ........................................................................................................................................ 70 KPI’s ................................................................................................................................................... 70 Resources .......................................................................................................................................... 71 Human ........................................................................................................................................... 71 Financial ........................................................................................................................................ 72 Iwanthat’s International Expansion ...................................................................................................... 73 Background ....................................................................................................................................... 74 Chinese Online Consumers ............................................................................................................... 75 Local Social Networks ....................................................................................................................... 76 Baidu Advertising .......................................................................................................................... 77 Online Marketing Strategies ............................................................................................................. 77 Challenges ......................................................................................................................................... 78 Technology ............................................................................................................................................ 79 5|Page Website Application .......................................................................................................................... 79 Client ............................................................................................................................................. 79 Middle ........................................................................................................................................... 79 Database ....................................................................................................................................... 79 Web Architecture Diagram (Based on Oracle Database Environment) ........................................ 80 Mobile Application ........................................................................................................................ 81 System Requirements ....................................................................................................................... 81 Table 2.1 Document Intended Audience ...................................................................................... 81 Purpose ......................................................................................................................................... 81 System User Groups ...................................................................................................................... 82 Consumers .................................................................................................................................... 82 Non-Registered Users ................................................................................................................... 82 Merchants ..................................................................................................................................... 82 iwanthat Administrators ............................................................................................................... 82 Functional Objectives........................................................................................................................ 83 Registration & Login ...................................................................................................................... 83 Facebook ....................................................................................................................................... 83 Twitter ........................................................................................................................................... 83 Email.............................................................................................................................................. 83 Wishlist Creation ........................................................................................................................... 83 Browser Toolbar Plugin ................................................................................................................. 83 Icon................................................................................................................................................ 83 Onsite ............................................................................................................................................ 83 Mobile Upload .............................................................................................................................. 84 Wishlist Curation ........................................................................................................................... 84 iwanthat Domain Activity ............................................................................................................. 84 Personal Profile ............................................................................................................................. 84 Network Profiles ........................................................................................................................... 84 Sitewide......................................................................................................................................... 85 Group Buying ................................................................................................................................ 85 High Level System Overview ......................................................................................................... 85 Functional Requirements .................................................................................................................. 85 Essential Use Case 1 ...................................................................................................................... 86 Swimlane Registration to System ................................................................................................. 87 6|Page Essential Use Case 2 ...................................................................................................................... 88 Swimlane Register to System ........................................................................................................ 89 Swimlane Wishlist Addition: Via External Webpage..................................................................... 91 Essential Use Case 4 ...................................................................................................................... 92 Swimlane Wishlist Addition: Via Host Site Icon ............................................................................ 93 Swimlane Wishlist Addition of item hosted on iwanthat domain ................................................ 95 Essential Use Case 6 ...................................................................................................................... 96 Swimlane Item Search Function.................................................................................................... 97 Essential Use Case 7 ...................................................................................................................... 98 Swimlane Group Purchase Initiation............................................................................................. 99 Essential Use Case 8 .................................................................................................................... 100 Swimlane Group Purchase Initiation........................................................................................... 101 System Constraints ......................................................................................................................... 102 User Interface Constraints .......................................................................................................... 102 Hardware Constraints ................................................................................................................. 102 Software Constraints................................................................................................................... 102 Communications Constraints ...................................................................................................... 102 Data Management Constraints ................................................................................................... 102 Operational Constraints .............................................................................................................. 102 Design Standards Compliance..................................................................................................... 102 System Features Specification ........................................................................................................ 103 Wishlist Addition ......................................................................................................................... 103 Browser Plugin/Extension ........................................................................................................... 103 Host Site embedded iwanthat button ........................................................................................ 104 iwanthat domain ......................................................................................................................... 104 Internal Search Feature............................................................................................................... 104 Indexing ....................................................................................................................................... 105 Retrieval Technique .................................................................................................................... 105 Text Based Image Retrieval ......................................................................................................... 106 Content Based Image Retrieval................................................................................................... 106 Collaborative Payment ................................................................................................................ 106 GiftManager ................................................................................................................................ 107 Contributor.................................................................................................................................. 107 Security ....................................................................................................................................... 107 7|Page Data Storage................................................................................................................................ 107 Usability .......................................................................................................................................... 108 Evaluation Process ...................................................................................................................... 108 Legal .................................................................................................................................................... 111 Registering the business ................................................................................................................. 111 Registering the trademark .............................................................................................................. 111 Electronic Commerce Act 2000....................................................................................................... 112 Data Protection Act 1988 ................................................................................................................ 112 Statutory Employer Requirements ................................................................................................. 113 Tax ................................................................................................................................................... 113 Profit & Loss Account and Cash Flow Statements .............................................................................. 115 Break down of costs ........................................................................................................................ 120 Salary ........................................................................................................................................... 120 Site Maintenance ........................................................................................................................ 120 Website App Widget Plug in development ................................................................................. 121 Hosting ........................................................................................................................................ 121 Office & Equipment..................................................................................................................... 121 Internet & phone bills ................................................................................................................. 121 Email Anti-Virus........................................................................................................................... 121 Advertisement............................................................................................................................. 121 Legal Accounting Fees ................................................................................................................. 121 Travelling Cost-Utility Bills .......................................................................................................... 122 Bank Charges, Domain, Company Registration and Data Controller Registration ..................... 122 Risk Analysis ........................................................................................................................................ 122 Strategic Risks ................................................................................................................................. 122 Operational Risks ............................................................................................................................ 123 Security Risks .................................................................................................................................. 124 Industry/market Risks ..................................................................................................................... 125 Financial Risks ................................................................................................................................. 125 Competitive Risks ............................................................................................................................ 125 Compliance Risk .............................................................................................................................. 125 Other Risks ...................................................................................................................................... 128 Risk Matrix ...................................................................................................................................... 128 Potential Grants-Investment .............................................................................................................. 130 8|Page First Step ......................................................................................................................................... 130 Enterprise Ireland ........................................................................................................................... 130 Venture Capitalists & Angel Investors ............................................................................................ 130 Bank Loan ........................................................................................................................................ 131 Ideal Situation ................................................................................................................................. 131 Overall Limitation................................................................................................................................ 132 References .......................................................................................................................................... 133 Appendix Emails .................................................................................................................................. 140 Tours America ............................................................................................................................. 140 Eportireland.com ........................................................................................................................ 141 SkimLinks ..................................................................................................................................... 141 Gary Rafferty Emails.................................................................................................................... 142 Anthony Birchall Emails .............................................................................................................. 143 Questionnaire Appendix ................................................................................................................. 145 Online Purchasing ........................................................................................................................... 147 Group Buying.................................................................................................................................. 149 Wishlists/Bookmarking................................................................................................................... 151 Technical ......................................................................................................................................... 153 Privacy ............................................................................................................................................ 154 Interview Ryan O’Donnell CEO of Let’s Gift It ................................................................................. 156 Technology A................................................................................................................................... 161 Technology B ................................................................................................................................... 161 Technology C.................................................................................................................................. 162 Index............................................................................................................................................ 162 9|Page “Having reviewed the proposal my belief is that this idea would be a worthwhile venture with significant potential to gain traction in the market and it would be time well spent to examine the opportunity further via the creation of a minimal via product and some basic test marketing” Charlie Ardagh CEO, Founder at Trackalyse ,Director, Co-Founder at ClipSure. Executive Summary iwanthat is a digital service that allows online consumers to purchase products and services collaboratively as a group. The technology enables online consumers to select a product or service and invite online friends and family to join in the payment process. The service is primarily aimed at the ’gifting market’ utilising the emotions and importance connected with giving a gift – ‘spend a little, give a lot’. The concept has been developed on recognition of the difficulties users face in purchasing gifts collaboratively. The primary complaints revolve on selecting the right item and organising the collaborative payment, iwanthat resolves both issues. In addition to the social website iwanthat offers eCommerce businesses a group payment facility that can be easily integrated on to such websites. This widget will allow eCommerce websites to independently offer their shoppers a group buying platform and potentially increasing traffic, customers and brand awareness. iwanthat has developed a number of viable revenue streams relying heavily on affiliate schemes. Targeted advertising is the long-term goal. We want to attract a high volume of users in order to acquire valuable information and work with affiliates to target online consumers with personalised or tailored advertisements. This form of revenue is highly dependent on user uptake. We will rely heavily on the eCommerce widget to generate cash flow in the early years. eCommerce websites that integrate the widget onto their websites will be required to pay out a percentage of every sale that is transacted via the widget. We have developed the specific features of the site which in conjunction with a visual prototype has led us to secure a developer willing to bring the project through completion and launch. 10 | P a g e Careful consideration has been given to all legal requirements, especially important when attempting to monetise user data. Our business model, multiple streams of revenue and marketing strategy we are confident will see iwanthat become a profitable enterprise three years from launch and from which will grow exponentially. Details of financial planning- Grants The financial planning is based on iwanthat receiving a bank loan of €150,000, as a group we will be putting €5,000 capital in each in order to try secure the loan which amounts to €25,000 personal investments by the founders. In relation to the cost we have overestimated all costs as from discussing the financial side with other entrepreneurs they encouraged this practice as costs tend to creep up and go above estimated costs. We planned so we could deal with these by overestimating the start up and running cost and by also keeping €60,000 in cash in reserve to deal with any unexpected larger costs which may present themselves. We feel that this means we have safe guarded our business from potential liquidity issues as from recent reports this seems to be the number one issue facing Irish SMEs. We have also devised an ideal situation where we will be entering the Horizon 2020 programme which is an initiative to help SMEs with high potential within Europe. We would be aiming to enter this programme by our third year, as our aim is to have enough users registered at that stage to show the high potential of our service. It would be at this point then we would be looking to expand globally as iwanthat would gain both financial and business support via this programme and it would help us rapidly expand. To help achieve this aim we will be utilising the contacts we have made in order to be successful in our application to Horizon 2020. One advisor we would be utilising would be Charlie Ardagh who is currently in the final stages of being accepted onto the current SME European programme called Seventh Framework Programme and we believe we could gain valuable insight into how to be accepted on to these types of programmes. We also anticipate applying for other grants at the outset of the start up such as innovation vouchers from enterprise Ireland which are €5,000 each and you can apply for 10, we will also be applying for first step grant which is worth €25,000 and they have 5500 of these grants to be giving out which was announced Minister Bruton in June of this year. We are not relying on these grants however and if we are successful in obtaining the grants we will be pumping the money straight into marketing and research. 11 | P a g e Overall our financial planning is based on making a loss in both year one and two and making a slight profit of just over €4,000 in year three. We believe these are realistic figures, also we felt that it is essential that marketing expenditure needs to be at a high level as we need to develop our user base plus to try get the company recognised by mashable or techcrunch as we have been told that getting published by sites like this will result higher user uptake numbers due to the exposure it would lead to. Concept Our proposed service is based around the social commerce phenomenon. We are proposing a service that will act as a platform for consumers to utilise a social or collaborative payment system to purchase products (Group Buying). The service will be aimed at the ‘gift buying’ market. We propose to create a website supplemented by an eCommerce widget that is inherently connected to Facebook through an application. A user will log onto the website and create an account. The user will be ‘encouraged’ to activate the account by logging into Facebook via the website. The user will be asked to authorise the app to connect to their Facebook profiles (much like ‘The Guardian Facebook’ app). The user will then be prompted to add several of his closest friends or family to his account by inputting the Facebook link of the friends. This is required to create a social circle. After the account is created the app will send the added members of the social circle a Facebook notification, alerting them that John (their friend) has added them to the social commerce group. The notification will encourage them to join ‘John’s’ social group thus giving the app access to their Facebook profile and information. The app captures as much information from each Facebook profile as possible such as D.O.B, interests, ‘likes’, location, status, gender, networks, employment, education, subscriptions, activity etc. This information will be the essential component driving our targeted advertising revenue model. Users will be able to surf the web and click products or service they like and add them to their wishlist using a plugin much like Evernote. For example – John and his 9 friends have successfully set up an account on our website. As mentioned above our service captures the D.O.B, interests, likes etc of the users. John’s birthday is in 4 weeks. The service would send out an automatic notification to all the other members of the social group, alerting them of John’s up and coming birthday. The notification would also include a list of suggested gifts (taken from the websites of affiliate partners) 12 | P a g e based on John’s interests derived from his Facebook activity. Simple payment plans would also be brought to the attention of the members. For example, John likes different fitness establishments on Facebook and describes ‘fitness’ as one of his interests. Little Woods Ireland is offering a fitness bike for 270€. The service would encourage the group to purchase the bike collaboratively at 30€ per member. Furthermore we want to develop an eCommerce widget. eCommerce websites will be able to integrate the widget seamlessly into their web pages. The widget will provide a function for users to purchase products or services (gifts) as a group or collaboratively online. So for example if a group of friends wanted to buy a gift from a particular website as a gift for another friend, one individual would be able to click on the widget and invite others to contribute to the gift via Facebook, email or mobile phone. Our software would create an event page where the contributions can be tracked, a deadline set and a secure payment facility. 