I.About us
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= www.Taste-Your-Fashion.com
Cooperating Companies:
The fashion company: FOREST is a small and medium sized
design and retailing company, targeting on the white collar class and
fashionable young people with certain purchasing power.
Forest always offers unique designs
and good service for their customers.
Ants Cafe:
Average consumption:
150-200HKD
Ants Cafe Offersdelicate dishes
including high-quality cafe, drinks and liquor, desserts and western food,
praising elite lifestyle.
Bottleneck Period!
Forest: Continuous sales decrease over
several seasons
Ants Cafe: Limited by themselves on the
design of the dishes, have not made any improvements on the creativity for long
time and the customers have become cheesed.
-What we do through the platform?
This website is regarded as a platform
for both companies creating values. The website will take advantage of the
internet, launching series of on-line activities to interact with fans,
followers and customers. Both of the company will also build any possible
links between the two to maximize the benefits of the website. Such methods
like membership, credit-based system will also be applied on this
platform to attract and retain customers.
-Our Expected Outcomes
Because both of the companies are in the bottleneck period, so building
the virtual platform is for Taking them away from the difficulties and helps
the companiesimprove in moral, reputation and popularity, and also helps
both companies find new commercial opportunities as well as development path.
This is an imaginative try for the companies with similar problems and
needs. The website will not only attract customers’ attention to both brands,
but also will generate profits for the off-line business, because the
innovative form of promoting will rouse the curiosity of both regular and
potential customers and the diverse promotion activities will make them try by
the new e-business approach or find new service from the traditional off-line
stores.
-Why do we cooperate?
1) The similar problems and needs
As what have been mentioned before,
both of the two companies are faced with the same problems: the period of
stagnations and bottleneck. Both of them have no ideas about how to take
measures to change the current situations solely. The deep reasons of their
stagnations and even decrease actually is no innovation. After customers have
experienced all the fresh things, they begin to leave and find something more
attractive.
2) The similar target market
The target customers of both fashion company
and restaurant are similar. The customer of the Forest is white collar class
with certain purchasing power (income ranging from 15000 to 25000HKD/month) and
has particular taste to life. Because the average consumption of Ants Cafe is
150-200HKD, so the pricing actually targets their customers within the white
collar class, which is overlapping with the customers of Forest. And then our
Taste-your-fashion.com will attract customers from both sides and make them
become the customers of the counterpart, which will definitely bring more
potential audience and generate more profits for both companies.
3) The similar enterprise-scale
Both of the two companies belong to the small
and medium sized enterprise and they are in the similar period of their
development, which make them better understand counterpart’s situation and
demand, and also make the cooperation possible and feasible to implement.
4) The similar nature