13 | P a g e Company Structure The five founders of iwanthat will form the management team of the company. All members will be recently graduated e-commerce master’s students. Post-launch, only two of the members will remain in full time positions as a sales and marketing manager and customer service and operations manager. The other three members will receive equity in the company and operate as external contract consultants where needed. The nature of the revenue models means we will not be profitable until year three of business and the enterprise cannot sustain three further salaries in its early years. In year three we will have the option of taking on another part-time employee or intern in an area we deem requires the necessity. This is due to the projected profit of €60,000 (see cash flow). We have tried to maintain as much work in house as possible to minimise costs however we do realise that there may be a need to employ some form of external IT professional or consultant as none of us have come from a fully technical background. Number of staff Year 1 2 Full-Time 3 Part-Time Year 2 2 Full-Time 3 Part-Time Year 3 3 Full-Time 3 Part-Time Employees (Full Time) Enda McGuinness - Director of Customer Service and Operations Background, Qualifications and Past Experience Enda is a recent graduate of Economic, Politics and Law from Dublin City University (DCU). He is currently studying a Master’s Degree in eCommerce from Dublin City University (DCU) and expects to graduate in November 2012. He has worked as a polling clerk and a presiding officer at the county sheriff’s office since 2009 where he has shown his strengths at both working independently and within a team environment. He has also worked for Changing Rooms Ltd. where he learned essential skills relating to time management and adhering to strict deadlines. Skills and Attributes He completed the Prince2 foundation level exam gaining essential skills in the areas of project management and team coordination that will be essential to the many campaigns iwanthat will be 14 | P a g e carrying out. In addition to this he has displayed a high degree of customer interfacing skills and a desire for constant advancement. Roles and Responsibilities Managing the office premises. Maintaining customer support services. Ensuring compliance of all legal obligations. Managing payroll and employee information. Adhering to finance department’s budget constraints. Jamie O’Sullivan - Director of Sales and Marketing Background, Qualifications and Past Experience Jamie is a recent graduate from Dublin City University (DCU) where he studied a BA in Law. He is currently studying a Master’s Degree in eCommerce from Dublin City University (DCU) and expects to graduate in November 2012. He has shown exceptional skills and work ethic in the area of marketing and it is for this reason that he will be leading the marketing department of iwanthat. From June 2008 to July 2012 Jamie worked as a digital marketing intern at Gamma Ltd. Where he displayed his dedication and reliability and worked to a high standard of detail. He also showed his core competency as a leader while working as an IT mentor in DCU from February to May 2012. These skills will be essential while leading the marketing department. Skills and Attributes In his time at Gamma Ltd. Jamie was able to highlight his skills in social media marketing by enhancing the company’s social media presence and the value of its marketing output. He also showed his sales ability developing skills in cold calling and exhibiting a high degree of customer interaction. Roles and Responsibilities As the head of marketing and sales how Jamie performs in his role will be critical to the success of iwanthat. His major responsibilities will include: Developing and leading the company’s marketing campaign. Maintaining the company’s social media presence. Developing both the online and offline advertising strategies. Co-ordinating with the other directors on sales strategies. 15 | P a g e Liaising and networking with the customer base. Working to budget constraints laid down by the finance department. Founding member external consultants Cormac Moran Background, Qualifications and Past Experience Cormac Moran is a 2011 graduate from National University of Ireland (NUI) Maynooth with a HDip in Information Technology. He is currently studying a Master’s Degree in eCommerce from Dublin City University (DCU) and expects to graduate in November 2012. Cormac has gained a vast amount of experience working in the areas of management, marketing, sales, customer service and consultancy. From 2004 Cormac has worked as an assistant manager at Canal Turn Ltd. Where he managed both the financial and inventory accounts. He also worked from January to March 2012 as a marketing consulting for The Design Basket where he assisted with Google analytics and conducted a comprehensive SEO audit while concurrently running a social media and adwords campaign. Skills and Attributes Through previous work Cormac has shown excellent communication skills with both colleagues and customers and displayed core competencies in team development and delegation. He has also shown a high level of technical skill which will be essential for maintaining the IT infrastructure that we will be putting into place. Roles and Responsibilities Cormac will be expected to maintain much of the technical aspects of the business as well as assist with administration when needed. His main job responsibilities will include: Maintenance and security of key IT infrastructure components. Working to the budget given from the finance department. Lead and advise on any IT issues that may occur throughout the course of business. 16 | P a g e Matthew Keegan Background, Qualifications and Past Experience Matthew is a recent graduate of Dublin Business School (DBS) where he completed an honours degree in business management. He is currently studying a Master’s Degree in eCommerce from Dublin City University (DCU) and expects to graduate in November 2012. Through previous experience Matthew has demonstrated his capacity to work in a broad range of industries. He worked as a customer service advisor in permanent TSB from July 2007 to January 2012 where he gained invaluable skills on numerous information systems. Skills and Attributes Matthew has shown excellent communication skills which will be imperative when he is laying down the annual budget and liaising with the other directors. Roles and Responsibilities As part of managing the finances Matthews responsibilities will include: Outline the financial position of the company. The Annual Report. Sales Forecast. Financial Strategy and Planning. Communicate the departmental budgets. Ran Zhang Background, Qualifications and Past Experience Ran is a recent graduate in Business and Economics from Trinity College Dublin (TCD). She is currently studying a Master’s Degree in eCommerce from Dublin City University (DCU) and expects to graduate in November 2012. Skills and Attributes Ran has shown exceptional communication and interpersonal skills that have enabled her to work seamlessly with the rest of the team. Her knowledge of foreign markets has also been an essential part of our future growth and expansion strategy. Roles and Responsibilities Ran’s roles will include the following: All administration functions within the organisation. Working with users to help solve any technical issues that may arise. 17 | P a g e Gathering user feedback to help develop and refine our marketing strategies. External IT Consultant - Gary Rafferty Gary Rafferty will be held on retainer as an outside IT consultant. His contact details are as follows: Email: [email protected] (CEO, Founder at Trackalyse and Director, Co-Founder at ClipSure) Advisors Lastly we have two advisors who will continue to assist in offering us professional knowledge with regards to the industry and technical details we may need. They are as follows: Rayhan Abdulmughnee - [email protected] (CEO of the Small Business Centre (Digital Marketing training centre) Vancouver Canada) Ryan O’Donnell - [email protected] (CEO and co-founder of Lets Gift it New York USA) Charlie Ardagh CEO, Founder at Trackalyse, Director, Co-Founder at ClipSure. 18 | P a g e Never again Get a Gift you don’t want Mission Our mission is to resolve the two most common problems people face when seeking to buy a friend, family member or colleague a group-gift; selecting the right gift and organising the collaborative payment. This mission will be sought centred on our core values of user comes first and transparency. Vision Our vision is to leverage the social commerce phenomenon and utilise up to date technologies to provide an optimum user experience, enabling us to gain traction and eventually lead the Irish/US market with plans for further expansion. Take the hassle and uncertainty out of buying great gifts for those you care about 19 | P a g e Concept Research When we started our research the first port of call we felt was necessary to understand was how consumers behave in relation to how they make purchasing decision online and how they research product/services before making purchasing decision. We felt this was a good starting point as if we understood this we could develop key elements of the research into our product service thus making it more appealing to potential customers. If we could make their decision journey more efficient and easier then this will be a USP for our site. When we delved into researching this topic of the consumer decision journey, we found that 58% of consumers starts their decision journey by engaging with a search engine as the first port of call when researching products or services, while 24% go directly to companies and the remaining 18% use social media as their first port of call when conducting research. This is however not the end of the process as digital consumer use multiple resources when making decisions about purchasing product/services. Of the 58% of users who engage in search engines first only 26% just use search engines for research while the 40% of those used social media as the next port of call. As well as this of those who used social media first 46% then turned to search engines to conduct further research and only 1% use only social media, while 26% use solely search engines. However 45% use search engines throughout the process and 18% only use it at the end of their consumer decision journey(WWP 2011). What this tells us is that we will need to incorporate a search into our site, and moving into the future we’d like to introduce image search but only when we can make the decision that it is commercially viable to the business as well as that the results that are returned need to match. As well as this we found that when consumer do engage in social media in relation to the consumer decision journey it’s not actually used to find products and services but heavily weighted in P2P advise, so people engage more with customer reviews and blogs. So what this tells is that P2P is an important fact in the consumer decision journey so what we decided from this was that we needed to have a means of review or for consumer feed back in relation to products and services in relation to items on users wish lists. This research was important part of our project development as we gained insights into how consumers actually go about research product service. We found out how consumers go about researching, so we can intertwine it with our site i.e. add in search capabilities and allow users to add reviews and comment of products thus we believe we our solving a problem by providing a service which will enable user use the site as a point of reference , research. This will hopefully result 20 | P a g e in consumers spending more time on the site, and as we hope to introduce target marketing the more the users stay on site the more information we can gather. Once we understood the consumer decision journey process we then moved onto understand our potential consumers. The first element we discovered from our research in this area is the fact that if we expect users to add comments or expand their time they expect some sort of rewards. This is something we considered when brainstorming in relation to what we wanted to be incorporated into the site. This also will play a part in order to get users to fill out as much information as possible after the original registration were we will only be asking them to fill out a few basic elements like name age etc but for one of our revenue models we will be aiming to target advertise so we are going to give user the option to fill out further details hobbies, interest etc. This will also work like the Google advertisement model where users can customise their add preference. So as April’s Social shopping survey said customers expect rewards for expanding their time so in order to achieve this for our consumers we will be pushing across the point to customers that it will result in better advertisement for them and that they have control over the advertisement they receive(Power Reviews 2011). The graph below is a simple illustration of online consumerism which was taken form Aprils Social Shopping survey. It shows that 72% of consumers purchase online several times a month. These would be our target market the digital consumer who shops online regularly who would make use of our service to keep track of online goods in one convenient place (Power Reviews 2012). How Often Do You Shop Online 8% 20% 30% Weekly Several Times a Month Once A Month 42% 21 | P a g e four times per year How Much Would Annually Online 17% 27% $250-499 16% $500-749 $750-999 16% 24% $1000-1499 $1500+ From those who where surveyed in the above graphs, one in two said that they spent 75% of their time researching products before purchasing. Yet again this show that understanding the consumer decision journey means that we can add value to our potential user. 22 | P a g e Group giving Research We wanted to research this aspect of the concept as we wanted to see what existing group purchasing experiences were like for people, was it used and if so who participated. The main research we found around this area was based around online group giving in relation to online wedding registers. In 2010 the knot company produced a marketing intelligence survey which polled 11,500 couples who had been married within the last twelve months. Of those who were surveyed 88% hand made a wedding registry and of those 80% managed their lists online. Some other interesting facts from this survey were that 61% of these used wedding sites to list their gift wishes. As well as this 65% received group gifts and 69% included higher price goods as they expected group purchasing to occur. So the idea of group buying via internet registers already exists, so we can conclude from this that it wouldn’t be much more of a push to produce individual wish lists. We’ll also be providing option just to create list for wedding, Christenings, house warming’s etc. However we felt that this wasn’t enough to go on so we decided to develop a questionnaire in order to get further insights into group gift giving and other elements we felt needed to be researched. The main problem we encountered in relation to researching this area was that the research papers we found were not freely available, so part of the funding we aim to generate will be spent on researching this area in much more detail(xogroupinc 2012). Questionnaire Research We decided to conduct a questionnaire as there wasn’t any group purchasing research papers freely available, so we decide that this should be an element that we place into our questionnaire, as well as this we wanted to research consumer’s online behaviour i.e. how often they purchase online or do they participate in group present buying. The questionnaire had 136 participants and of those there was only a slight lean towards male but only slightly 51% where male 49% where female. 85% had made gift purchases online at some point or other. The graph below depicts how often these make purchases online (0% bought once a day), and the table below show how the ages of the correspondents correlated with the sex of the correspondents. 23 | P a g e Age Male (No. & %) Female (No. & %) 18-24 27-39% 23-34% 50 25-34 27-39% 27-40% 54 35-44 6-8% 4-6% 10 45-64 6-9% 12-18% 18 65+ 3-4% 1-2% 4 Total 69 67 Sales 1% 1% 21% 7% Several times a day 20% Once a day Several times a day Once a week 40% Several times a month Once a Month Not in last 6 months At this point we could see that 21% hadn’t made a purchase in the last 6 months so we decided to cross this element with age to see if that played a part in those who hadn’t shopped online in the last 6 months. We were pleased to see from our research that 79% had made purchases online in the last month which matches the figure in Aprils Social Shopping Survey. As we mentioned earlier 85% of those surveyed had bought a gift for someone online before, this was encouraging as beforehand we felt it would be a lower percentage, so of the 136 participants 116 had made a gift purchase online and 20 hadn’t. Once we had established this we then moved onto finding out how many gifts these had bought online which is depicted in graph below. 24 | P a g e 10. How many gifts have you purchased online? 28% 9% 1 Between 2-5 45% 18% Between 6-10 More Than 10 What this indicates is that consumer are already participating in present purchasing online which is a positive factor for us as we will be focusing on Ireland and UK with our marketing plan to start off with. The next area we felt was important to research was the group gift buying culture. Of those surveys 57% had participated in group gift giving leaving 43% who had never participated. We also wanted to research what type of gifts occasion would users most likely get involved with in relation to group gift purchasing. We gave the user several options and they could choose more than one option. On what occasions would you be likely to purchase a group gift? 81% 61% 30% 50% 28% 33% 7% A Birth A Birthday A Wedding House Warming Retirement Christmas Other So what this information helps us with is that when we are developing a market plan we should be aiming to convey the benefit and use these insights towards Birthdays , Weddings and Christmas as this are the top 3 categories which people said they would participate in group gift purchasing. 25 | P a g e Several members of our group had participated in group gift purchasing before and they said there was some problems when they participated in group purchasing so we also decided that we should include this in our questionnaire as it would be a useful insight into consumer problems and the more problems this service solved the better chance of quick uptake numbers. The problems which seemed to affect group’s gift purchasing the most were collecting the money, ideas. The breakdown of the results can be seen below. So what we learnt form this was that if we can organise it that collecting money isn’t a problem then we are adding value to the consumer. We aim to overcome this problem by having graphs and reminders sent to participants so people know who has paid and how much is left to be collected. And the other main problem was lack of ideas and since the users themselves will have to create the list this problem is also avoided. What problems, if any, were encountered when organising the group gift purchase? 57% 32% 15% Collecting Money 7% 30% 10% Reimbursing Deciding on Lack of ideas Lack of time the Number of participants participants 3% Other None The final part we wanted to research was aimed at establishing the current use of online retailers wish list by potential consumers. The results showed that the majority of users don’t make use of wish lists, 38% said they make use of wish lists on site while the majority of 62% don’t make use of them. Some interesting figures from this research showed that 55% would be willing to create wish list and share them with friends in order to receive gifts they want. However 75% of participants said that they would make use of friend’s wish lists in order to make a purchasing decision. 26 | P a g e Would you make use of a friends wishlist, if they made it available for you to see, when making a decision on purchasing a gift for them? 25% Yes 75% No This is an indication to us that there is a big gap between those who would be willing to register wish lists and share them with those who would use them to help them make purchasing decisions in relation gift buying for friends. So as a strategy we need to push the USP of our product in order to overcome this potential barrier to user uptake. We also believe that there will be a domino effect i.e. if we can tap into the 55% who said they would share their wish lists then if they invite 5 people to the service to view their profile or use the service we could overcome the gap between those who would share and those who would make use of the others wish lists. 27 | P a g e Mobile App Research We decided that this needed to be part of the service as users will then be able to add items on their wish list while they are out shopping etc. However we wanted to investigate how consumers use their mobile phones in motion. The first part of the research involved finding out about how many Smartphone’s there are and how they are growing in number. According to a Gartner 2011 study smart phones sales reached 472 million worldwide (58% increase from 2011 figures) and according to Red C report 71% of Irish phone users have or intend to have Smartphone’s by the end of the year. This was just our basic research into smartphones, what we really wanted to find out was how smartphone owners use their phone when out and about. The graph below is from a Google 2012 study “Mobile movement study”, the specific question they asked user was “where do you use your smartphone” (Google 2012) Smartphone Usage 93% Home 87% On the go 77% In a Store 73% restaurant 72% Work 54% 50% Cafe airport The point we take from here is that users won’t have to change users habits as 77% already use there Smartphone’s while in store and overall 87% use smartphone while on the go. This demonstrates that there is already a culture of smartphone owners using their devices while shopping and on the go. We can conclude from this that developing the app would be a worthwhile investment as it is yet another value adding element for our potential users. Social Media P2P Research 28 | P a g e If we examine social media and its growth rate over the last number of years, we can see that it has exploded onto the scene. Last year Facebook grew by 13.4% and is expected to grow to over 1 billion users this year. Alongside this, Twitter grow by 31.9% last year, and has hit the 500 million users milestone in March 2012. The point we’re trying to get across here is that there is nearly an insatiable appetite for social media interaction. This directly correlates with the need of the individual for social approval. People are willing to expose information about them, once it’s adding value to themselves. So by adding a form of social media into the site we are not alone catering for a need out there but also using social media element we should be able to get much more market information. All this plays on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in particular level 3 and 4. Level three plays on the need to feel like you belong while level 4 plays to personal esteem which includes social recognition. We believe this is viable as a result of the explosion of social media and in direct correlation with smartphone uptake along with the current habits of smartphone users. The app/website falls nicely into the social media side as users will share/rob like others user’s products from their wish list, on top of this users will be able to add reviews of product as from our research we have found user who research using social media are looking for reviews and user blogs and customer reviews ahead of sites such as facebook. Overview of Research 29 | P a g e The primary results we took from our research are as follows, firstly it is of utmost importance to have search capabilities intertwined with the site so users can search for products, which fellow users have placed on their wish lists. As we are allowing users to place reviews of products or services this also adds value to potential users as P2P reviews such as blogs and customer reviews are held in the highest regard by consumers when using social media to research products and services. Even though our service is free and we won’t be charging consumers, they still expect rewards in order to expand their time. This is especially applicable as we are aiming to introduce target marketing in the future, this will rely on users filling out their more in-depth profile information as well as tracking their wishlists. This adds value to the consumer in relation to receiving more applicable adverts” 70% of consumers say targeted advertising based on interests or shopping behaviour, similar to Amazon’s recommendation model, would make them more likely to buy products on social networks”(Internet Retaling 2011) as well as adding value to consumer. Plus Behaviour targeting is expected to increase from $1.7 billion this year to $2.7 billion in 2011 and $4.4 billion in 2012, according to eMarketer(MarketingCharts 2012) . So we’d be aiming to earn some of this revenue especially as it’s expected to nearly double in the next 12 months. We also found a study that states that more than three quarters of respondents aged between 16 and 24 years indicated they were willing to receive advertisements, compared to 48% of those aged over 65 in relation to tracking their movements online “As consumers show more willingness to have their online activity tracked, advertisers will start to undergo a fundamental shift from ‘blast’ advertising campaigns towards more personalised and value-added promotions”(StartupSmart 2012). This further helps us identify our target market. So we conclude from this that users understand that they receive rewards benefits from expanding their time ie the more information they update on their profile the better advertisement they will receive. Also when we are negotiating with advertisers we can explain that target and behaviour advertisement has far higher CTR then normal advertisement. Christian Byrne explained during a POD that a successful Irish click through rate is 0.06% and 0.1%, and according to Market week journal you can expect to achieve 3 or 4 times more of a convergence rate than you would expect from lowest-cost run-of-site ad placements. When the concept was in the brainstorming part we also decided to include an app so users could upload photos when they were out and about shopping. However we wanted to see if users would be willing to engage with an app on the move, or was this going beyond how they currently users their Smartphone’s. As a result of the research we have established that not only do users use their 30 | P a g e Smartphone’s while shopping but that it is quite a high percentage, 87% use them on the go and more relevant to our idea 77% use Smartphone’s while in stores. Our research into group gift giving has also given us some insight into the types of occasion in which users would participate in group gift giving, the three major categories were Christmas and Birthdays and Weddings. Of those we surveyed only 57% had participated in group giving before but from research into wedding registers we found that 88% of participants in a survey had put their wedding register online and of these 65% had received gifts by groups and of those surveyed 69% purposely placed higher price goods expecting group gift giving. We also delved into the problems that people have when participating in group gift giving, the main ones were lack of ideas and collecting money, so because our service offers users the opportunity to create custom made wish lists we have eradicated this problem and also because users will be able to track who has paid and how much and reminders will be sent to those who haven’t paid i.e. a weekly update on a group gift group. We also researched into people’s perceptions around sharing wish lists with friends family etc we found from our survey that 55% would be willing to share wish lists with family and friends, however we also found that 75% of those surveyed would use friends family wish lists in order to make purchasing decisions. However this is an area in which we need to do further research when we have the available funds to invest in research papers or conduct our own market research. To conclude this section of the business plan, we believe from the research results which we have shown above prove that there is a market for our service and that as a service it is solving a problem for consumers in relation to the problem they have said they are incurring when getting involved in group gift giving. On top of this consumers hold P2P reviews in high regard when they are researching products and as we will be allowing users to add reviews etc to products we believe we can create a one stop shop where consumers can conduct their research as well as adding these to their wish lists. 31 | P a g e Industry Analysis Porters 5 Forces Threat of new entrants - High Without having any specific IP protection our business can be easily copied and adapted by other companies. Therefore there is a high reliance on brand trust and loyalty. There is little if any existing loyalty to already established brands. Therefore acquiring initial users will be easier. However it will be important to get across our product differentiation and USP to consumers. There is a threat from existing brands entering the market, in particular established social media sites who could leverage their large user base to quickly dominate the market. Initial capital requirements are relatively high particularly in relation to IT management and infrastructure. 32 | P a g e Potential for high profitability in the future due to growth of online social commerce making it more attractive to new competitors. This will also result in higher levels of investment in the sector reducing initial start-up costs as a barrier to entry. However this will level itself off as the more competitors who join the lower the profitability for all firms within the industry. Threat of substitute services - Low-Medium While we have identified several companies offering the same services as us none of them offer substitute products within the market we are targeting and we are confident we can offer a high quality, competitive service. It is hard for customers to substitute once locked into our service due to high switching costs i.e. losing all the products on their list. This will hopefully increase brand loyalty. Bargaining power of customers – Medium-High The availability of existing substitute products is relatively high. However once we work hard to gain the initial customer base we believe that they are unlikely to transfer to another service due to the high switching costs. The large customer base from social media sites will reduce the overall bargaining power of individual users. Bargaining power of suppliers - Low-Medium As an online service we have a very low dependency on suppliers and distribution channels. It is also very easy to change suppliers should we be required to do so. However we will be reliant on a sufficiently skilled and experienced IT professional to manage the technical end of the business as none of the current employees have the advanced skills to do so. This position should be easy to fill however it will be costly. We will also be reliant on Facebook’s social services to manage much of the social aspect of our service as profiles will be based off of Facebook profiles. This gives them quite high bargaining powers which may pose a challenge in the future particularly if they become a direct competitor to us. 33 | P a g e Intensity of existing competitive rivalry – High There are a high number of competitors in the market however we found few that offered the exact service we plan on offering in the Irish and UK markets. Our biggest competitor is most likely www.shareagift.com in the UK market. However they do not offer the wish list function and ability to view friend’s wish list that makes up our unique selling point. In fact most of the competitors are only providing certain aspects of our fuller service and lack some functionality characteristics that make ours more streamlined and easier to use, in particular the direct integration between wish lists, group buying, peoples social media profiles and their well-established friends lists on these profiles. Once we gain an initial number of users they are likely to get their friends to join resulting in a knock on effect allowing us to quickly gain market share. Conclusion Current level of competition is at a low to medium level but does seem to be shifting as more players join the market due to low barriers to entry and a growing trend in social commerce. It is therefore essential that we act quickly to gain market presence and attract our starting customer base. It will also be important that we distinguish ourselves early on as offering a fuller service and creating a strong brand image and defining for customers what it is that differentiates us from competitors 34 | P a g e Competitors Overview eBay Group Gifts Social Gift Let's Gift it Competitors Gift Simple 35 | P a g e The Gifts Project Share a Gift Friend Fund eBay Group Gifts “…want to give a loved one something great but that can cost a pretty penny…” eBay Group Gifts is a platform that allows users to collaboratively buy gifts together from anywhere in the world. Friends and family can ‘chip in’ to buy a gift together for any occasion. “Spend a little, give a lot, gift it together” eBay Group Gifts is fully integrated with Facebook. Users can attract participants via Facebook and there is also a function to view up and coming birthdays via Facebook. Alternatively users can use email addresses to invite participants to chip in to the group payment platform. Once a gift has been chosen and funded users can securely pay for the gift using PayPal and track the progress of the gift. However the primary USP of eBay Group Gifts is the integration with eBay. eBay offers millions of products (gift ideas) worldwide and this seamless integration means that users do not have to leave the eBay website or worry about the security of their payments. 36 | P a g e The Gifts Project The Gifts project is owned by eBay but offers a more complete service than eBay Group Gifts. The Gifts Project targets established ecommerce websites and offers such websites a number of key incentives. Basically ecommerce websites are encouraged to adopt a plugin or ‘social layer’ onto the pages of their website. The plugin will be embedded in the webpage using a few lines of JavaScript coding and the user will be offered the opportunity to invite their family or friends to purchase the product(s) via Facebook or email as a group. Effectively a single consumer surfing a compatible ecommerce website may bring a group of other random consumers to the website thus putting in the ‘leg work’ to attract new customers to the website (which will lead to repeat purchases, word of mouth promotion, wider customer base etc). Furthermore the package allows the merchant to track key analytics such as the performance of the plugin (revenue, engagement, viral activity etc) and the demographics of the website’s customers (derived from the Facebook integration). The Gifts Project has established partnerships with ecommerce websites like eBay, Café Press, Astley Clarke, Not on the high street.com etc. 37 | P a g e Friend Fund Friend Fund is a service that allows users to collect a pool of money with friends. It is not targeted at the gift buying market specifically like the previous two potential competitors. Friend Fund allows users to pool money together to pay for anything from household expenses like paying the rent to lavish wedding gifts. A prospective user of Friend Fund will log on to the website and create a specific pool for a specific product, service or reason. The service is fully integrated with PayPal providing that all-important security net. The creator will then be asked to invite individuals into the pool via Facebook, Twitter or by email. Friend Fund sets a ten-day time limit in which the participants must reach their intended fund target. This encourages the users to share the ‘pool’ on any social media platform in a bid to attract more participants to add funds to the pool and reach the target on time. This subsequently promotes Friend fund as a service and increases the potential traffic that can visit the Friend Fund website. 38 | P a g e Share a Gift Share a Gift is potentially our biggest competitor on the market. The UK based digital company offers consumers the opportunity to create a gift page, invite friends and split the costs of the identified gift. Users can invite friends for all over the world via Facebook or email. The Share a Gift package will send handy reminders to the participants in the gift page to mitigate the hassle of chasing down money. At the beginning of the gift page the creator can add a specific gift URL or alternatively they can set a fund target and deadline. The Share a Gift package provides a ‘Find a Gift’ tool from users who opt for the latter option. 39 | P a g e Gift Simple Gift Simple is a Facebook application that allows users to tap into their social networks and pull money from friends and family for that dream gift. A user logs into Gift Simple via their Facebook account and is presented with an interactive dashboard. The personalized dashboard notifies the user of friend’s birthdays that are on the horizon and highlights which friends are already Gift Simple subscribers. Users can also invite non-subscribers to join Gift Simple. Once a user has activated their Gift Simple account three primary functions are available, ‘List a Gift’, ‘Give a Gift ‘and’ View own Gifts’. The List a Gift function allows the user to make an appeal to their friends and family. The appeal will illustrate the gift and describe why this particular person needs or wants this gift. The appeal can be posted to the user’s Facebook wall thus making friends and family aware and encouraging them to contribute to the gift idea. Alternatively the user can give a gift. Users can view active members wishlists and offer a contribution to the progress of a specific gift on the wishlist. A gift message can be posted on the recipients Facebook wall. Finally the ‘View own Gifts’ function allows users to keep track of the users own gifts, send thank you notes to contributors and make changes to existing gifts. Gift Simple allows users to check out at any time and the money raised can be transferred to the users bank account. 40 | P a g e Lets Gift It Lets Gift It is a social group gifting service integrated with Facebook and secured by authorize.net. This service is very interactive and accessible. Users have an option to buy a gift card from a specific retailer (Amazon) or they can alternatively pull a product from the Internet and upload it on the Lets Gift It interface. The interface will automatically pull the description and price of the product and enter it into the gift creation form. Lets Gift it also offers a security feature for its users. The gift creators can stipulate what parties have access to the gift page and the identifications of the creator and contributors can be concealed. Once the creator has integrated the application with their Facebook account and identified the recipient on Facebook, Lets gift it will present a list of the mutual friends between the two parties. Such mutual friends act as possible investors into the gift project. The creator can send personalized invitations to encourage investment. Alternatively invitations may be sent via email. 41 | P a g e Social Gift Social Gift provides online retailers with a social group gifting function. Online retailers can purchase a package from Social Gift, which allows them to install a plugin onto their product pages. When potential buyers visit compatible product pages they will see an option where they can ‘Create a Group Gift’. The creator will be asked to fill in some details about the gift and the reasoning behind it. He/She will be able to invite family and friends to contribute to the gift page via Facebook or email. Once the gift page is set up a unique Social Gift event page will be accessible. The participants can track the progress of the gift, see who has chipped in and even interact with each other. Once the money has been raised the Social Gift application will process the payment and deliver the product to the recipient. 42 | P a g e Revenue Streams We recognized early on in this venture that it is imperative to sustainable success to consider a number of different revenue stream options. We primarily analyzed the potential from the businessto-business (B2B) market. We developed several avenues of possible revenue based on market research, existing trends and prospective client interaction. In order to assess the potential Irish B2B market, we examined the existing eCommerce websites operating within the Irish domain (see table 1.1). We did not find a live Irish eCommerce website that offers a group buying/gifting function. This raised two issues: 1. The technology has not been developed or offered in Ireland sufficiently 2. The Irish eCommerce website market does not see the value in a group buying/gifting function We conceded that the answer was more than likely the latter scenario however we needed to dig deeper to shed more light on the situation. Irish eCommerce websites and specifically gifting websites would be the primary target market for the B2B side of the business (See Table 1.1). We established contact with a number of these companies to gauge their interest in the group buying widget and to assess the viability of bringing the service to the market. We received some very positive feedback. Anthony Birchall, CEO at gifts.ie, expressed an interest in the plug-in and is willing to integrate it in to his eCommerce website on a trial basis (see appendix emails). He believes the plug-in has the potential to increase the annual average order, which is roughly around €60. Dermot Ryan, CEO of Eport Ireland, also expressed a strong interest in integrating the plug-in into his website. He is willing to offer his eCommerce website as a trial platform to see how the plug-in will perform. He believes the integration with Facebook will give his website valuable exposure to increase his reach and customer base (see appendix emails). Furthermore Lulu O’Sullivan, CEO of Gifts Direct also expressed some interest. O’Sullivan was cautious about our revenue stream citing that the commission on a sale that we extract would need to be very low because of tight margins on some products but it is a service she would consider (see appendix emails). Finally Ken Kennedy, technology manager at Tour America and Cruise Holidays expressed a strong interest in the widget. Again he is willing to take on the widget on a trial basis and is willing to offer us a percentage of each sale that is transacted using the group buying widget. 43 | P a g e Based on interviews with the CEOs of existing group gifting providers in the United States (Lets Gift it & Gift simple) and further online research we identified two initial B2B primary revenue options. SAAS revenue model: Sell our software (widget) as a service to eCommerce (gifting) websites. Cost per sale revenue model: Extract a percentage of every sale that is completed using our group-buying platform. Ryan O’Donnell CEO of Lets Gift it, believes that the B2B market is much more scalable and suggested that we give away “our first born son” to penetrate the market. Basically we need to demonstrate the value of a group payment plug-in to eCommerce websites, in particular for gift websites. We have attracted four confirmed eCommerce platforms to test the group payment widget on a trial basis (gifts.ie, Gifts Direct, Tour America & Eport Ireland). This trial basis will give us the opportunity to showcase the value of the service: Increase the average order figure Increase the revenue, customer base and reach by giving the primary customer the opportunity to invite random consumers to the website The unique integration with Facebook will increase reach, brand awareness and popularity for the website and also benefit supplementary advantages like the search engine optimization of the website. If we can demonstrate the values listed above we can accelerate into deriving revenue from eCommerce websites. Group payment widgets are completely bespoke in the Irish eCommerce market. Therefore we could not demand up front service payments for an untested service. We would need to work towards earning the SAAS provider role. In the early stages we hope to derive some revenue on a cost per sale basis. Basically every time a consumer purchases a product or service from an eCommerce website using our widget we would receive a small percentage of the sale. As the service grows in popularity we would be able to negotiate a higher percentage. A subset of this revenue stream may also exist. As described above when an individual uses our group payment widget on an integrated eCommerce website that individual is required to invite a number of friends or family to participate in the group gift or payment. This will increase the exposure and 44 | P a g e reach of the website. If any of the consumers participating in the group gift becomes a repeat customer and purchase a product or service within a certain time frame of the group gift, we may be able to extract a small percentage of the revenue from that particular sale. A further supplementary stream of revenue could be derived from affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a model in which a business makes money by driving traffic, leads, or sales to another, affiliated company’s website (Loayza 2009). Basically we would act as a partner site attempting to funnel our visitors towards eCommerce storefronts. This revenue stream will rely heavily on user uptake and the amount of action our website attracts. We asked ourselves how would we gain any affiliate traction? There are two viable and sustainable options available: User generated content – we intend on providing the facilities to encourage our users to generate unique content. We will design a forum where users can discuss products and service with other users. The forum discussions will be categorized – for example ‘electronics’ ‘fitness’ ‘holidays’ etc. Furthermore participants in a group gift will be able to add user-generated content to the event page (discuss ideas and other products). The aim in relation to affiliate marketing revenue is that users will post links from eCommerce products or services, which will lead to other users following the link and ultimately a conversion (potentially). We decided to examine the Pinterest revenue model, which generates a significant amount of revenue from user generated content affiliate marketing. . Pinterest uses a service called Skimlinks. Skimlinks is a service that allows websites to monetize user generated content automatically without affecting the user experience. This makes affiliate marketing simple. We decided to contact Skimlinks and assess our potential (see appendix emails). Skimlinks approved our idea and service and we were granted access to 74 Republic of Ireland merchant affiliation programmes in a matter of minutes. As mentioned above this is a user dependent form of revenue. If we reach our user uptake targets we would be able to ‘manipulate’ to a degree in order to increase our affiliate revenue potential (e.g. monitoring discussions and posting pertinent links). We examined the existing eCommerce websites operating in the Irish market some of which were derived from Amas 45 | P a g e Table 1.1 Gift Websites eCommerce Websites (Selected) Gifts Direct Littlewoods Ireland Gifts Argos Carroll’s Irish Gifts Eport Ireland House of Ireland Buy4now Kilkenny Shop Perfume Ireland Tin Gifts Ticket Master Its Magic Elara Pressie Port Easons Gift Voucher Shop Direct Ski McEvoys Great Days Out Gift Gallery Next Direct Tour America To get an idea of potential revenue models which would take advantage of our user base and to gain advice on other matter we secured a meeting with Charlie Ardagh CEO of Trackalyse. Charlie is a serial entrepreneur who has also worked as the marketing director of Magnet communication. The first potential revenue source we discussed was email advertisement Charlie said we could expect to earn €20 per 1000 CPM, this was backed up when we conducted our own research into email marketing. Our particular email marketing will evolve using the top two items on a persons wish list and emailing them to those person particular friends within their groups. The email campaigns will be conducted every quarter however we will also be emailing a user’s friends a month before their birthday and a month before Christmas. So this means per person register we will be sending 6 emails per year where advertiser can aim directly at customers and what they want. To show the value of the service we will allow advertisers one quarter free and we hope this to be the last in an average of 2.68 more quarter in year one so we can generate revenue from year two. Another revenue source we have researched is target advertisement this is advertisement which is focused around using the users information in order to target specific advertisements which are relevant to the users. The research we found (Federal Trade Commission) saying that target advertisement was worth €5 per 1000 CPM. So for this revenue model we took the approach that we intend to introduce target marketing after year one when we have at least developed a user base. Similar to the email marketing we will be offering the last quarter of year one for free 46 | P a g e advertisement to prove its effectiveness. This type of revenue model like the email advertisement relies on the user uptake. However we believe because we will have at a minimum user demographic and hopefully more information if the users fill out the complete profile information, and this added to the fact we will have a list of the users actually wants. This will turn into a major revenue generator once the user base reaches a critical mass. As well as this Facebook target advertisement studies have found that behavioural advertising increases the click through rate by as much as 670% when compared with non-targeted advertising. Accordingly, behavioural advertising can bring revenue than of non-targeted advertising. We are aware in relation to our revenue models that they are based on the user uptake and that it is essential that we gain significant user uptake to maximize. At this stage it particularly difficult to accurately gauge revenue stream as we had no starting point to predict or work off. This is an area which we will be looking at to research once we secure funding in relation to loans. “Respectfully, this information is proprietary. Good luck in your endeavours.” Ryan We’d like to point out however at this stage that we have received positive feedback from both potential clients and others who operate in the market and other advisors. This is why we feel that from these revenue models we can become profitable by the year end of year three. Iwanthat Value Proposition User Experience We feel our group buying facility will be very attractive and valuable to online shoppers in Ireland and the UK. We want to bring the social enjoyment of shopping together to the online world. Group gift participants can interact and track the payment progress. The main selling point or value proposition of the iwanthat platform is the ability for consumers to purchase ‘special’ expensive products or services for loved ones at an affordable price by collaboratively paying for the item. We want to help people make every special occasion extra special and we believe this group buying facility will bring friends and family closer together and strengthen relationships. It certainly has an 47 | P a g e appealing cost incentive. After analysing the digital consumer decision journey we also feel that we will be providing a service that not only allows user to create wish list but also give P2P review of products and service which is the main reason user engage with social media in their decision journey so if we have both products and reviews in one place we will be adding value to the users. eCommerce Retailer (Widget) We have identified a number of key value propositions that we must translate when trying to market the group buying widget to etailers’. In order to use the widget the initial point of contact (consumer) must activate a group gift and invite a number of friends or family members to participate in the group gift. This in its own right is a very valuable action. This will substantially increase the number of visitors to the etailer website, which will lead to more sales conversions and repeat customers. We can denote this action as a form of (online) word of mouth marketing as friends and family and recommending an online product or service to other friends and family. Furthermore our research told us that on average about 8-10 participants take part in an online group gift (Lachs 2012). This potentially signifies that one set of eyes could in fact lead to ten sets of eyes viewing an eCommerce website randomly, thus increasing the reach and brand awareness of the etailer. Research and feedback from active e-tailers highlighted to us that online social integration is difficult to achieve (see appendix emails). One of the main features and selling points of the eCommerce widget would be the seamless integration with Facebook. The etailer would receive Facebook publicity when the group gift invitations are sent (wall posts) and when the group gift is received and acknowledged. Our final significant value proposition pitch to eCommerce websites would centre on increasing the average order spend and selling more expensive items or stock. Providing a platform for people to buy a gift in a group and chip in will definitively lead to a rise in higher end product/services sales. 48 | P a g e Marketing & Entry Strategy Situation Analysis Users Our target users in a broad long term sense are internet users between the ages 18-50, nondiscriminant of gender, active users of social media and comfortable with online purchase. More specifically refined and tied to our primary research the launch marketing campaign will target our ideal users. Our ideal users will be young professionals bracketed between the ages of 20 –35. Ideal users regularly engage with friends via social media and will use multiple channels to consume content based on their interests including but not limited to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blogs. They are avid users of social media with the highest priority placed on Facebook. Facebook users are priority because it is the online platform our ideal users tend to interact with their closest friends on and the nature of the platform is reliant on social interaction. Our users are not necessarily avid online shoppers in terms of volume purchased, but are certainly experienced and comfortable with making purchases online. User online shopping characteristic of which a higher priority is placed on is that they most definitely research products and services online prior to purchase (on or offline purchase). They review products from various sources and become themselves brand/product advocates and or seriously consider peer reviews when researching. Our initial target user or the ‘low hanging fruit’ is an early adopter excited to try new web based applications and they may read blogs and articled published by well-respected online technology/social media news sites such as TechCrunch, Mashable, Silicon Republic and Simply Zesty etc. The following user profiles typify the kind of users we will target based on primary and backed up by secondary research on who the application will appeal to most. 49 | P a g e User profile 1 User Profile 2 50 | P a g e User Profile 3 As highlighted by the user profiles the characteristics of ideal users are diverse and almost indefinable to a specific degree, therefore cannot be tied to a niche area of interest or theme. While not exactly a call mass marketing the reality of the service offering means the service offering cannot be narrowly segmented. This leads to the obviously difficult challenge in gaining traction in a very competitive space where the pursuit of eyeballs on screens is a premium. To overcome this we have already highlighted that targeting early adopters keen to try and rate new web based applications will be vital to growing the user base. Short term marketing will concentrate on attracting influential early adopters coupled with aggressive brand awareness campaign and incentivised peer referral this will form the foundation of a long term mainstream targeting strategy. User statistics and site analytics will continually be monitored to optimise marketing. Market Trends & Analysis Our service solves two chief problems in purchasing gifts and group-gifts, in selecting a gift the recipient actually wants while affording a convenient facility for groups of people to contribute to a single gift. With this in mind we had to analyse the market to decipher whether the environment constitutes scalable product that relies on critical mass for financial viability. The market affects 51 | P a g e needing analysis are highlighted below, in which trends were assessed to predict the popularity of the platform. eCommerce Social Commerce Misc • Purchases • Research • Wishlists/Bookmarking • Group Gifts • Similar Platforms/Concepts • Wedding Registries/Crowdsourcing • Internet Usage • Social Media • Plugins/Browser Attchments Purchases To firstly concentrate on the Irish market the number of consumers buying online is experiencing continuous growth, both in terms of volume and diversity of products purchased. This trend has shown steady growth; 2010 figures state 36% of Irish consumers have purchased online, the 2012 figure is 43%, leaving Ireland on par with the EU average. While travel and holiday accommodation remain the most popular categories for online purchases, clothing and sporting goods showed significant growth, up to 17% of the Irish population making an online purchase compared with 13% the previous year. While the future remains promising for online purchase in Ireland the market still lags behind our closest neighbours in the UK where 71% of the population made online purchases last year. In the UK, the online marketplace has been valued at £68 billion making it the second largest eCommerce market in the world, this fact alone although highlighting the relative fragility of the Irish market demonstrates the opportunities available in the UK, therefore an integral part of our longer term strategy. 52 | P a g e Research Of course our interest is not merely in online purchases but also the way, in which consumers use the internet throughout their decision journey, more specifically researching products they like or would like to purchase. The customer acquisition process had for decades been defined in terms of a purchase funnel. The funnel concept although uncomplicated is out-dated. Consumers are no longer passive subjects in the marketing process. They are live participants who thanks to the internet, more importantly; ease of search engine use and willingness to engage in social media have gained the ability to research and review their purchases more thoroughly. The purchase process has become more iterative, with individual research and peer reviews becoming increasingly influential factors throughout the journey. What this means for marketers is greater opportunities to convince consumers, however this comes with increased competition on a vast landscape where their consumers may be difficult to find. In recognition of this shift in consumer buying behaviour, our application provides a solution to both marketers and consumers. Our application from a user perspective provides them with a convenient method to store items they like during the decision journey. While at this stage figures are not really required to bolster the fact that consumers conduct extensive research prior to purchase, the figures below taken from UK research serve to emphasise the point that the features of the system add value to users in providing a service to ease an action that is continuing to grow. 53 | P a g e From a marketer’s perspective, we have already highlighted iterative nature of the consumer decision journey. Users of our system will provide them touch points potential consumers active in the consideration and evaluation stages of the process. These are high quality leads because the targeted audience have already expressed and explicit interest in the product or service by adding the item to their wishlist. McKinsey who developed the consumer decision journey model, argue when a consumer is considering a purchase their initial consideration of brands is expanded as they conduct online research, it is at this stage that marketers must try to influence consumers; when they are evaluating the competition it is important not be forgotten or lost in such a competitive consumer controlled marketing landscape. Our system will provide marketers with hot leads of consumers having already expressed interest, an opportunity to convince them to purchase. Wishlist/Bookmarking Another aspect of the market we needed to consider was that of on line wish list usage and social bookmarking. Given the fast pace at which applications like this enter the market, trends are difficult to concretely identify. What we can say is that the concept of storing items in a personal profile has been proven by applications like Digg which has morphed into more of a news article sharing site, Pinterest which predominantly focuses on categorically based images and Evernote a more ubiquitous capturing application. Many of the features of these applications we share on iwanthtat therefore the concept should be familiar to users. iwanthat ,although a form of social bookmarking is essentially a wishlist application. Stemming from our primary research it emerged although there are a number of services on the market only 38% used wishlists. However with one in place 50% of respondents would make their wishlists viewable to friends, 68% stated they would consult the wishlist of a gift recipient. Therefore the concept of publishing wishlists with the intention of selecting friends to view them is one our target market is willing to embrace. Our feature rich 54 | P a g e application offers beyond what is readily available on the market an extremely user friendliness focused application bolstered by effective marketing can increase the number of wishlist holders. Group-Gifts The term social commerce is almost indefinable for any kind of meaningful analysis, there are however certain aspects that are of immediate concern to us. Peer review already documented as being of huge importance to consumers when reviewing items and also the concept of group-gifts. For iwanthat we define group-gifts as the act of a group of individuals contributing monetarily to purchase an individual item for a single recipient. This is something most people already regularly do with our research suggesting the most popular occasions being; Christmas, birthdays and weddings. We also uncovered difficulties people encounter in this activity, iwanthat aims is to provide a mechanism that removes the chief difficulties people experience in this regard; inviting participants, collecting money and selecting/organising the gift. If we take an online context this concept is gaining traction with similar concept examples including the crowd-funding, online wedding gift registries etc. and platforms with a similar service offering, outlined in the competitors section of the document. Internet Of course being a completely online enterprise, based in Ireland as our initial target market with plans for swift expansion to the UK we must consider internet availability. Internet penetration in both nations is strong and continues to expand (UK 84%, Ireland 66%). These figures or the predicted trends do not warrant any caution to establishing a business reliant on user internet access. Social Media Social media usage is important factor of our target market as, they are willing to share and engage with friends via online channels while also comfortable with similar technology/interfaces. It also assists in the almost organic viral peer referral marketing that should help iwanthat swell its user base. Browser Plugin/Attachments One final aspect of bookmarking we had to consider is user perception or attitudes toward browser plug-ins. Success for us is obviously measured to huge extent on active users, and this depends largely on user willingness to install a browser plugin. Initially this was a concern given plugin’s were initially greeted with caution due to security and privacy issues. Our research suggests this attitude is no longer the majority with the vast majority either in favour of using browser plugins or indifferent, placing more emphasis on the features they offer. 55 | P a g e Examining the Exterior (PESTEL) Political Environment Economic Legal Social Technological We conducted a PESTL analysis to better determine what external factors would have an impact on the success on iwanthat or potentially negate growth. The issues we discovered have been summarised into several tables below with a more in depth look at what contributes to them mentioned after. 56 | P a g e Key Potential Impact Timeframe Type Impact Over Time Relative Importance H = High S = Short Positive: + Increasing: + Critical M = Medium M = Medium Negative: - Decreasing: - Important L = Low L = Long Unknown: U Unchanged: = Unimportant Unknown: U Unknown U = Undetermined Political P.I. Smart Economy – H Timeframe Type I.O.T. Importance L + + Important Government promotion of hi-tech start-ups. The Irish government has gone to significant lengths over the past number of years to promote investment in hi-tech start-ups both from foreign investment as well as direct investment from government organisations such as Enterprise Ireland. This trend seems set to continue into the future with the Minister for Jobs and Enterprise, Richard Bruton, announcing the availability of €20 million for co-investment in seed and capital funds through Enterprise Ireland. Making the announcement the Minister said: ‘Venture capital funds provide crucial funding, advice and networks both to early-stage highpotential companies in key high-growth sectors and to expanding established businesses. They are critical in helping to bridge the funding gap for Irish companies and ensuring that these companies can continue to grow and create jobs in Ireland. The Government is determined to support the development of a more dynamic venture capital industry in Ireland and the Action Plan for Jobs 57 | P a g e commits to delivering a number of key measures to step up our performance in this area’. (Enterprise Ireland, 2012) In addition to this there was the recent announcement from Finance Minister Michael Noonan for US based Silicon Valley Bank to lend €80 million to start-up technology companies (Irish Independent, 2012). Economic P.I. Increase in consumer H Timeframe Type I.O.T. Importance M-L + + Important M - = Important M - U Unimportant online spending. Economic recession. Currency M exchange L rate – euro weakening. In 2011 43% of Irish consumers purchased goods online (CSO). This is an increase from 36% the previous year (State of the net, March 2012). In May 2012 93.8% of Irish internet users visited online retail sites. According to IAB Europe €1,837 million was spent online just between September and February. This shows the continuing growth of online commerce within the Irish economy and will be essential to the success of iwanthat. The economic recession has had an impact on retail sales particularly in brick and mortar stores. In a survey carried out by RedC they found that most consumers plan to decrease their spending across all product categories over the next six months. However this has made consumers more likely to shop around and has possibly contributed to the increase in the number of Irish visitors to online retail sites mentioned previously and our target market of 18-34’s were found to be the least likely to decrease spending across all categories. Also sentiment shown in the survey reveals that most Irish consumers believe that the economy will fare the same or better over the next six months. This shows a general positive outlook by consumers which will hopefully benefit iwanthat in its first months of business. However it should be noted that sentiment within the younger age groups, our target market, show a slightly more negative outlook. Regardless of this it is important that we 58 | P a g e realise even online retail could be damaged if further economic strain is placed on consumers already stretched disposable income. This is a risk that will have to be monitored closely to avoid any damage that may occur. Lastly the weakening euro will reduce consumer’s purchasing power online on international retail sites. Social P.I. Increase in internet H Timeframe Type I.O.T. Importance S-M + + Critical S-M + + Critical usage – more time and money being spent online. Growth of social media H and social commerce. Irish consumers are spending more time online and more time using social media. In 2011 Irish consumers were spending an average of 20 hours a week online, a quarter of that being on social media sites such as Facebook. A survey by Deloitte during Christmas 2011 observed the main reasons why Irish consumers purchase goods online as being: 1. Shopping when I want (54%) 2. Saving time (54%) 3. Getting other consumers’ opinions (50%) (State of the net 2011) Also from our own research we found that more than 90% of our respondents ranked price checking as important or very important in choosing to purchase something online. This reiterates what I said previously about the increase in Irish consumers visiting online retail sites to get value for money. Global social media revenue is forecast to reach US$16.9bn in 2012, up 43.1pc from 2011 revenue of US$11.8bn, according to Gartner. As our business hinges so much on the social aspect of online commerce it will be essential that this trend continues. It is important to note that much of this 59 | P a g e revenue came from advertising and social gaming and not sale of products via social media. However with social sharing becoming a mainstream activity when shopping online, via Facebook like and Twitter tweet buttons, we will see a shift in the future towards a more integrated social shopping experience. As evidence of the power of social shopping a 2012 survey done by Sociable Labs showed a 75% click through rate on friend’s comments about products they had purchased. 53% then purchased the product when they got to the retailers site. This then results in a domino effect as the survey found that 83% of these would go on to share the product on social media sites as well. As a result the future of social shopping will see products going viral in the same way that videos do now. Technological P.I. Reduced hosting costs L Timeframe Type I.O.T. Importance L + = Unknown S-M + + Important S-M - U Critical L - U Critical over time. Smartphone mobile and M internet technologies – consumer access to the internet 24/7. Competition from H similar services. Dependence on social H integration. The falling prices of web hosting as well as economies of scale coming into play will have a positive effect as iwanthat expands into the future. Features such as Facebook’s recently discovered prototype want button will mean direct competition on web pages as our widget must vie for space with these other buttons. However there button is mostly socially focused simply allowing people to post products they want and does not offer any direct commerce purchasing element as of yet. 60 | P a g e 43% of Irish consumers now have a smartphone. This has resulted in IAB Europe stating that 80% of Irish people are online, 15% above the European average. With 2 out of 5 social media users accessing it from mobile devices these devices have become essential in social commerce and interaction. In terms of dependence on social media integration we can see that 47% of Irish adults have a Facebook account. Our integration with Facebook while an advantage now could turn if there is a downturn in the popularity of the service such as happened with Bebo and MySpace. Legal P.I. Strong consumer M legislation at Timeframe Type I.O.T. Importance L U U Important S-M - = Important S - U Unimportant L - - Critical both European and National level. Legal issues concerning H saving of images on database. Intellectual property L law. Privacy and data H protection. Legislation at both a national and European level has greatly strengthened consumer rights when making transactions online. We must ensure that we follow the legislation laid down paying particular attention to providing the following areas: 1. The full contact details. 2. The main characteristics of the good or service. 3. The price including all taxes and delivery costs and how the payment is to be made. 4. How the goods will be delivered or how the service will be carries out. 5. Provision of a cancellation option. 61 | P a g e 6. The minimum duration of the contract. 7. Any guarantees and after sales services that are available. Pinterest has shown the concern that has arisen over copyrighted images being stored by companies without the permission of the creators of those images. While social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have implemented a system to counter this by asking users do they have permission to upload the pictures before doing so, Pinterest tries to maintain a seamless system and have therefore gone against the use of a permission request system. Similarly we will not be implementing a permission request system and will therefore have to include the ability to request the removal of images on our website. Privacy and data protection are always concerns for an e-commerce based website, particularly with the recent increase in high profile websites being hacked by unauthorised users and losing customer information. As a result we will have to ensure we implement an information system control to prevent any lapse in security based on three levels of perimeter security, authentication and authorization. This will require us to perform a risk analysis to determine the level of threat and the cost of prevention. Finally it will be essential that we adapt some form of disaster recovery plan in case prevention fails. This should be done in conjunction with the risk analysis and should not be left for when a breach has occurred. 62 | P a g e Strengths Weaknesses First Mover Advantage; No exact Inexperience. same service offering and few direct Complete competitors in Irish/ UK market. USP; Wishlists & GroupGifts Seamless social adoption; Facebook integration. crowded Revenue generation dependant on user base will take time. Peer Referral; Strong incentive for users to invite friends. in market. unknown Reliance on social media; especially Facebook. Offers user supreme convenience Reliance on plugin/widget which some consumers may not want to use and websites may not wish to adopt the use of. No control over distributors reputation, customer service etc. No strong IP. Opportunities eCommerce Threats continued/predicted Possible competition from Facebook growth. should they turn their want button Social Commerce growth. into an active commerce button. Mobile application growth. Very crowded market. Increased internet access. Laws relating to copyright are out- Increased digital literacy. dated Large brand affiliation possible. litigations if not adapted to the online Expansion into wider European/international markets. may result in future digital age. General risks of e-commerce including Business model adaptable to tailor hacking, viruses, credit card fraud and specific/niche markets. technical failure bringing our services Possibility of venture capital investment. and Monetising data. 63 | P a g e consented customer down. Marketing 4 C’s Customer Needs and Wants Market analysis highlighted the absence of a product that solved the two biggest problems associated with collaborative group-gifts; selecting the perfect gift and a mechanism to conveniently allow multiple users contribute to the purchase. These two big problems were initially identified through personal experience and questioning friends, family colleagues. Subsequent primary research in the form of a survey reinforced the issues at a larger scale therefore defining the problems do exist. iwanthat resolves the issue of selecting the ideal gift through allowing users to create wishlists comprised of products they research from online retailers by simply using a browser plugin to bookmark, categorise and store an item in their iwanthat profile. Users can then make their wishlists available to friends, family, and colleagues who are also registered users. The difficulty in inviting contributors to give money and collecting the money to purchase the gift is also solved. Fully integrated with Facebook, people who wish to organise a group-gift can simply invite friends from Facebook to contribute with details of the recipient, product being purchased and amount required. Cost to Customer Revenue will be used by monetising user data to advertisers therefore users will not be charged directly to use the service. Of course users will be subject to utility internet costs to access the site. From a personal perspective they will also have to consent to their information being used for commercial gain, a fact that will completely transparent however we are confident honesty security commitments and the benefits of using the system will outweigh any misgivings they have in this respect. Convenience The purpose of the application is to improve gift-giving activities of which increased convenience is at the core. Seamless integration with current social networks reduces much inconvenience with the ability to register through Facebook, Twitter or email. Minimal learning curve to use the website is ensured through remaining true to w3c standards and modern website conventions with respect to usability and availability. 64 | P a g e Communication Excellent communication and dialogue with users will be vital to success. The development of the launch has influenced by test user feedback, while we will continue to actively solicit feedback from users to improve their experience. We will utilise Social Media as our primary communication channels with users for product education, responding to queries, acknowledging feedback and brand affinity generation. 65 | P a g e Business Marketing Strategy Objectives To draft the marketing plan for launch, we had to consider iwanthat critical success factors. The primary of which is gaining a critical mass of users. To achieve this we have devised a double tiered marketing strategy. Beta Launch 1st November 2012 Aggressively target influential early adopters. Utilise as much social media and other free or low cost channels as possible to raise brand awareness coupled with focused display and PPC advertising and SEO. Make them feel ‘special’; actively seek their input, suggestions and how we can optimise the site and features to their benefit. The viral nature of the application should help swell the user base given the purpose of the site is to share with friends the products you like. Solicit as much feed-back as possible to refine the product in this period, removing or adding features where necessary. Full Lunch 1st October 2013 With the target of 5,000 users reached we will have at this stage acquired further funding, with a proven concept and a target the Christmas period. With a perfected site and compliment of features we will aggressively market the product to a significantly greater expense, whilst still utilising social media channels we will invest in higher quality content, ramp up our paid advertising (PPC and display) and seek to be published in social media/technology online channels. Marketing campaign messages will be aligned to traditional gift giving occasions; birthdays, Christmas, mother’s day, father’s day and weddings. Goals As sole priority in the first year of launch revolves completely around gaining traction, success will be defined in terms of user base expansion user activity. 1. Build brand awareness and develop a dialogue relationship with user base. 2. Promote a clear message to users, concisely explaining the feature set and why using iwanthat will be to their benefit. 3. Establish user trust and portray our overriding value of transparency. 4. Drive traffic to the website. 66 | P a g e 5. Convince users to register. 6. Encourage users to actively use the features. 7. Incentivise peer referral. Audience Selection To effectively market iwanthat we have to match the product offering with interested individuals through the media channels they utilise and value most. Audience Attributes When constructing the media mix through which we intend to reach users, we consider their attributes, essentially where we can find and engage them. As stated previously we intend to aggressively target influential early adopters, individuals passionate about new web based applications that can improve their workflow, both on a personal and professional level. Meet Bob: 67 | P a g e Product Attributes Obviously to construct an effective marketing strategy and the most important thing to consider is the market we are trying to reach; a close second will be the attributes of the product we are trying to promote. To help shape our marketing strategy we describe iwanthat in simple terms: 1. Highly Visual. 2. Content is user driven. 3. Consumerism focused. 4. Social. With a clearly defined concept we have to develop channels of engagement between iwanthat and its user base, more specifically vocally influential early adopters. Marketing Tactics New Media Publishers We will purchase display advertisements in technology related web publishers examples of which include TechCrunch, Mashable, TechCocktail, Silicon Republic etc. The readership of the aforementioned fall directly into the category of audience we will try to reach. TechCrunch audience for example according to comscore is defined as: Male: 64.6% Male. Affluent: 33.9% HHI of $100K+ per year. Passionate: 70% of readers identify tech as a personal passion. Mobile: 70% more likely to read tech news daily on their mobile device. Engaged: Nearly 50% more likely to share links on social sites. To assist negotiating terms for a featured article we will concentrate the majority of ad purchases from a single publisher. Throughout the Beta launch this will constitute the majority of our advertising budget. 68 | P a g e PPC Advertising We will implement specifically focused PPC advertising campaigns through both Google and Facebook. Via Google Adwords rigorous keyword testing will be conducted to narrow our target audience as much as possible. Facebook provides various filters to target specific audiences, we will heavily utilise this throughout the campaigns with a predominant focus on: Age & Birthday Location Connections Education Individual/Group Solicitation We will actively pursue notable high authority individuals in the new media/technology sphere through traditional communication channels, twitter and LinkedIn offering financial reimbursement and or other incentives with personal invites to become registered users. Content To accompany the various aggressive push marketing channels we will develop a comprehensive content strategy predominantly via Facebook and YouTube. This will serve two purposes education and affinity. Educating through instructional videos explaining the features on the site along conveying the benefit to users and the problems iwanthat solves. We will heavily engage with users through Facebook and twitter responding to queries and soliciting feedback on how the product can be improved. It is through social media channels we will also seek to gain affinity with users creating, publishing and sharing popular content they are interested in and keen to share. We also intend maintaining a consumer related blog distributed through social media channels. Website The iwanthat website will serve as both a promotional vehicle and a dynamic CRM system. Registered active users will be incentivised to invite friends to view their wishlists, this is in conjunction with the mandatory minimum of five users each new user will have to invite to complete registration. While we will utilise Google analytics to monitor user activity, gleaning insights to refine the site features and determine the top performing sources of traffic to focus on. 69 | P a g e Public Speaking We will actively pursue opportunities to speak at events where opportunities to engage our target market exist. Featured among this will be technology and social media related events. Possibilities to speak at Universities or entrepreneurship events sharing our experiences will also boost brand awareness. Message Marketing will be heavily product orientated emphasising the benefits of iwanthat from a user perspective which include. Ubiquitous bookmarking application allowing users to curate wishlists of products/services they like and the ability to share this with friends. ’ Group-gift buying facility allowing users to easily purchase gifts with contributions from various individuals. KPI’s Defined measures of success will be tied directly to the objectives/goals of the marketing strategy. To refresh we have one primary goal; traction in the market. Therefore success will be ultimately determined on the number of registered users we attract. Each channel of communication will be examined under this frame while the secondary objectives of on-site user activity and peer referral will also be priority. 1. Unique Users: Target = 15,000 70 | P a g e Primary KPI, utilising Google Analytics we will monitor the traffic of newly registered to assess the performance of specific campaigns (display, ppc and social media content) continuously and modify tactics/marketing message accordingly. As paid ads constitute the majority of the first year marketing campaigns CTR will be heavily monitored. Having sourced display advertising with TechCrunch.com at an average CTR of 0.25% we will seek to at least hit that average with an aim to achieve 0.5%. Bounce rate and time on site will also form key measures to the effectiveness of the advertising. 2. User Activity: Target = Each User has at least 5 items in their wishlist While growing user base is critical, it is of little use without actively using the application therefore providing us with data we can monetise. This can be simply measured through our own database and will be continually monitored make alterations to marketing campaigns when and where necessary. 3. Peer Referral: Target = 83% of new users registered via friend invitation The registration system will require each new user to invite 5 friends prior to completion therefore in a perfect system where each individual could invite 5 unregistered friends this would result in a minimum 83% new users via peer referral. Accounting for new users wishing to invite friends already registered and those who will invite more than 5 we have kept the target at 83%. The effectiveness of this strategy will have to be monitored ensuring this stage in the registration process does not deter new users (who don’t want to invite 5 friends). This can be achieved through Google Analytics, evaluating the number of users who leave the registration process at this stage. This strategy longterm will reduce marketing costs therefore the message must convince users to the benefits of inviting more friends. Resources Human All marketing activities will be implemented within the team given the level of expertise in digital marketing present. To ensure a focused consistent message is prevalent across all communication channels Jamie O’ Sullivan will be responsible for implementing both inbound and outbound marketing initiatives including Social media content publication, community management, SEO, PPC campaign management and display network advertising. Therefore funding will only be required to pay for advertising. He will monitor KPI’s, draft reports to demonstrate progress to the rest of the team and seek input where necessary. Provisional funding has also been made available if required for specialised content production where necessary. 71 | P a g e Financial For the first year we have devised a marketing budget of €21,375 with a provisional €5,000 for specialised content services. 16,875 72 | P a g e •New Media Site display adsTechCrunch •Annual fee for 1m impressions 4,500 •Facebook PPC •Google Adwords 5,000 •Bloggers/Influencers •Graphic Design •Video Iwanthat’s International Expansion Iwanthat have great opportunities to expand its operation to foreign countries where the local eCommerce market is growing at a much faster rate than the United States, the UK and Europe, for example, Russia, Brazil, Indian, and China. In most of these countries, local social networks are usually preferred and they tend to be large, for example, Renren and Weibo in China, VKontakte in Russia and Orkut in Brazil. Not only there is little or no competitions in these countries can be beneficial for Iwanthat, but also the Internet user base in these countries are huge and fast growing. The following figure shows the distribution of the Internet users by regions, where over 65% of Internet users are based outside Europe and North America. Figure 1: Internet Users in the World – Distribution by World Regions, 2011 Others (Africa, Middle East, Australia), 10.70% Lat Am / Caribb, 10.40% Asia, 44.80% North America, 12.00% Europe, 22.10% (Source: Internet World Stats, www.internetworldstats.com, based on 2.2 billion users worldwide) According to the latest research by Forrester (2012), a leading global research and advisory firm, the e-commerce market in India is set to grow the fastest within the Asia-Pacific Region at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 57% between 2012 and 2016, and the growth rate in China is 25% in the same period. Iwanthat will be aiming to expand its operations to foreign countries in the beginning of the third year, when the company became operationally and financially stable. We will be aiming to enter Chinese market, the most potential e-commerce market, as our first global expansion stop. According to Bloomberg News (2012), online purchases account for rising portion of total retail sales in China. Chinese online shoppers spent 782.6 billion ($123 billion) yuan online last year, a gain of almost 54 % from a year earlier. At this rate, China is expected to become world’s largest retail ecommerce market in 2013 73 | P a g e $356 billion Online Sales by 2016 In this section we will firstly carry out a market research and consumer behaviours, and then provide an overview of local social network platforms that are important to Iwanthat, as well as some useful information. Last, we will develop a set of possible marketing strategies for Iwanthat. Background China has the world’s number one Internet user base, more than two times bigger than the US. According to Internet World Stats, as of 31 December 2011, China has 513 million Internet users, increased from 420 million in 2010, with almost half of them log on to the Internet via mobile devices. And according to a report prepared by McKinsey China (2011), with six million new users jumping online every month, China could have as many as 750 million people online by 2015. In addition, Forrester (2012) forecasts that the e-commerce sales in China will be increase from $169.4 billion in 2012 to $356.1 billion in 2016. While Facebook, Twitter and YouTube dominate the most of Western countries, many of China’s 420 million Internet users are gravitating toward home-grown sites, such as QQ and RenRen for social networking, and Youku for video sharing. Social media is heavily used in China. In a report “The Great Social Wall of China” (2009) by Netpop Research, it pointed out that 92% of Chinese netizens use social media – forums, bulletin boards, chats, blogs, micro blogs etc., while only 76% of US netizens do the same. Currently, China's e-commerce market is dominated by the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) industry, accounting for 85% of the market in 2009 and driven primarily by Taobao's (www.taobao.com) 74 | P a g e early successes. However, B2C is gaining momentum and is expected to reach 40% of the market by 2015 (AT Kearney Report, 2011). With more and more consumers moving to B2C sites searching for high-quality products and services, we can see great opportunities for Iwanthat. Chinese Online Consumers Different from Ireland, where 80% of Internet users are between age 16 and 24, and most of them are involved in colleges and universities (IIA Report, 2009), Chinese Internet users have a bigger spread in age groups and education backgrounds. The following figure from the 28th Statistical Report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC, 2011) shows that there are large proportions of Internet users are below age 20 and over age 29 in China. The report also shown that almost 70% of Internet users are engaged in junior or senior high schools, only 11.7% of total Internet users are engaged in universities and above. Figure 2: Age structure of Chinese netizens in Jun 2011 60 and 50-59, 4.8% above, 2.4% Below 10, 1.3% 40-49, 11.6% 10-19, 26% 30-39, 23.2% 20-29, 30.8% (Source: 28th Statistical Report, CNNIC, 2011) By identifying the age groups and education backgrounds of Chinese Internet users, it can help Iwanthat to develop different marketing strategies for different types of users. 75 | P a g e Local Social Networks According to VentureBeat (2010), the top four social networks in China are Qzone, RenRen, Pengyou, Sina Weibo and Kaixin001 (see figure 3 and 4 below). Figure 3: China’s Top 4 Social Networks in Comparison URL Users Market Share (July 2009) Users RenRen Kaixin001 QZone 51.com www.renren.com 120m 17% www.kaixin001.com 75m+ 12% www.qzone.com 388m 22% www.51.com 160m 12% Students, white-collars White-collars Teens Mixed Figure 4: China’s Social Network Universe (by number, age and location of users) Renren tends to be the most popular and fast growing real-name social network, therefore can be the primary target market for Iwanthat. According to Renren’s Unaudited Second Quarter 2012 financial results, it has 162 million activated users, and 45 million monthly active users. Monthly active users not only grew faster than Facebook's but also accelerated sequentially. “People rely more on word-of-mouth from friends, family and key opinion leaders, many of whom share information on social media”, indicated in their report, McKinsey (2012) believes that social media has a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in China than for anywhere else in the world. 76 | P a g e Baidu Advertising In relation to search engine, Google China and Baidu are the two most used ones in China. However Baidu almost dominates the search market. According to Global Stats (2012), Baidu has more than 70% of market share and it is still increasing, while Google China has less than 27% of market share with a decreasing trend. Baidu offers paid search or Pay-Per-Click (PPC); and it works in a way that is very similar to Google. If Iwanthat has the Chinese language capability, the best option is to advertise through Baidu’s Advertiser Website: www2.baidu.com (Chinese version) or otherwise go to Baidu’s International Support Site: http://is.baidu.com/ (English version). Another option available for Iwanthat is to use agencies that are offering full service solutions for Baidu. These specialist agencies usually have a better understanding of Chinese market and consumer behaviours, therefore be able to generate better keywords, optimize the site, and increase Iwanthat’s online presence. Online Marketing Strategies We recommend the following online marketing strategies for Iwanthat in China. 1. Build a quality, interactive and easy to use website, and to provide ‘live chat’ support. 2. SEO 3. Create profile on major social networking sites and actively post and engage in conversations to promote Iwanthat’s website. 4. Create an account on www.sina.com.cn, the micro-blogging website, and publish posts regularly. 5. Create an account on major forums, for example, QQ forums (bbs.qq.com), Tian Ya (www.tianya.cn), and Mop (www.mop.com). 6. Engage in Chinese “Q&A site”, for example, baidu zhidao (zhidao.baidu.com), tianya wenda (wenda.tianya.cn), and sina iask (ishare.iask.sina.com.cn). 7. Share videos on major video sharing sites. YouTube cannot be accessed from China, therefore Iwanthat must use a number of local video sharing sites like Sohu TV 77 | P a g e (tv.sohu.com), QQ Video (v.qq.com), iQiyi (www.iqiyi.com), Youku (www.youku.com) and Tudou (www.tudou.com). 8. Ideally, Iwanthat can work with local celebrities and popular entertainment stars, to let them post personal messages online to their fans and followers. Challenges Iwanthat will be facing difficulties to get the concept crossed over Chinese online consumer’s mind. Based on our research, we found that large proportion of Internet users are not educated, and had never engaged in activities that Iwanthat trying to promote. Therefore, how to get them start using Iwanthat can be a problem. In addition, despite the growing trend of the Chinese e-commerce market, online fraud is becoming a common problem. According to the 28th Statistical Report (2011), 8% Chinese netizens encountered frauds during online consumption in the past six months. The scale of such netizens hit 38.80 million. Therefore, Iwanthat must pay extra attention when dealing with both suppliers and customers. 78 | P a g e Technology The central objectives of the technical deliverables were to get the product as close to development ready as possible. In this vein we focused on detailing the specifics of the system in terms of features, functionality, architecture and design/usability. Resulting in the following: Web architecture description. System Requirements Document Functional Requirements Specification Usability testing. Prototype web application-HTML & CSS Website Application There are three levels to the development of the website; flagship domain of the application. Client The client level hosts the user interface and access to the features of the application. HTML and CSS format and style and display the content to the user. Dynamic elements on the pages such as user dependent actions like validating data input and decorative features are implemented with JavaScript and JQuery. Middle Data will be pulled to and from the database using middleware technologies. We have not specified what this must be given our inexperience in the field. Recommendation will be made for PHP given its popularity use in this context, however we will work closely with developers to ensure the technology utilised is capable of enduring the applications functional features and is exponentially scalable to user growth. Database The site will be hosted on Amazon web services which also supplies database to store and manage the data. AWS also support HTTP, SSH and MSQL which we conceive will be used however open to any considerations/recommendations developer has. 79 | P a g e Web Architecture Diagram (Based on Oracle Database Environment) 80 | P a g e Mobile Application Although not focused on to a serious extent, at this stage there are plans to develop a mobile application in line with current technological trends to compliment the website. The mobile application will share exactly the same features as the website where possible while incorporating features taking advantage of the mobile environment, such as uploading pictures to wishlists. The mobile application will share the same database as the website while specialist developers in both android and iPhone operating systems will be commissioned to develop the application. System Requirements This document outlines the requirements for the iwanthat system in development for the practicum MSc eCommerce DCU (Group H). The purpose of this document is to specify the critical requirements and communicate what the objectives and functionality of the application from a user perspective will be. The document will serve as a reference point for technical development of the application in terms of web architecture, user experience (design and usability) and interactivity between users and system. Table 2.1 Document Intended Audience Readers Users System Architect Quality Assurance Benefits To determine whether the document satisfies the needs of users and solicit constructive feedback to be acknowledged in iterative development. To use this document as a source of reference in designing the system architecture. This document will provide a basis to test the requirements/features of the system. Developers Guidebook insight to the necessary properties and elements of the system. Advisors To provide conceptual clarity of the project and technical features. Purpose The purpose of iwanthat is to provide a web bookmarking application with a focus on consumer products and services. The application has three integral elements; the bookmarking facility, social interaction with friends within the system and a group buying facility. 81 | P a g e After registering and creating a personal profile with iwanthat users will be able to; when browsing any third party websites capture desired elements (i.e. products/services) and store them in their personal iwanthat profile creating a ‘Wishlist(s)’. User wishlists will be customisable and organisable in accordance with their interests and goals. In a similar vein to typical social network models users will be able to create a social group of friends, relatives, colleagues etc., whom at the detailed specification of the profile owner, will be able to view and engage with the wishlists of friends in their social groups. Users will have the facility to initiate, manage and execute the purchase of a product or service for a member of their social group straight from the recipient wishlist. While this feature in itself provides convenience to the user the major benefit is the ability to make this a ‘group purchase’. A user can invite members of their circle to contribute to a gift for a mutual friend, which will then be sent to the intended recipient (or anyone else if specified) when the amount required to purchase the item has been raised. System User Groups This subsection details the different types of users who will engage with the system and their privileges. Consumers Consumers are application registered individuals who utilise the functional features of the application once they have logged in using username and password. Non-Registered Users None registered users will have limited access to the system; there will be publicly available content that can browse but not engage with. Merchants Merchants will be sold incisive targeted marketing opportunities to consumers, based on data obtained from consumer engagement with the system. They will have no direct user profiles rather engage with a separate commercial aspect of the system designed to implement targeted advertising. iwanthat Administrators Internal users will include members of the iwanthat sales marketing and development teams who monitor and troubleshoot the system and construct models to monetize consumer engagement. 82 | P a g e Functional Objectives Registration & Login There will be three modes of registration. Facebook Users will be afforded the opportunity to register with iwanthat and authenticate their account via a Facebook. As long as the user is signed into Facebook, they are automatically signed into iwanthat site also. Using Facebook for login provides all of the basic information required to create a social, personalized experience from the moment the user visits iwanthat. Twitter In a similar manner to twitter users will be allowed to register and login via their twitter profile. Email This will employ a typical registration process requiring users to fill predefined fields in a registration form. Wishlist Creation This subsection outlines the different mechanisms through which users can add items to be stored in their iwanthat profile. Browser Toolbar Plugin When on a website users will be able to capture specific items using a browser toolbar snippet tool. This action will initiate parsing of the page to extract the item image and relevant details including price, description etc. and host domain address. Icon This mechanism will be offered on host websites that have installed the iwanthat button on their site products. In this instance users will simply click the iwanthat button to add the item to their wishlist. Onsite Users will also be able to add items to their wishlists from content hosted within the iwanthat domain. These items may come from content they have permission to access within their social groups or content published from site administrators or third parties. 83 | P a g e Mobile Upload While not an immediate focus, long term the system will also enable users to take pictures in physical stores which, utilising geolocation software will automatically specify from where the product is available and prompt users to enter unattainable automatic data. Wishlist Curation Using all mechanisms in adding items to their personal wishlists users will be provided with an interface to help them organise their wishlists. They will be presented with a categories menu where they can add each item to a relevant custom or inbuilt category. The interface will allow users to provide additional commentary/tags to accompany the item along with a ranking mechanism. Finally before being posted to their profile users will be allowed to custom the privacy settings of each individual item to determine who can view and engage this item from the host profile (Private, Specific User, Specific Group, All Friends). iwanthat Domain Activity This subsection details the functional requirements of the system from a user perspective while logged in on the iwanthat website application. Personal Profile Users will be able to view, edit delete all content curated on their wishlists; such as add additional comments to items, or alter the privacy settings of their wishlists or items within. Users will also be able to edit their own personal information provided to iwanthat. Users will be able to create and customise social groups inviting those already in their network and search for new connections. Users will also be enabled to customise their targeted advertising settings. Users will also be afforded the opportunity to search the iwanthat database for similar items using content based image retrieval; search by example (items in wishlist) and filter the results in accordance with query intention. For example queries intending to filter on price (‘Getit Cheaper’), location (‘Getit Closer’ or variance (‘Getit Similar’). Network Profiles Users will be able to view and comment on profiles, wishlists and items within their network, based on permissions specified by the profile owner. The ‘Luvit’ button will allow users to show their appreciation of items in a friend’s wishlist while the ‘Stealit’ button will afford users the ability to copy an item from a friend’s wishlist to their own or to another member of their social group. 84 | P a g e Sitewide Beyond general user curated items in wishlists, site wide content will be made available to all users. This will be in the form of blogs/articles/trend etc., categorically ordered. This content will be afforded similar functionality to profile items (‘Luvit’, ‘Stealit’, ‘Search’ etc.) Group Buying This subsection details the functional requirements to enable users to initiate, manage and contribute to a collaborative gift for a member of their social group. To initiate a gift a user will click the ‘Giftit’ button on an item stored in the recipient wishlist (becoming ‘GiftManager’). This will bring up a menu to detail the terms and conditions of the group buying event. Various options will be made available here, but the essential components are, privately inviting friends within their iwanthat social group (or Facebook request) and setting the payment terms (open contribution or setting the required amount). Invitees can privately decline or accept the invitation; only the ‘GiftManager’ will receive a notification to this effect. On acceptance the nominated amount will be deducted from a PayPal account and sent to PayPal account of ‘GiftManager’. The ‘GiftManager’ will be in a position to monitor the progress of the fund and set the delivery terms of the gift. High Level System Overview Functional Requirements This subsection further refines the functional objectives, detailing actors and steps involved in individual essential use cases within the iwanthat system. 85 | P a g e Essential Use Case 1 Name Registration to the System Summary A user registers with iwanthat Actor Typical User Goals A user wants to create an iwanthat profile Preconditions The user is on the iwanthat homepage A. Facebook Registration Basic Sequence i. User clicks ‘Register through Facebook’ button. ii. The System presents their information for review. iii. The system produces information on iwanthat privileges on their Facebook profile. iv. The user clicks ‘accept’ to complete registration. B. Twitter Registration v. User clicks ‘Register through Twitter’ button. vi. The System presents their information for review. vii. The system produces information on iwanthat privileges on their Twitter profile. viii. The user clicks ‘accept’ to complete registration. C. Email Registration i. User clicks on ‘Register through Email’ button. ii. System presents an unfilled form. iii. User must provide at least the following information; fname, lname, location, date of birth, email address, password, confirm password, accept terms of their data usage and click register. Post-Conditions The user is successfully registered with iwanthat. Exceptions Invalid information was provided by user. 86 | P a g e Swimlane Registration to System 87 | P a g e Essential Use Case 2 Name Login to iwanthat Summary A registered user logs in to iwanthat Actor Registered User Goals User wants to access their profile Pre-Conditions Registered User and on the homepage of iwanthat. A. Login with Facebook Basic Sequence i. User clicks login with Facebook button ii. Automatically logged in to iwanthat if logged in to Facebook iii. Login to Facebook if not already B. Login with Twitter i. User clicks login with Twitter button ii. Automatically logged in to iwanthat if logged in to Twitter iii. Login to Facebook if not already C. Login with Email i. The user clicks the link to login. ii. The system presents a login form. iii. The user types her username and password. iv. The user clicks the login button. v. The system redirects the user to the homepage. Post- Conditions User has full access to their personal iwanthat profile and associated privileges Exceptions User has not registered to the system. System displays an explanatory error message and redirects the user to the registration form. User types the wrong username and/or password. Given the opportunity to retry 3 times in predetermined timescale after subsequent invalid attempts they will be locked out of the system for a period of time. 88 | P a g e Swimlane Register to System 89 | P a g e Essential Use Case 3 Name Wishlist Addition Via External Webpage Summary User placing an item into their wishlist Actor User Goals A user wishes to import an item into their wishlist User is Registered and logged in. Pre-Conditions Host site restrictions do not disallow data capture. Basic Sequence i. User clicks on snippet tool in browser toolbar ii. The system provides a snippet tool cursor iii. By moving cursor around the desired object user captures individual element from the page iv. System provides menu to organise the item addition; destination, categories, description, tags, privacy, ranking, comments v. User fills in desired information and clicks button to import item to their iwanthat profile vi. System parses html and pulls data to store including at least; image, price, source URL in user wishlist Post-Conditions New item added to user wishlist or other designated destination Exceptions Source site restrictions disable actions. 90 | P a g e Swimlane Wishlist Addition: Via External Webpage 91 | P a g e Essential Use Case 4 Name Wishlist Addition Via iwanthat Icon on Host Site Summary Item added to user wishlist where iwanthat icon is present at source Actor User Goals User wants to add item to wishlist by simply clicking iwanthat icon Pre-Conditions User Registered and logged in Basic Sequence Post-Conditions Exceptions 92 | P a g e i. User clicks iwanthat Icon on external webpage ii. System provides menu to organise the item addition; destination, categories, description, tags, privacy, ranking, comments iii. User fills in desired information and clicks button to import item to their iwanthat profile iv. System parses html and pulls data to store including at least; image, price, source URL v. This data transported to user profile New item added to user wishlist or other designated destination Swimlane Wishlist Addition: Via Host Site Icon 93 | P a g e Essential Use Case 5 Name Internal Wishlist Addition Summary User adding item hosted on iwanthat domain to wishlist Actor User Goals User wants to add an item from a friend’s wishlist or other content they have access to within iwanthat domain to their own wishlist User registered and logged in Pre-Conditions Item has ‘Stealit’ button attached Basic Sequence Post-Conditions Exceptions 94 | P a g e i. User clicks ‘Stealit’ button ii. System provides menu to organise the item addition; destination, categories, description, tags, privacy, ranking, comments iii. User fills in desired information and clicks button to import item to their iwanthat profile New item added to user wishlist or other designated destination Swimlane Wishlist Addition of item hosted on iwanthat domain 95 | P a g e Essential Use Case 6 Name Item Search Summary Search By Example (CBIR) of defined item within the iwanthat system Actor User Goals User wishes to conduct a search based on an image have in their wishlist User Registered and logged in Pre-Conditions User has example item to conduct the search on Basic Sequence i. User clicks Compareit button attached to item in wishlist ii. System produces menu to filter search options iii. User selects query constraints iv. System conducts internal search of iwanthat index for relevant items v. System displays menu of search results Post-Conditions User has menu of items to select from based on query Exceptions No matching items 96 | P a g e Swimlane Item Search Function 97 | P a g e Essential Use Case 7 Name Group Purchase Initiation Summary The system will allow users to initiate and manage a collaborative gift for a member of their social group Actor User Goals The user wishes to purchase a gift for a connection and invite mutual connections to contribute User is logged in and registered Pre-Conditions Recipient is registered User has selected the gift to be purchased from connections wishlist Basic Sequence Post-Conditions Exceptions 98 | P a g e i. User selects clicks on gift in recipient wishlist ii. System produces menu iii. User clicks ‘Giftit’ button iv. System produces menu to set terms of gift purchase process, invite contributors, set price per person (or open contribution), date to be received by, delivery mechanism etc. v. User fills fields vi. System produces message confirmation of terms and button to confirm vii. User clicks confirm viii. System produces message detailing successful gift contribution invitations send to specified recipients User has initiated a group purchase for a member of their network, and is now a ‘GiftManager’ Swimlane Group Purchase Initiation 99 | P a g e Essential Use Case 8 Name Group Gift Response Summary The system will afford users to respond to invitation to participate in a group gift Actor User Goals User wants to accept and contribute to a group gift invitation or decline request Pre-Conditions Basic Sequence User registered and logged in User has been invited to participate in a group gift i. User clicks on group gift invitation ii. System displays message detailing terms of invitation, from whom, for who, gift details, contribution amount required, deadline etc. iii. User Clicks accept a) System produces form to, enter payment details and personal message to recipient b) User fills fields c) System presents confirmation menu d) User reviews details and clicks confirm/amend e) System produces message confirming successful contribution iv. User clicks decline a) System offers menu to specify whether declination message should be sent to GiftMaster and add comments to declination to be sent to ‘GiftManager’ (optional) b) User adds comments (optional) and confirms declination c) System sends message to gift manager detailing declination from invitee if requested d) If not requested no message sent to ‘GiftManager’ v. User clicks decide later a) System stores original invitation in user profile for future reference Post-Conditions 100 | P a g e User has accepted/declined/undecided on group gift invitation Swimlane Group Purchase Initiation 101 | P a g e System Constraints User Interface Constraints The UI will adhere to strictly defined design principles where emphasis will be on simplicity and intuitive design. The system will operate in line with typical web application functionality therefore a user familiar with basic browser navigation should easily understand the features and functionality within the system. Hardware Constraints The system should be accessible and functional from any device with a popular browser; namely desktop, laptop and mobile devices (tablets and smartphones). Software Constraints The system will be designed to run on all modern web browsers. Communications Constraints System must have access to the designed database. The system must also communicate with third party applications where given permission to by users (eg. Facebook, twitter). Data Management Constraints System must be capable of complying with all necessary data management regulations (EU). Operational Constraints Although measures will be put in place to accommodate expansion the system will be limited by its operating server in terms of the maximum number of users it can support at a given time. Design Standards Compliance The system will adhere to standards and recommendations laid out by W3C, with specific emphasis on coding practices and web accessibility guidelines. 102 | P a g e System Features Specification This document details the core features of the Sizzelit system including the technologies/techniques used and the integration/utilisation of third partner organisations and services. In this respect the primary features dealt with are: 1. Wishlist Addition 2. Internal Search Feature 3. Collaborative Payment 4. Data Storage Wishlist Addition There are three mechanisms through which users will be able to add items to their wishlists. (i)Browser Toolbar Plugin/Extension, (ii) A pre-existing widget in the shape of an iwanthat icon on the host site that is fully integrated with the iwanthat system, (iii) For adding items from within the iwanthat domain a widget will allow users to add items from profiles wishlists of others within their social group. Browser Plugin/Extension The plug-in will have the capacity to access, capture and manipulate HTML elements at the request of the user with the essential functionality including: i. Deployment, the plug-in extends the core application (browser) ii. Discovery, the plug-in is activated automatically at run or load time iii. Integrate seamlessly into web browser. iv. Must respond instantly when initiated by the user and called by the browser. v. Can only run within the browser. vi. Must be able to capture URL and HTML elements on a webpage – title tags, alt tags, meta tags, anchor text etc. in real time when called upon. More specifically and at the very least the item image, URL and price. 103 | P a g e vii. The plugin will automatically store the captured data within the user’s personal iwanthat profile. viii. The plugin must be secure in that data captured is only stored in designated locations. As we are not satisfied a suitable framework to develop a cross browser extension, a custom extension will be developed for specific browsers. Plugins will be made available to download one of our iwanthat web clipper extensions for the most popular browsers of the typical users; Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer. Although increasing the complexity and cost to develop the system the benefit of developing multiple clippers is to align with the functionality available in each browser and ensure a smooth system learning transition for users. However the ultimate goal and features of each clipper will remain the same. Host Site embedded iwanthat button This feature will let merchants add the iwanthat icon to the products on their page. Merchants can retrieve the JavaScript code to display the button and manually add this feature to items on their webpages through the source code. To achieve this merchants will use a feature on the iwanthat domain whereby they enter the url of the site page the item resides and the image url, this will then generate JavaScript they can copy and paste to their webpage. iwanthat domain Items users have access to on the iwanthat domain will have a button that allows them to add this item to their own wishlist. Internal Search Feature This section outlines the internal search technique to be implemented in order to allow users query images from within the iwanthat domain based on a pre-existing item (search by example). Query by example is a technique often criticised because it requires user to have an example of the image prior to conducting the query. In the case of iwanthat and this specific feature this prerequisite is already satisfied therefore not an issue. 104 | P a g e Indexing To develop a database index of the system we will initially need to conduct a manual crawl generating a base index from which early adopters to the system can query. Then each time a user adds an item to their wishlist from a host domain not yet crawled by the iwanthat a, the domain will subsequently be crawled. This method ensures the index will grow organically in line with user interests. This aspect of the system will employ an inverted file as the indexing mechanism, being the most efficient manner to structure text based search and under the assumption the matrix properties generated can be deployed as ‘terms’ in the index. Retrieval Technique To enable the image search to efficiently return accurate results the system will deploy a hybrid Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) technique; utilising both text and image based search. The specific technique we propose using is a hybrid model capable of performing CBIR through utilising both image and text based search. The benefits of this approach include: i. The speed, description accuracy and comprehensive performance benefits of text based search. ii. The visual accuracy and relevance of image content matching. iii. The query result has to return both image and textual information i.e. a visual representation of the product or item queried accompanied with the associated information such as price, location etc. The information retrieval process should work as follows. i. Scraping the embedded and associated text of the image then performing a keyword search from the local system index. ii. This will quickly generate a shortlist of likely matches stored in a bootstrap image database. iii. From this shortlist content based matching techniques are applied to return only visually accurate results pertaining to the searched example. 105 | P a g e iv. The search results can be further refined with information filters to return user requests such as cheaper versions or location dependent duplicates of the original product, which will be matched against textual information. Text Based Image Retrieval This phase of the search process will utilise traditional text based image retrieval techniques using keywords. The ‘keywords’ will be automatically extracted from the image and associated text such as the image alt tag, filename, caption and other descriptive text captured. Users will also be prompted to apply tags to their saved items which can serve as annotations. A term weighted vector model approach to retrieval. The weights in this case will be based on both frequency and relevance. Content Based Image Retrieval The image features (colour and texture) will provide the basis for matching items, broadly broken into two categories; high level provide semantic meaning and low level features which describe the image using offer a machine understandable description of the image using parameters such as colour, shape, texture and salient points within the image. The system should employ a fusion method utilising the more time efficient benefits of using a block colour histogram which is closer aligned to human visual perception in conjunction with the increased accuracy advantages of shape, special location and points of intersect. By creating a hybrid of both methods in which an initial colour comparison generates a likely match followed by refinement and verification texturally by Euclidean distance a computationally quick and visually precise results can be achieved. Further research is required to detail the specifications of the algorithm and uncover whether a multiple algorithm or a single dynamic one which is capable of altering item retrieval accuracy is possible, to for example return items based on an item search to return similar items of a different colours or a specified colour (i.e. same shirt in a different colour) or just similar items. Collaborative Payment The iwanthat system will facilitate users to initiate and manage or simply contribute to a gift for a member within their social group. With regard to purchasing a gift there are two classes of user (1) a GiftManager; who initiates the gift purchase, selects the item, invites friends and receives contributions from contributors then executes the purchase of the item directly from the merchant and (2) a contributor who donates to the request on invitation. 106 | P a g e GiftManager To be a GiftManager the user must have an existing or setup a PayPal Account, which allows them to receive the payments from those willing to donate to the gift. When the required amount is reached the user will be notified and the GiftManager will purchase the item with the PayPal account. Contributor To be a Contributor the user must have one of the following to donate money to the send money to the GiftManager and donate to the gift; (1) PayPal account, (2) Credit Card or (3) Debit Account with Visa Debit facility. Security iwanthat will use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to provide the safest, most secure payment experience possible. SSL technology enables encryption of sensitive information during your online transactions in conjunction with encryption specialists that specialise in data encryption especially for eCommerce such as Verisign Inc. Data Storage. The System will employ Amazon Web Services with the chief benefits being security and low cost scalability. This removes the need to develop significant internal infrastructure that will be capable of scaling quickly and efficiently. The specific features used will be Amazon's S3 (Simple Storage Service) and EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute). Both packages allow the system data storage allocation to grow organically in accordance with requirements, while saving money by only paying for required (pay as you go billing) resources. The flexibility of the system even allows for dynamic scaling at peak or low times of system use. 107 | P a g e Usability The usability testing of both our website and app is going to follow one of our key company values; put the user first. It is important that we get the end users involved from the outset as they are the ones who will be using it and no matter how much research we do there is no better way to develop a site around consumer needs than having them involved from the early stage. Evaluation Process In order to reduce cost we will be approaching the NGM coordinators to get NGM student to participant in the usability studies. If this is not possible we will be relying on getting volunteers. The project at this stage was focused on drafting the first prototype. The goal was to develop the web design aspects of the application focusing of usability and functionality. We adhered to usability guidelines such as Nielsen’s ten heuristics and recommendations laid out by W3C; soliciting feedback from targeted end users in first stage low fidelity prototypes (see technology) explaining the concept and introduce them to the idea and ask for their input in relation to the sketched paper visualisations. This stage was vital to ensuring group-think did not prevail prior to more advanced modelling where mistakes would have been much costlier. 108 | P a g e This stage led us to develop relatively static webpages visualising the look, feel and navigation processes of the eventual end product. When more advanced features and functionality is implemented into the application continuous user testing will be prevalent to ensure the feature rich application remains simple to use and processes are clearly understood with a minimal learning curve. 10 Heuristics Inspection 1. Visibility of system status 2. Match between system and the real world 3. User control and freedom 4. Consistency and standards 5. Error prevention 6. Recognition rather than recall 7. Flexibility and efficiency of use 8. Aesthetic and minimalist design 9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors 10. Help and documentation At the point where the site/app is being developed several rounds of usability testing, more specifically diary testing as lab testing will hopefully yield realistic and in-depth insight to all aspects of usability from an end user perspective. The diary method will involve users filling out a questionnaire then giving them access to the site for a set period of 2 to 4 weeks. While they are using the site they will be keeping a diary. In this way we can see how easily users familiarise to the application and highlight difficulties. Once the set period is finished we would then ask the user to hand over the diary. Once we have accessed the diaries we would then invite the users back in for a one to one interview to discuss the problems they encountered and how they think we could solve this to their satisfaction. Then when we fix the problems they have found, we will run another diary usability study to ensure all aspects of the site are user friendly. The second round of testing is key as users may find glaring problems in round one; the second round will surface any remaining more subtle flaws. It would be at this point then we would bring in a professional usability expert to give 109 | P a g e the site a final seal of approval prior to launch. Continuous usability testing will be conducted as our user base grows from whom we will encourage feedback and suggestions at all times. This is an essential part of the process in terms of usability as the success of the website hinges on providing a simple, useful service but also aligning with the marketing strategy of targeting early adopters and making them feel part of the development process. 110 | P a g e Legal Registering the business Firstly we must register our business name, iwanthat, before beginning the process of incorporation. Following registering the name we will be seeking to establish iwanthat as a private limited company based on the procedure laid down in the Companies Act 1963. There are four main documents which we must draw up, get the director to sign and deliver to the Registrar of Companies along with the relevant fee. They are as follows: 1. Memorandum of association: This governs our company’s external relationships with the public and contains; the name of the company, the company objectives, a statement of the division of share capital, a statement of the limited liability of members and the signatures of shareholders. 2. Articles of Association: Sets out the internal rules of how the company will regulate its affairs. This includes procedures relating to meetings as well as voting procedures and the powers and duties of the company directors. 3. A statement of the amount of authorised capital. 4. Form A1: This declares the companies compliance with the Companies Act 1963. It also includes the company name, registered address and directors. The base cost of this is €320. If all of this is in order we will be issued a certificate of incorporation and will be deemed a separate legal entity in the eyes of the law. Registering the trademark We will have to ensure we register iwanthat’s trademark as soon as possible as to ensure priority over anybody else. According to the Irish patents office the minimum required to register a trademark are: A request to register the Mark (completion of the prescribed application form meets this requirement), The name and address of the person requesting the registration, A representation of the mark, A statement or list of the goods and/or services for which registration of the mark is sought. 111 | P a g e The initial application fee is €70. Upon success of this application a further registration fee of €177 is due. After this initial period there will be a fee of €250 payable every ten years from the filing date of the application. These are merely the statutory fees required initially. Additional fees may be incurred if for instance we wished to amend the trademark. Electronic Commerce Act 2000 As a primarily internet based business we will have to comply with the e-commerce act 2000. We will create a place on our website that will inform users of their legal entitlements. The areas we will need to pay particular attention to are as follows: 1. Formation of electronic contracts – The act clarifies the formation of electronic contracts are valid via the use of an electronic signature. It is particularly important that we make users aware of the exact moment when a binding contract is being entered into. Also an enforceable contract must contain the following prior information; your identity, the delivery costs, the characteristics of the goods or services, the period the prices remain valid and any extra charges that may apply, before the contract is made. 2. Electronic signatures – Electronic signatures will have to be implemented into all contracts used on our website. We will most likely use a private key inscription which means that only the author can create, amend or send the message meaning that the authenticity of the signature can be assured. 3. Cancellation of online contracts – Consumers have a period of 14 days to withdraw from a sales contract without requiring a valid reason. 4. Provision of features to assist people with disabilities – Equality legislation means we must provide a service capable of accommodating the needs of a person with a disability to a reasonable extent. This includes aspects such as text size and colour. 5. Recent EU consumer rights directive – Changes brought about by a recent EU directive will have to be taken into account. The main ones to be concerned with are a proposal to remove hidden charges and costs on the internet and banning pre-ticked boxes on websites. Data Protection Act 1988 Under the data protection act we, as a data controller, are deemed to have certain responsibilities to keep consumers personal information safe and secure. The act defines eight basic principles that we must abide by: Obtain and process the information fairly Keep it only for one or more specified and lawful purposes 112 | P a g e Process it only in ways compatible with the purposes for which it was given to you initially Keep it safe and secure Keep it accurate and up-to-date Ensure that it is adequate, relevant and not excessive Retain it no longer than is necessary for the specified purpose or purposes Give a copy of his/her personal data to an individual, on request In 2013 we will also be legally obliged to nominate one member of the company to act as data protection officer. This person will have the responsibility of maintaining the standards set down in the data protection act by documenting procedures and conducting regular security reviews. Lastly it is important that all staff are made aware of the companies responsibilities in relation to data protection whether by regular updates or directly training them. Statutory Employer Requirements Looking towards expansion in the future it is important that we mention our main responsibilities as employers. The following are some of the key areas of legislation we will have to adhere to: 1. The Terms of Employment (Information) Acts 1994 and 2001 state an employer must give certain information in writing including the terms and conditions of employment. 2. The Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 to 2005 protects employees from unfair dismissal under several grounds laid down within the act. 3. The Employment Equality Act 1998 and 2004 deals with discrimination within the workplace across nine grounds including gender, marital status, family status and sexual orientation. 4. The Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 governs aspects of working time including rest periods, weekly rest breaks, Sunday working, maximum working hours and record keeping. 5. The National Minimum Wage Act 2000 places the minimum wage for an adult worker at €8.65 per hour. The directors of iwanthat have chosen to take below minimum wage for the first few months in order to get the company up and running. 6. Health and Safety Laws require us to prepare a written safety statement identifying the risks and hazards of the workplace and how we will ensure a safe workplace for employees. Tax Under Irish law we will be required, once trading has commenced, to register with the revenue commission and comply with the taxation laws set down as follows: 113 | P a g e 1. Corporation Tax payable at 12.5% of our annual profit. We do not estimate having to pay this in our first year as we have not forecasted any profits due to the high costs of starting up. 2. Value Added Tax (VAT) will require us to acquire a VAT number so that we will be able to claim back VAT on certain purchases and expenses. These will then be subtracted from the VAT we pay on sales. Finally we will have to complete a VAT return every two months. 3. PRSI is payable on all employees at a variable rate depending on the wage level of the employee. It is an additional charge on top of the employees’ wages. 114 | P a g e Profit & Loss Account and Cash Flow Statements Year 1 Sales Revenue Widget Email Marketing Affiliate Targeted Advertising Total Operating Expenses Salaries Site Maintenance PRSI Website & App development Widget Development Hosting Office Equipment Virtual Office Mobile Phone Bills Internet & Landline Email Address & Anti virus Advertising Legal Fees Account Fees Travel Utility Bills Banks Charges Data Protection Registration Company Registration PayPal Loan Interest Bank loan payments Total Profit (/Loss) 115 | P a g e € Quarter 1 10091 0 100 0 10191 Quarter 2 8826 0 100 0 8926 Quarter 3 3429 0 125 0 3554 Quarter 4 16924 0 150 0 17074 Total 39270 0 475 0 39745 10,000 2925 1075 1500 800 112.8 2000 169 450 177 80.85 16,875 250 250 250 1000 60 35 50 10,000 2925 1075 10,000 2925 1075 10,000 2925 1075 112.8 112.8 112.8 450 177 80.85 1500 250 250 250 500 60 450 177 80.85 1500 250 250 250 500 60 450 177 80.85 1500 250 250 250 1000 60 40,000 11700 4300 1500 800 451.2 2000 169 1800 708 323.4 21,375 1000 1000 1000 3000 240 1037 7,500.00 1037 7,500.00 1037 7,500.00 1037 7,500.00 4148 30,000.00 46,597 26,168 26,168 26,668 125,600 50 -85,855 Year 2 Sales Revenue Widget Email Marketing Affiliate Targeted Advertising Total Operating Expenses Salaries Site Maintenance PRSI Website & App development Hosting Office Equipment Virtual Office Mobile Phone Bills Internet & Landline Email Address & Anti virus Advertising Legal Fees Account Fees Travel Utility Bills Banks Charges Data Protection Registration PayPal Loan Interest Bank loan payments Total Profit (/Loss) 116 | P a g e € Quarter 1 15797 1875 200 4875 22747 Quarter 2 16483 1875 200 4875 23433 Quarter 3 6181 2000 250 5200 13631 Quarter 4 30220 3935.5 300 5687.5 40143 Total 68681 9685.5 950 20637.5 99954 10,000 2925 1075 10,000 2925 1075 10,000 2925 1075 10,000 2925 1075 225.6 100 169 600 177 80.85 16,875 250 250 500 1000 60 35 225.6 100 225.6 100 225.6 100 600 177 80.85 1500 250 250 500 500 60 600 177 80.85 1500 250 250 500 500 60 600 177 80.85 1500 250 250 500 1000 60 40,000 11700 4300 0 902.4 400 169 2400 708 323.4 21,375 1000 1000 2000 3000 240 35 1037 7,500.00 1037 7,500.00 1037 7,500.00 1037 7,500.00 4148 30,000.00 42,859 26,780 26,780 27,280 123,701 -23,747 Year 3 Sales Revenue Widget Email Marketing Affiliate Targeted Advertising Total Operating Expenses Salaries Site Maintenance PRSI Website & App development Hosting Office Equipment Virtual Office Mobile Phone Bills Internet & Landline Email Address+anti virus Advertising Legal Fees Account Fees Travel Utility Bills Banks Charges Data Protection Registration PayPal Loan Interest Bank loan payments Total Profit (/Loss) 117 | P a g e € Quarter 1 22900 3750 350 9750 36750 Quarter 2 23896 4000 400 10400 38696 Quarter 3 8961 4375 500 11375 25211 Quarter 4 43809 8550 500 12350 65209 Total 99566 20675 1750 43875 165866 15,000 2925 1612.5 15,000 2925 1612.5 15,000 2925 1612.5 15,000 2925 1612.5 451.2 100 169 750 177 80.85 24,159.32 250 250 500 1000 60 35 451.2 100 451.2 100 451.2 100 750 177 80.85 5000 250 250 500 500 60 750 177 80.85 5000 250 250 500 500 60 750 177 80.85 5000 250 250 500 1000 60 60,000 11700 6450 0 1804.8 400 169 3000 708 323.4 39,159 1000 1000 2000 3000 240 35 1037 7,500.00 1037 7,500.00 1037 7,500.00 1037 7,500.00 4148 30,000.00 56,057 36,194 36,194 36,694 165,138 728 iwanthat Year 1 Quarterly Cash-Flow Statement Pre-Startup EST Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Total 162,913 128,904 111,709 89,142 79,594 0 0 0 10,191 173,104 10,191 0 0 8,926 137,830 8,926 0 0 3,554 115,263 3,554 0 0 17,074 106,216 79,594 10,000 829 113 10,000 829 113 10,000 829 113 10,000 829 113 2,925 18,875 250 500 169 627 1,000 200 2,925 1,500 250 500 2,925 1,500 250 500 2,925 1,500 250 500 627 500 200 627 500 200 627 1,000 200 1,037 1,037 81 1,037 81 1,037 81 1,037 81 50 35 60 36,700 7,500 44,200 128,904 60 18,621 7,500 26,121 111,709 60 18,621 7,500 26,121 89,142 60 19,121 7,500 26,621 79,594 Cash & Bank on Hand (beginning of month) CASH RECEIPTS Cash Sales Group Investment Loan/ other cash inj. TOTAL CASH RECEIPTS Total Cash Available (before cash out) CASH PAID OUT Website App Gross wages (exact withdrawal) Payroll expenses (taxes, etc.) Hosting Supplies (office & oper.) Repairs & maintenance Advertising Car, delivery & travel Accounting & legal Virtual Office Telephone & Internet Utilities Insurance Taxes Interest Email / Anti-Virus PayPal Company Register-Data Control Miscellaneous SUBTOTAL Loan principal payment TOTAL CASH PAID OUT Cash & Bank Position (end of month) 118 | P a g e € 25,000 150,000 175,000 175,000 1,000 500 2,000 4,587 7,500 12,087 162,913 0 0 79,594 iwanthat Year 2 Quarterly Cash-Flow Statement Cash & Bank on Hand (beginning of month) CASH RECEIPTS Cash Sales Group Investment Loan/ other cash inj. TOTAL CASH RECEIPTS Total Cash Available (before cash out) CASH PAID OUT Gross wages (exact withdrawal) Payroll expenses (taxes, etc.) Hosting Supplies (office & oper.) Repairs & maintenance Advertising Car, delivery & travel Accounting & legal Virtual Office Telephone & Internet Utilities Insurance Taxes Interest Email / Anti-Virus PayPal Company Register-Data Control Miscellaneous SUBTOTAL Loan principal payment TOTAL CASH PAID OUT Cash & Bank Position (end of month) 119 | P a g e € 88,131 Q1 88,131 Q2 66,065 Q3 62,764 Q4 49,661 Total 62,570 0 88,131 22,747 0 0 22,747 110,878 23,433 0 0 23,433 89,498 13,631 0 0 13,631 76,395 40,143 0 0 40,143 89,804 0 62,570 10,000 829 226 100 2,925 18,875 500 500 169 777 1,000 200 10,000 829 226 100 2,925 1,500 500 500 10,000 829 226 100 2,925 1,500 500 500 10,000 829 226 100 2,925 1,500 500 500 777 500 200 777 500 200 777 1,000 200 1,037 81 1,037 81 1,037 81 1,037 81 35 60 37,313 7,500 44,813 66,065 60 19,234 7,500 26,734 62,764 60 19,234 7,500 26,734 49,661 60 19,734 7,500 27,234 62,570 0 0 88,131 0 0 62,570 iwanthat Year 3 Quarterly Cash-Flow Statement Cash & Bank on Hand (beginning of month) CASH RECEIPTS Cash Sales Group Investment Loan/ other cash inj. TOTAL CASH RECEIPTS Total Cash Available (before cash out) CASH PAID OUT Gross wages (exact withdrawal) Payroll expenses (taxes, etc.) Hosting Supplies (office & oper.) Repairs & maintenance Advertising Car, delivery & travel Accounting & legal Virtual Office Telephone & Internet Utilities Insurance Taxes Interest Email / Anti-Virus PayPal Company Register-Data Control Miscellaneous SUBTOTAL Loan principal payment TOTAL CASH PAID OUT Cash & Bank Position (end of month) € 62,570 Q1 62,570 Q2 43,063 Q3 45,366 Q4 34,184 Total 62,499 0 62,570 36,750 0 0 36,750 99,320 38,696 0 0 38,696 81,759 25,211 0 0 25,211 70,577 65,209 0 0 65,209 99,393 0 62,499 15,000 1,613 451 100 2,925 24,159 500 500 169 927 1,000 200 15,000 1,613 451 100 2,925 5,000 500 500 15,000 1,613 451 100 2,925 5,000 500 500 15,000 1,613 451 100 2,925 5,000 500 500 927 500 200 927 500 200 927 1,000 200 1,037 81 1,037 81 1,037 81 1,037 81 35 60 48,757 7,500 56,257 43,063 60 28,893 7,500 36,393 45,366 60 28,893 7,500 36,393 34,184 60 29,393 7,500 36,893 62,499 0 0 62,570 0 0 62,499 Break down of costs Salary When the business is set up we will initially have two members of the group employed at an agreed salary of €20,000 a year. The other members of the group will still be involved but on a non-pay basis as they have other employment plans and it makes more commercial sense than having five employees in a start up to begin with. Site Maintenance As no member of the group has a technical background we will be employing Gary Rafferty a Senior Software Developer, who has quoted €25 per hour for maintenance. We have predicted that this would average 9 hours a week of maintenance. 120 | P a g e Website App Widget Plug in development We have also researched the cost of developing the full working site and an app. We have been quoted €1500 for both by Gary Rafferty. On top of this Gary also quoted € 400 for the plug in and €300 to €400 for the widget (appendix emails). Hosting The hosting services we will be using is amazon EC2. We found that pinterest also use this service. At the height of its use with 17 million users it cost pinterest $35 per hour using amazons EC2. We gauged our figures on this but tripled the figure as amazon’s costs greatly decline the more storage you use. Office & Equipment In order to reduce costs we will be working out of Matthew Keegan’s office which is located in Raheny as we won’t be charged barring paying utilities. We also are registering for regus.ie which means that we can book rooms for meeting and get our post delivered to a business address at a cost of only €169 per year. Internet & phone bills The internet and phone landlines come as a package for business customers. It includes 4 line connections. We will also be paying for business mobile phone bills for the company. Email Anti-Virus We will be using http://www.blacknight.com to provide us with our email account and they also provide antivirus as well as at a reasonable cost of €79.50.The email service uses Microsoft Outlook. Advertisement Marketing costs constitute predominantly paid advertising targeted at a specific user profile. As detailed in the marketing strategy we need to reach early adopters who will in turn become evangelists of the product. Although supplemented by cost free social media channels this cost is justified as the revenue models hinge on a critical mass user base. The social/technology landscape is crowded therefore significant marketing spend is required to attract users. We have estimated ad performance and user uptake predictions at a conservative scale to bringing the service into profitability by year 3. Legal Accounting Fees On advice we were told that legal fees and accounting amount €2000 per annum. This advice was received from Charlie Ardagh a serial entrepreneur. 121 | P a g e Travelling Cost-Utility Bills We have put aside a €1000 for travel for year 1 as, if we will be travelling, it will only be within Ireland and the UK to start off. These travel expenses rise through the 3 year projections as we expect to travel more. We have also included our utility bills which are more in the first and last quarter as they are the colder months. Bank Charges, Domain, Company Registration and Data Controller Registration These are all costs associated with setting up a business and registering as a data controller. Registering the company is a one off cost will a data controller must pay a fee every year. The domain names are free for Irish start ups http://www.gettingbusinessonline.ie/. Bank charges have been estimated at €60 per quarter, which was a guiding figure we received from researching start up costs. Risk Analysis The purpose of producing a risk analysis report is to recognize the probability and impact of various risks on Iwanthat, both short term and long term. By recognizing the events that might adversely impact Iwanthat systems and operations, we aim to increase the likelihood of success and to create value for the business. Iwanthat faces a number of risks which can be categorized into the following types: strategic risks, operational risks, security risks, industry or market risks, financial risks, competitive risks, and compliance risk. Strategic Risks Strategic risks are those that arise from the fundamental decisions that managers, directors or boards take concerning business objectives. In other words, they are the risks of failing to achieve the business objectives. Iwanthat faces strategic risks including aggressive or incompatible strategic initiatives, inadequate operating policies, lack of long-term vision, and unclear or inconsistent strategic goals. These risks may arise when Iwanthat wants to expand, or even continue in the long term. Wrong decisions are either difficult or costly to reverse, and they could have significant negative effects on Iwanthat, causing loss of profits or even closure of the business. In order to manage the strategic risks effectively, managers/boards should adequately adjust their risk tolerance based on different scenarios. In addition, they should also try to avoid engaging in business activities that are considered to be too risky. 122 | P a g e Operational Risks Iwanthat may face operational risks such as systems failure, equipment breakdown, power outage, network crash, data loss, or unexpected events resulted from an external disaster. Even though the probability of occurrence of these events is considered to be low, the impact can be significant. In order to minimize the loss from these events, Iwanthat should have adequate physical asset protection and natural hazard preparedness. In addition, a detailed and up to date Business Continuity Plan (BCP) should be created and tested periodically. It is important that every employee of Iwanthat knows their responsibilities and what to do in the event of disaster. 123 | P a g e Security Risks Iwanthat is a cloud-based application and most of its activities are happening online and involve high degrees of interactions from various sources, therefore the exposure to security risks tends to be high. Data breach will be the most common security threat faced to Iwanthat. It can have both financial and organisational impacts. According to Irish Information Security and Cybercrime survey (Deloitte, 2012): the average cost to organisations of data breaches over the past five years stood at €41,875 per incident, with 60% reporting losses less than €5,000 and 10% above €250,000. In addition to possible financial loss, data breaches could have great impact on organisations, for example: loss of productivity, termination/resignation of employees, loss of data, litigation or other legal issues, increased insurance costs, loss of profit, and long term loss of business. The level of security threats for Iwanthat depend on many factors, for example, the number of users, the percentage of business applications that are considered to be mission critical, the percentage of activities based on mobile platforms, the percentage of all applications that are developed by third parties, and the frequency of vulnerability tests that are carried out. Based on our research, the security risks are relatively high for Iwanthat. The Deloitte survey (2011) showed that, out of all surveyed Irish firms across different industries, almost half claimed that they had more than one security breach over the past twelve months. 32% of all respondents claimed that they had 1-5 security breaches, 4% claimed that they had 6-20 security breaches, and another 4% claimed that they had more than 20 security breaches over the past twelve months (see figure 1). Figure 1: The no. of information security breach in the past 12 months 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% No security breaches 1-5 security 6-20 security More than 20 Do not know No method of breaches breaches security identifying breaches these attacks The survey also showed that employees and employee activity, for example, negligence or lack of knowledge, was the biggest challenge in information security. Therefore, while ensuring system security, Iwanthat also needs to pay attention to training and educating its employees. 124 | P a g e Industry/market Risks Iwanthat operates in a fast-paced, dynamic and challenging environment; therefore it faces risks like changes in the technological environment, and shifts in industrial trends and consumer behaviours. We consider that Iwanthat will be facing relatively low industry and market risks in the coming three to five years. At the moment, the market environment is very favourable for the growth of Iwanthat. According to the Digital Hub Annual Report (2011), Ireland currently spends approx. €4 billion every year, and by 2017, the domestic online consumptive economy will be valued at €21 billion of forward-forecasted GDP. The e-commerce industry continues to expand; we see that there are more opportunities than threats for Iwanthat from the market perspective. Financial Risks Iwanthat faces two major types of financial risks: funding and revenue risks. Like many other businesses, Iwanthat may experience problems like high funding costs, lack of availability of funds, unexpected changes in costs or revenue. Based on our analysis, Iwanthat will face low funding risks as there are a number of funding sources available. However, the business is likely to face great revenue risks, particularly in the first year or two. We recommend that Iwanthat should produce quarterly financial statements instead of yearly, and by doing that, it will help Iwanthat to acknowledge its financial performance and position in a timely fashion, therefore reducing financial risks. Competitive Risks Iwanthat faces competitive risks however it tends to be low and the impact to iwanthat is relatively small. The two biggest competitors we observed are sharegift.com (based in UK) and eBay Group Gift (global). In Ireland, there are no other web applications that are providing a similar service to Iwanthat. Compliance Risk In relation to regulatory compliances, Iwanthat is governed and regulated by three major authorities: 1) Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud computing, 2) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) 125 | P a g e web standards, and 3) the last, also the most important, EU and Irish privacy and data protection law. 1. AWS security compliances According to AWS Risk and Compliance July 2012, Iwanthat has shared responsibility with AWS for managing the IT environment. AWS’ part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. iwanthat’s responsibility includes configuring it’s IT environment in a secure and controlled manner for its purposes. iwanthat is required to continue to maintain adequate governance over the entire IT control environment regardless of how IT is deployed. Leading practices include an understanding of required compliance objectives and requirements (from relevant sources), establishment of a control environment that meets those objectives and requirements, an understanding of the validation required based on the organization’s risk tolerance, and verification of the operational effectiveness of their control environment. 2. W3C web standards Although there is no enforcement authority and the compliance is voluntary, it is important that Iwanthat adheres to the standards and recommendations laid out by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with specific emphasis on coding practices and web accessibility guidelines. W3C (www.w3.org) is an international community where member organisations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards. W3C standards define an Open Web Platform for application development that involves HTML, CSS, SVG, WOFF, the Semantic Web stack, XML, and a variety of APIs. By following W3C rules and standards, it will not only enhance Iwanthat’s web accessibility, stability and accountability, it will also increase user’s experience therefore leading to potential financial benefits. The web standards can be accessed from W3C homepage under the “Standards” section. There is also an easier way to test Iwanthat’s site for W3C compliance with industry standards. Simply go to W3C’s homepage and click “Accessibility,” go to the “Web Accessibility Initiative” (WAI) page, and then click “Evaluating Accessibility.” Under this section detailed guidelines and a number of useful tools can be found that can be used to simply and easily evaluate Iwanthat’s site for compliance with recommended industry standards. 3. EU and Irish privacy and data protection regulations 126 | P a g e Iwanthat must follow the data management regulations outlined by (Irish) Data Protection Acts, 1988 and 2003, which give effect to the European Union’s Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC (1995). In 2012, the European Commission proposed a major reform of the EU legal framework on the protection of personal data, with the aim of strengthening individual rights and tackling the challenges of globalisation and new technologies. According to the EC law, Iwanthat is required to respect the privacy and data protection rights of those whose personal data is entrusted to it, and at least to follow the following rules: collect and process personal data only when this is legally permitted; respect certain obligations regarding the processing of personal data; respond to complaints regarding breaches of data protection rules; collaborate with national data protection supervisory authority – in this case, Irish Data Protection Commissioner In relation to data breaches, the new EU data protection law requires all companies and organisations to notify the national supervisory authority and affected citizens of any serious data breaches within 24 hours. However, in reality, firms find it a struggle to report data breaches within 24 hours and many companies don't have the sophisticated systems for identifying breaches in the first place. Iwanthat as a data controller (defined as the persons or entities which collect and process personal data) must determine the purpose and the means of the processing of personal data and are also required to register with Irish Data Protection Commissioner and renew on a yearly basis (contact detail is shown in Appendix A, registration and renewal fees are shown in Appendix B). According to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, Iwanthat is required to meet the following minimum standard set by the authority: access to computers and manual files are restricted to authorised staff only; access to the information is restricted on a "need-to-know" basis in accordance with a defined policy; computer systems are password protected; information on screens is kept hidden from unauthorised personnel (e.g. visitors); a back-up procedure is in operation, including off-site back-up; all waste including papers, printouts, etc. are disposed of carefully 127 | P a g e Failure to comply with certain data security regulations is a criminal offence and can lead to fines of up to €250,000 in the case of a company and €50,000 in the case of an individual. There are other regulations that Iwanthat must be follow, for example, The Companies Acts 19632009 that regulates companies in Ireland, and the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 that providing for the health and safety of people in the workplace. Overall speaking, Iwanthat faces a relatively high degree of compliance risks. In order to reduce the probability of regulatory violations, it is better to carry out audits, and this can be done both ‘in-house’ or seek third party consultants. In relation to Data Protections, Iwanthat may study the Report of Data Protection Audit of Facebook Ireland (2011), which was published by the office of the Data Protection Commissioner, Ireland. The report provides a comprehensive assessment of Facebook Ireland’s compliance with Irish Data Protection law and by extension EU law in this area. This report can be a practical guidance for Iwanthat in examining its practices, policies, and responsibilities in relation to privacy and data protection laws and regulations. Other Risks Iwanthat may face a number of other risks during its operations, for example, fraud, loss of key staff, reputational damage. Risk Matrix Based on the above risk analysis, we categorized all major identified risks according to the likelihood of their occurrence and the impact that they will have on Iwanthat, and illustrate them in the following matrix. This will also assist with the prioritization of the risks. 128 | P a g e Impacts ● Operational Risks ● Security Risks ● Funding Risks ● Revenue Risks ● Other Risks ● Competitive Risk ● Market Risks Probabilities 129 | P a g e ● Legal Risks ● Strategic Risks Potential Grants-Investment First Step First provide loans of up to 25,000 for start up companies. First step goal is to provide finance for SMEs with the overall goal of creating job opportunities. First step is a non for profit organisation who receives funding from enterprise Ireland and EU seed and venture capital Enterprise Ireland through the EU Seed and Venture Capital Fund and the Social Finance Foundation. They have recently announced a new round of funding of €90 million which they say will be loaned to 5,500 businesses. We will be applying for this grant but are business finance dont relying on this funding in order to start the business. Enterprise Ireland Enterprise don’t just offer funding for new start ups but also advice and mentors which we feel would be off great benefit to the iWantThat team as we are all college students and don’t have experience of operating a business. We have however obtained a few contact while conduct research for the business who would be more than willing to act as advisors. This was one of the surprising features we found while contact industry experts, that people are willing to help advice the team freely without expecting anything in return. We will also be applying for Innovation vouchers these are worth 5,000 each and you can gain a maximum of 10. And as we are all DCU student we will be using these vouchers in DCU if we are successful in relation to eligibility. Venture Capitalists & Angel Investors The group has discussed this option of gaining investment particularly the venture capitalist. On the positive side of the venture capitalist investment would be the knowledge advice we would receive form the venture capitalists. However on the negative side they would want a high percentage of the company in return as Gavin Duffy stipulated when he spoke in the Helix that he on average asks for 30% to 50% off the company in order to invest in any company. As a group we wouldn’t feel comfortable giving this amount of the company away so this would be the last route we take in order to get the finances to start the company. 130 | P a g e Bank Loan This is our preferred option in order to get seed capital to start the business. The loan which we have been looking at is at a rate of 5.24%. The loan repayments have an option of flexibility to structure repayments to meet our circumstances. However we have structured the repayments in our projections to be made every month for the full amount. The main banking we have researched for a loan is BOI as we were informed they are lending to starts more so then any other banking in Ireland by our accounting advisor. If the avenue is however unsuccessful then we will be pursue other banks in relation to gaining start up capital. The other possibility is using capital from multiple source ie grants and then applying for AIB sme loan of 100,000 plus our own investment of 25,000. Company Amount Monthly Duration Repayments BOI 150,000 €2,845.64 Interest Per Interest Rate Month 60 Months 345.64 5.24% Ideal Situation Our Ideal grant situation would be to gain our seed capital for the first few years of the business from a BOI loan and from the investment from group members. The point which we want to reach is being able to apply for the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). However this EU programme is stopping in 2013, but there is another option if we haven’t applied for the 2013 funding, a new programme called Horizon 2020 who will work with high potential starts . The aim of this programme is to fill the funding gap for early stage, high risk research and innovation by SMEs. The programme’s budget is €6.8 billion, and as one of our contacts has gotten to the final stage of the FP7 programme so we can gain some valuable insights from them in relation to being accepted onto the programme. We feel if we could achieve this then we could put the money into developing the site/app further as well as spending more on marketing and reaching further afield, as you can see from the report we have an expansion plan specifically for China as a member of the team is Chinese and was able to develop a strategy for penetrating the market. 131 | P a g e Overall Limitation There were limitation within the group dynamic, the first and main militating factor was that we couldn’t get any MECT into our practicum group which affected the group in relation to developing the technical side of the business. Cormac Moran became our IT group member as he has more knowledge on the technical. This had consequences as Cormac spent most of the time learning tools and web technologies in order to develop the prototype. This meant that Cormac couldn’t participate as much as we would want on the business side of planning. This is why if you look at our financial planning that we will be outsourcing the fully function site and app to Gary Rafferty who is a senior software developer as well as site administration and maintenance. If we had of had an MECT we would have had the site and app developed and live so we could have tested the market in relation to getting an insight into user uptake potential. This would have been a major advantage for the group and business plan development. The site at this stage needs significant technical development for a fully functional live launch while a widget for host sites and a browser plugin must also be developed. However the specifications for which are included and contracted to a third party (Gary Rafferty). We ran into several problems while researching and developing our business plan for iwanthat. This was primarily based around the fact as student we didn’t have much resource in terms of paying for research papers which could have been of great value in relation group buying and user uptake as well as consumers use of wish lists. These are areas we’d like to research further once we have obtained seed capital. It was challenging as well contacting industry experts to try obtaining insights into the market, as many of the contacts we made where willing to give advice but however the important insights we were looking for couldn’t be given to us as it was vital information for the respective companies. These are areas we believe we can overcome if we are able to access mentors through enterprise Ireland programme, this is something we discovered in a talk given by Susan Hayes ”The Positive Economist” stipulated as a major factor in the reason she was able to expand her business outside of Ireland and the UK to Europe and the rest of the world when she conducted her webinar series for NGM. When we started to access the business plan we have produced the first limiting factor we have recognised is the seed capital. We are relying on obtaining a bank loan in order to fund iwantthat start-up cost. We also have predicted that there are cost we haven’t included this is not a criticism of the financial plan but however is based on information we obtained from advisors outside of the college who stipulated that unforeseen expenses must always be accounted for; this is why we have 132 | P a g e planned and kept capital in reserve amounting to over 60,000 by end of year three(Cash Flow Statement Y3).The only other avenue will have to obtain seed capital will be from venture capitalist, but as we mentioned this is an avenue we’d rather avoid as the percentage of the company we’d have to surrender to an investor would be higher than we would will accept however if it is a case where we are turned down for a loan then we have to accept that we may have to give up a high percentage of the company in order to get the business of the ground. Another limitating factor for the group will simply be the fact that we are all college graduate with little to no experience of running a start-up this is why we have obtained advisors from outside of the college as we won’t have the college advisor once we live the college. This will be vital when we are negotiating with companies in relation to target advertisement and email marketing. We can use the outside advisor here as they will be able to tell us how to approach the situation. This is something with Sean O’Sullivan Co-founder of both Dial2Do and Rococo software, stipulated when he gave a talk in High Tech & Innovation lecture. He told use of his experience when he was launching his first business and was in negotiation with Sony Ericsson, and they were offering far less then he want, but upon calling an adviser he told him you need them more than they need you and in this case it’s better to get the software on their products, and this will help to negotiate a higher price with other providers. In terms of research limitations the main area we see problems with was within our own online survey. The sample we took may have skewed the overall results as it was mostly younger people who filled out the survey. This left us with little data on what could potentially be a large market base in older customers. References Dublin City Enterprise Board (2012) eBusiness and Legal Considerations. [online] Available at: http://www.dceb.ie/Knowledge-Centre/E~Business/eBusiness-&-Legal-Considerations [Accessed: August 16th 2012]. 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Annual Report 2011, The Digital Hub, accessed on 16th July 2012, publication available at: http://www.thedigitalhub.com/about/publications/22 137 | P a g e Deloitte, Irish Information Security and Cybercrime Survey, July 2012, Available at: http://www.deloitte.com/assets/DcomIreland/Local%20Assets/Documents/ERS/2012/IE_Au_ERS_CybercrimeSurvey_0612_WEB.p df AWS Cloud Computing Whitepapers, “AWS Risk and Compliance”, July 2012, Available at: http://d36cz9buwru1tt.cloudfront.net/AWS_Risk_and_Compliance_Whitepaper.pdf, Accessed on: 9 July 2012 Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003, Data Protection Commissioner, January 2009, Available at: http://www.dataprotection.ie/documents/legal/DPAConsolMay09.pdf Report of Data Protection Audit of Facebook Ireland , 21 December 2011, Available at: http://dataprotection.ie/documents/facebook%20report/final%20report/report.pdf Irish E-Commerce Report, 24 April 2011, Published by StudioForty9, Cork City, Ireland http://www.irishecommercesurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Irish-E-CommerceSurvey-Report.pdf Dublin City Enterprise Board (2012) eBusiness and Legal Considerations. [online] Available at: http://www.dceb.ie/Knowledge-Centre/E~Business/eBusiness-&-Legal-Considerations [Accessed: August 16th 2012]. Dublin City Enterprise Board (2012) Data protection: customer rights and company responsibilities . [online] Available at: http://www.dceb.ie/KnowledgeCentre/E~Business/Data-Protection-Issues [Accessed: August 17th 2012]. Hospitality Recruitment (2012) Some of Employer’s legal obligations. [online] Available at: http://www.hospitality.ie/legal_obligations.htm [Accessed: August 16th 2012]. Google (2012) Smartphone User Study Shows Mobile Movement Under Way. [online] Available at: .http://adwords.blogspot.ie/2011/04/smartphone-user-study-showsmobile.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot /ATHs+(Inside+AdWords) [Accessed: 11/06/2012]. 138 | P a g e Internet Retailin (2012) Facebook and consumer insight: Connecting everything, everywhere. [online] Available at: http://internetretailing.net/magazine/archive/november2011/facebook-and-consumer-insight/ [Accessed: 08/06/2012]. marketingcharts (2012) Behavioral-Targeting Ad Spend Poised for Growth. [online] Available at: http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/behavioral-targeting-ad-spend-poised-forgrowth-with-help-from-online-video-5019/emarketer-behaviorally-targeted-online-adspend-2006-2012jpg/ [Accessed: 14/06/2012]. Power Reviews (2012) The 2011 Social Shopping Study. [online] Available at: http://www.powerreviews.com/assets/download/Social_Shopping_2011_Brief1.pdf [Accessed: 02/06/2012]. Start up Smart (2012) KPMG report downplays influence of social medi. [online] Available at: http://www.startupsmart.com.au/planning/technology/kpmg-report-downplays-influenceof-social-media/201201115041.html [Accessed: 12/06/2012]. WWP (2012) The role of search and social media in the purchasing pathway. [online] Available at: http://www.wpp.com/NR/rdonlyres/CA49ED29-06A4-4E10-A1F0C25BAA35CF2A/0/groupm_search_the_virtuous_circle_feb11.pdf [Accessed: 01/06/2012]. xogroupinc (2012) 10/06/2012. [online] Available at: http://www.xogroupinc.com/pressreleases-home/2011-press-releases/2011-01-04-theknot-2010-bridal-registry-study.aspx [Accessed: 08/06/2012]. about.com (2012) Hierarchy of Needs The Five Levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. [online] Available at: Hierarchy of Needs The Five Levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs [Accessed: 05/04/2012]. Renren Announces Unaudited Second Quarter 2012 Financial Results, Yahoo Finance News, 7 August, 2012, Avaialble at: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/renren-announces-unauditedsecond-quarter-230000235.html “China's E-Commerce Market: The Logistics Challenges”, AT Kearney Report, 2011, pdf available at: http://www.atkearney.com/images/global/pdf/Chinas_ECommerce_Market.pdf 139 | P a g e Understanding China Digital Consumers, McKinsey China, February 2011, Available at: http://www.mckinseychina.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/02/understand_china_digital_consumers.pdf Asia Top Internet Countries, Internet World Stats, 31 December 2011, Available at: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm Asia Pacific Online Retail Forecast, 2011 to 2016, Forrester, 16 April 2012, Available at: http://www.forrester.com/Asia+Pacific+Online+Retail+Forecast+2011+To+2016/fulltext/-/ERES72723 Venturebeat, China’s Top Four Social Networks: RenRen, Kaixin001, Qzone, and 51.com, 7 April 2010, Available at: http://venturebeat.com/2010/04/07/china%E2%80%99s-top-4social-networks-renren-kaixin001-qzone-and-51-com/ The Great Social Wall of China, Netpop Research, LLC, 2009. Search Engines in China (2009-2012), Global Stats, July 2012 http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-CN-monthly-200912-201207 Available at: “The 28th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China,” China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), July 2011, Available at: http://www1.cnnic.cn/download/2011/cnnic28threport.pdf Bloomberg News, “China to Lead World’s Online Retail Market In 2013, Xinhua Says”, Bloomberg, 29 May, 2012, available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0529/china-to-lead-world-s-online-retail-market-in-2013-xinhua-says.html “China’s Social-Media Boom”, McKinsey China, April 2012, pdf available at: http://www.mckinseychina.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/McKinsey-Chinas-SocialMedia-Boom1.pdf Appendix Emails Tours America 140 | P a g e From: Ken Date: 1 To: [email protected] August Kennedy <[email protected]> 2012 14:26 Hi Jamie, Thanks a lot for the e-mail and congratulations on such a great idea and for putting the time and effort into it to get to this stage. It certainly is something we would like to discuss in more detail and see some actual working demo's of. If you have more information, examples, demo's you can provide can you forward them on. I'll discuss internally and see what options we can look at for a trial period, maybe covering both Cruise Holidays and Tour America web sites. Thanks Ken Eportireland.com From: Dermot Date: 23 July 2012 16:36 Ryan <[email protected]> To: Jamie O Sullivan <[email protected]> Hi Jamie, Thank you for the call and the time you took to explain your idea in depth. Your idea is of great interest to me as I feel that it will give my site greater exposure in the Social Media area and give customer groups a novel way of buying products from my site. As my site is an export orientated platform, I feel that the addition of your product will set us apart from other sites in the same market. As discussed,I will forward your mail etc to my Webmaster so you can liaise with him on the implementation at the backend. He will be back to work next week. Looking forward to seeing this in action, Best Regards, Dermot Ryan, Eportireland Ltd. Galway +353 91 565 947 SkimLinks From: Nayan Date: To: 141 | P a g e 1 Jamie O August Sullivan Tolia <[email protected]> 2012 11:30 <[email protected]> Hi Jamie, Thanks for speaking to me today. You can sign up for a Skimlinks account with this link. We currently work with 74 retailers in Ireland, and have negotiated premium rates of commission with 2 of these. We pay you 75% of any commission generated and retain 25% as our fee. There are a number of options for integrating Skimlinks, we have a vBulletin plugin which offers a customizable way to integrate Skimlinks on a vBulletin forum, alternatively you can install Skimlinks by simply pasting one line of Javascript code into your global footer, above the </body> tag. Let me know if you have any other questions. Best, Nayan Gary Rafferty Emails Hey Matt, How's tricks. Depends on their experience and how they want to be paid. Typically, the website/app build will be an upfront cost, then the maintenance can either be a monthly fee or per issue/fix. If the website it fairly static, just a a placeholder for the company address and service etc, a few hundred would cover it. Anything more dynamic, would be upwards. If you can give raw numbers, say 500 for website build, a little more for the mobile app, and 20per hour per maintenance issue. If you need more indepth details, shoot over a mail with what the website is etc. Best of luck man, Cheers, Email 2 Not at all. It's no hassle man. For the plugin I'd charge probably a flat 400- maybe a bit more or less depending on the quality they need. The widget, probably less as it's a bit less work. Maybe 300ish. 142 | P a g e Best of luck man Anthony Birchall Emails Subject: -----------------------From: Date: To: Jamie Group O 23 Sullivan July Buying <[email protected]> 2012 15:07 [email protected] Dear Mr Anthony Birchall, My name is Jamie O'Sullivan and I am a eCommerce Masters student at Dublin City University. I am contacting you in relation to a digital idea my colleagues and myself are currently working on. The concept: We are creating a business that will be primarily geared towards the B2B market but will also cater for the B2C market. So in relation to the B2B - we are developing a plug-in or widget that eCommerce websites will be able to integrate into their web pages. The plug-in will provide a function for users to purchase products or services (gifts) as a group or collaboratively online. So for example if a group of colleagues wanted to buy 'The Cu Chulainn Hamper' from your website as a gift for a retiring colleague, one individual would be able to click on the widget and invite others to contribute to the gift via Facebook, email or mobile phone. Our software would create an event page where the contributions can be tracked, a deadline set and a secure payment facility. The widget would look something like this: Why would gifts.ie want to integrate such software in to their website? 143 | P a g e Well our research has told us that on average about 8-10 participants take part in an online group gift. This means that one person who is surfing your website will be able to invite another 9 random individuals to gifts.ie. Attracting such high volumes of traffic to your website from one purchase will lead to repeat customers and broaden the reach of your website. As I'm sure you are aware Word of Mouth marketing is very powerful and this is the perfect tonic to increase WOM. This will lead to increased revenue Increased reach increased customer base Social integration Sell more expensive stock - group buying is very appealing to consumers on a restricted budget We are currently examining a number of different revenue streams. Selling the software as a service to businesses is an option or integrating the software in to eCommerce websites for free and implementing a cost per acquisition revenue stream to begin with is another option. We have a number of alternative revenue streams on the B2C side of things in development. Basically I am just looking for your thoughts and feedback or even an expression of interest. Would you be interested in this service or interested in following the progress of the development and learning more about what it could do for gifts.ie? Would such as service interest you in any way? We really appreciate your time. Looking forward to your thoughts and hearing back from you! Regards, Jamie DCU Ph. +353 872160705 Skype: jamie_os Twitter | LinkedIn | CV 144 | P a g e O'Sullivan ---------From: Date: To: Jamie O 23 Sullivan July <[email protected]> 2012 15:07 [email protected] Birchall July Sullivan <[email protected]> 2012 08:15 <[email protected]> ----------From: Date: To: Anthony 24 Jamie O Hi Jamie, Thanks for the email. We are familiar with the model and have been approached by a few companies offering a this service. It is something on our radar which may be introduced to our site in time. I'm in the office most days if you want to call me any afternoon and have a chat - 014656444. Kind Anthony Questionnaire Appendix 145 | P a g e regards, 136 responses Summary 1. I consent to participate in this survey and am aged over 18 years. Yes 136 100% No 0 0% 2. What age are you? 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-64 65+ 50 37% 54 40% 10 7% 18 13% 4 3% 3. What is your gender? Male 69 51% Female 67 49% 4. What country or region do you currently reside in? Republic of Ireland United Kingdom and Northern Ieland Other European Union Country USA Other 118 87% 6 4% 0 0% 4 3% 8 6% 5. What area best describes your current employment situation? Airline Construction Distribution Financial Services Healthcare Hospitality Local Government Government other than Local Government Manufacturing 146 | P a g e 2 1% 0 0% 1 1% 22 16% 5 4% 4 3% 2 1% 2 1% 0 0% Pharmaceutical Professional Services Retail Student Information and Communications Technology Other Sciences and Technology Utilities Unemployed Other 4 3% 10 7% 3 2% 46 34% 11 8% 0 0% 1 1% 2 1% 21 15% 6. Which best describes your current annual personal income? (Question not compulsory) <€10k (US$12k) €10k (US$12k) - €24k (US$32k) €25k (US$33k) - €49k (US$65k) €50k (US$66k) - €74k (US$98k) €75k+ (US$99k+) 49 36% 26 19% 34 25% 9 7% 8 6% Online Purchasing 7. How often would you purchase goods online? Several times a day Once a day Several times a week Once a week Several times a month Once a month Not in the last 6 months 2 1% 0 0% 2 1% 9 7% 39 29% 55 40% 29 21% 8. How important are the following factors in your decision to purchase goods from the internet? - Delivery time Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 4 3% 3 2% 18 13% 76 56% 35 26% 8. How important are the following factors in your decision to purchase goods from the internet? - Good description of goods Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important 147 | P a g e 4 3% 1 1% 3 2% 64 47% Very Important 64 47% 8. How important are the following factors in your decision to purchase goods from the internet? - Guarantees and warrantees Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 4 3% 6 4% 22 16% 57 42% 47 35% 8. How important are the following factors in your decision to purchase goods from the internet? - Prices Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 4 3% 0 0% 3 2% 28 21% 101 74% 8. How important are the following factors in your decision to purchase goods from the internet? - Privacy of personal information Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 4 3% 0 0% 17 13% 43 32% 72 53% 8. How important are the following factors in your decision to purchase goods from the internet? - Reputation of the company Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 3 2% 2 1% 14 10% 65 48% 52 38% 8. How important are the following factors in your decision to purchase goods from the internet? - Security Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 3 2% 0 0% 7 5% 35 26% 91 67% 8. How important are the following factors in your decision to purchase goods from the internet? - Range of choice Very Unimportant Unimportant 148 | P a g e 3 2% 6 4% Neither Important nor Unimportant 21 15% Important 71 52% Very Important 35 26% 9. Have you ever purchased a gift online? Yes 116 85% No 20 15% 10. How many gifts have you purchased online? 1 Between 2 and 5 Between 6 and 10 More than 10 11 8% 53 39% 22 16% 33 24% Group Buying 11. Have you ever participated in group buying of gifts (birthday, wedding, retirement etc.) for family, friends and coworkers? Yes 78 57% No 58 43% 12. How many people were in charge of organising the gift? 1 42 31% 2 19 14% 3 or more 28 21% 13. On what occasions would you be likely to purchase a group gift? (Tick all that apply) 149 | P a g e A birth 33 30% A birthday 88 81% A wedding 66 61% A house warming 31 28% A retirement 36 33% Christmas 55 50% Other 8 7% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%. 14. What problems, if any, were encountered when organising the group gift purchase? (Tick all that apply) None 30 31% Collecting the money 56 57% Reimbursing the participants 15 15% Deciding the number of participants 7 7% Lack of ideas or lack of agreement 31 32% Lack of time 10 10% Other 3 3% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%. 15. How much would you contribute on average to the purchasing of the gift? <€20 €20 - €49 €50 - €99 €100 - €149 €150 - €199 €200+ 37 27% 51 38% 12 9% 5 4% 0 0% 2 1% 16. What type of gifts would you purchase? (Tick all that apply) Vouchers 72 65% Clothing 47 42% Consumer electronics 51 46% Tickets for events (cinema, concert, theatre etc.) 76 68% Airline tickets 32 29% Jewellery/Accessories 44 40% Cosmetics 26 23% Books 50 45% CDs/DVDs 54 49% Toys/Games 36 32% Other 11 10% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%. 17. Of these gifts which purchases would you make online? (Tick all that apply) Vouchers 150 | P a g e 55 49% Clothing 48 43% Consumer electronics 51 46% Tickets for events (cinema, concert, theatre etc.) 78 70% Airline tickets 46 41% Jewellery/Accessories 28 25% Cosmetics 22 20% Books 56 50% CDs/DVDs 48 43% Toys/Games 29 26% Other 6 5% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%. 18. What sites did you use to buy these gifts? (Tick all that apply) Specialist sites (e.g. PC World, Ticketmaster etc.) 86 79% Online retailer (e.g. Amazon) 81 74% Auction sites (e.g. Ebay) 37 34% Gift retailers (e.g. Giftsdirect) 16 15% Other 11 10% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%. Wishlists/Bookmarking 19. Do you make use of any online retailers shopping wishlists to keep track of products you would like? Yes 51 38% No 85 63% 20. List some of your favourite websites where you would avail of this feature. TommyApart from AMAZON not decidedwowhd.com, play.com, amazon.comAmazonebay, amazon.ASOS, ticketmasterwww.thomann.de www.musicstore.comAmazon, ThomannRiver Island, Topshop, Korkeys etcRiver Island Boohoo.com ticketmaster amazon asosamazonAmazon and eBayamazonGap, Amazon, AsosAmazon Tripadvisor Bookings.com AA Insure/ Online insurance companies Banking products Utilities companies websitesAmazon, Ebay, CDWow, BooHoo, LittleWoodsamazon nudie Amazon.com, Debenhams, Wallis, Ticket MasterAmazon.com Beauty Bay Ticket master www.taobao.com www.strawberry.hkn/ahmv topshop ASOS littlewoods 21. What types of products would you add to your wishlist? (Tick all that apply) Clothing 62 61% Consumer electronics 37 37% 151 | P a g e Tickets for events 49 49% Airline tickets 30 30% Jewellery/Accessories 27 27% Cosmetics 15 15% CDs/DVDs 43 43% Toys/Games 19 19% Other 13 13% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%. 22. As a rough estimate what do you think would be the average value of the items on your wishlist? <€20 €20 - €49 €50 - €99 €100 - €149 €150 - €199 €200 - €299 €300 - €399 €400 - €499 €500 - €999 €1000+ 8 6% 35 26% 35 26% 8 6% 4 3% 6 4% 2 1% 0 0% 2 1% 4 3% 23. Of the products in your wishlist how many of them would you realistically be likely to purchase for yourself? None 1 - 24% 25 - 49% 50 - 74% 75 - 99% 100% 8 6% 40 29% 26 19% 17 13% 8 6% 6 4% 24. Would you make friends aware of products you would like them to purchase for you as gifts for birthday, wedding etc? Yes 68 50% No 55 40% 25. Would you make use of a friends wishlist, if they made it available for you to see, when making a decision on purchasing a gift for them? 152 | P a g e Yes 92 68% No 31 23% Technical 26. To your knowledge do you actively make use of plugins/extensions for web browsers (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome etc.)? Yes 89 65% No 23 17% Do not know 24 18% 27. How do you feel about using browser plugins/extensions? 1 - Strongly oppose 3 2% 2 5 4% 3 67 49% 4 23 17% 5 - Strongly favor 23 17% Strongly oppose Strongly favor 28. How likely are you to use a browser plugin/extension if it offered some additional function you would make use of? 1 - Extremely unlikely 6 4% 2 3 2% 3 38 28% 4 49 36% 5 - Extremely likely 26 19% Extremely unlikely Extremely likely 29. How likely are you to use social media buttons on online retail sites to post about 153 | P a g e products you are interested in to your social networks? 1 - Extremely unlikely 49 36% 2 24 18% 3 21 15% 4 23 17% 5 - Extremely likely 10 7% Extremely unlikely Extremely likely 30. How likely are you to use the login with Facebook feature when creating an account on a website? 1 - Extremely unlikely 49 36% 2 20 15% 3 28 21% 4 18 13% 5 - Extremely likely 11 8% Extremely unlikely Extremely likely Privacy 31. In general which is more important to you: CONVENIENCE or PRIVACY? Convenience 39 29% Privacy 97 71% 32. If given the option, do you set your profile on social networking sites to private? Yes 110 81% No 5 4% Sometimes 18 13% 33. How important is your consent when... - Sites sell/share your personal information with 154 | P a g e others Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 3 2% 1 1% 8 6% 17 13% 104 76% 33. How important is your consent when... - Sites track your movement around their site Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 4 3% 16 12% 24 18% 33 24% 56 41% 33. How important is your consent when... - Sites track your movement around the internet Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 2 1% 5 4% 8 6% 22 16% 96 71% 33. How important is your consent when... - Sites track you online purchases Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 4 3% 5 4% 22 16% 30 22% 70 51% 33. How important is your consent when... - Sites gather in-depth personal profiles about you from other outside databases Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 3 2% 3 2% 6 4% 19 14% 102 75% 33. How important is your consent when... - Sites customize your online experience to your personal preferences Very Unimportant Unimportant Neither Important nor Unimportant Important Very Important 4 3% 10 7% 28 21% 37 27% 50 37% 34. How do you feel about companies monetising your personal information online by selling 155 | P a g e it to third party organisations? Totally unacceptable 1 2 3 4 5 - Perfectly acceptable Totally unacceptable 86 63% 22 16% 14 10% 9 7% Perfectly acceptable 3 2% Number of daily responses Interview Ryan O’Donnell CEO of Let’s Gift It 1) How would you describe Let’s Gift It in your own words just to get some context? a. Let’s Gift it is a platform for social gifting, we make it easy fun and social f or friends, family and co-workers to split the cost of a gift 2) Are you a B2B company or a B2C company? a. B2B primarily. We do a little bit of B2C only to keep us on our toes i. Why B2B – creating widget rather than creating a B2C social website? a. Easier with less money and resources to go B2B, basically B2C is harder to scale 3) From the technical point of view would it be more difficult to develop the plugin? a. Same difficulty either way 156 | P a g e 4) From your experience how competitive would you say the market is over there? a. Its very crowded the gifting market is very crowded] 5) Yeah we were surprised to see how many gifting platforms exist after our research… a. Ye, well just in the US alone there was 111,000 companies started, look at any industry especially online, its full in every aspect, the internet is full of people trying to solve the same problem in incrementally different ways – how all that is going to shape up we will see but yes the gifting market is crowded. 6) How do Let’s Gift it differentiate themselves from the rest? a. We have a boatload of new products coming out that moves further away from group gifting (was not prepared to reveal new products) - basically we took 10% of our product and made it 90% of our business. 7) Do you primarily target North American consumers or would you have attracted any business from Europe or Asia for instance? a. Primarily NA to start, the main reason for that is when you are processing credit cards or shipping internationally, its get very complicated when you start to deal with no domestic transactions 8) Following on from your experience would you think the Europeans for example would be less inclined to take part in group gifting than the Americans for instance. a. I don’t think so I think they would be just as inclined or even more inclined from my experience. 9) In relation to your target market, corporate office groups, friends, families etc, what would be the most popular events people engage with your group gifting service? a. Birthdays – 50% Holidays probably – 30% and everything else is kind of split between the rest 157 | P a g e 10) In relation to your demographics, what gender would be the most likely candidate to begin a group gift? a. Males are not really coming gin and starting a group gift, it is primarily females 11) Revenue streams, would you use advertising, affiliation, transaction or syndication? a. Primarily affiliate fees and for B2B it’s software as a service model i. Would you use something like Skimlinks for affiliate fees model? a. Yes skimlinks would probably be a good way to start, if I was to do it over again I would have used Skimlinks but it was not around when I started. From the consumer side that would be a good avenue to pursue 12) What’s the biggest challenge Let’s Gift Faces? a. The biggest challenge is your dealing with subset niche markets – so you have (USA) 190b$ online commerce market – so you have an estimated 10% of that is gifts (19b$) – then you have a subset of that is group gifts – what is that number? Well I’ve been quoted at saying its 10% of Gifts so its like 2b$ - so you have got 2b$ to go out and find for you business – total market – still a big market – But what portion of that will go in search of a group gifting website – the problem may not be big enough to create a big enough market – so the solution may not be solving a big enough problem – its kind of to be determined – there is enough companies tackling this so that we should start to see if there is a big enough market over the next year or two in terms of sustainability b. I’ll go down one more path on this – its always interesting when you look at a startup in terms of the US. We can look at a West Coast versus East Coast startup – West Coast is get as many users as you can as quickly as you can (free service) – East coast is figure out a business model and grow a sustainable business and once you hit some kind of traction scale what’s working – I think with group gifting the biggest challenge is in order to engage with the web service that you have you require somebody to use their credit card – some of it is security (they don’t know me), they may not have their credit card on them or I’m on my mobile I cant do this – 158 | P a g e one of the challenges is keying in on the transaction but I still think there is a business here. I think there is a correct path to customer acquisition and providing a service I don’t think anybody is doing it yet. 13) Would Let’s Gift It be one of the main players in the market? a. Its hard to say, we are more B2B focused compared to some of our competitors who are more B2C focused. So depending how you carve up the market that I subject to conformation 14) In relation to attracting clients to B2B, what are the most effective channels of marketing the service to potential businesses? a. Invest in a trade show. Furthermore I have had a career before doing this I have 1300 LinkedIn connections it’s a hell of a lot easier to get in front of people with that. Having a strong network or being able to tap into somebody else’s strong network is very important. 15) Most popular product or service that a Gift page or event is created for – electronics, holidays etc? a. American express gift cards – gift cards for cash not gift cards for products 16) How did you guys get the business going? In terms of investment and capital? a. We didn’t do any VC I prefer not to fund this with any VC at all – we raised through angels 17) Is the company working towards profitability now? a. Working towards profitability after one year and a half – there is such little barriers to entry in this market that it is not difficult for a new person come in and get started pretty quickly. 18) Have you found it difficult to acquire partners? a. Yes, companies are reluctant to add the plug-in or widget to their websites, we try to convince companies by ‘giving away your first born son’, be ready to give it away for free for a minute, to start until you can prove that it works. 159 | P a g e 19) In relation to the technical side of things, would you say the technology behind it is difficult to implement? a. The most difficult thing about technology in our time aside from building hardware, has been setting up infrastructure, so back in the day they would have to go to Sun or Cisco and buy shit load of servers to spit, today everything is just done in the cloud so its free you know its super easy to do, not free necessarily but its free relative to the cost of hardware. So to build the actual technology I don’t think it’s terribly difficult to build in relation to a lot of other things. I don’t think there is much difficult to technology to implement today, which is what makes markets like these that much more competitive and at risk. 20) We were looking to incorporate a wishlist function into our service, you guys don’t use it, have you looked into that at all or is there a reason? a. Yeah we have looked into it, there is no reason why we haven’t done it, other than we have not focused on our consumer side of the business but there is probably something there along with a social rewards scheme on the consumer side. 21) Does Let’s Gift it offer a mobile app? a. No, for group gifting probably not, I get it and what you would do with it but we are doing a lot more than group gifting now so that is not really our core business 22) In relation to the payment methods, why do you guys use authorize.net as opposed to PayPal? a. PayPal does not allow a business model that works off of aggregation so folks who are using PayPal, I don’t know how they are doing it you can’t aggregate payment together. If you want a really good way to take some competitors out of the market send complaints into PayPal. I would recommend going with somebody like authorize – anytime you collect money, you’re the middle man, they call it aggregation so a lot of payment type companies will not want to take this kind of business, its too risky, so you need to go with whoever takes your business, just get something live and figure it out from there 160 | P a g e 23) Are there any legal requirements with offering such a service or would the disclaimer dissolve the responsibility to the retailer? a. It’s a tough questions, we haven’t had any problems in relation to that its hard to know exactly, the retailer is going to make sure the obligation falls to us, but like as I said we haven’t had to deal with that. Technology A Appendix A: Data Protection Commissioner Contact Details Data Protection Commissioner Canal House, Station Road, Portarlington, Co. Laois Lo-Call: 1890 25 22 31 Tel. +353 57 868 4800; Fax +353 57 868 4757 Website: www.dataprotection.ie E-mail: [email protected] Technology B Appendix B: Processing fee for Applications / Renewals Postal On-Line Applications (Visa, Laser or Applications Mastercard) Applicants with 26 employees or more (inclusive) €480 €430 Applicants with 6 to 25 employees (inclusive) €100 €90 Applicants with 0 to 5 employees (inclusive) €40 €35 161 | P a g e Technology C Index 162 | P a g e Registration Step 1: Sign-up Options Registration Step 2: Invite Friends 163 | P a g e Registration Step 3: Create Social Groups 164 | P a g e Registration Step 4: Start a few wishlists Registration Step 5: Add Plugin 165 | P a g e Registration: Finished User Profile Page Example 166 | P a g e 167 | P a g e User Wishlist Example 168 | P a g e Search Results Example 169 | P a g e Friend Wishlist Profile Example Friend Wishlist Category Example 170 | P a g e 171 | P a g e Webpage with Browser Plugin Example Plugin Dialogue Box Example 172 | P a g e Group Gift Widget on Host Site 173 | P a g e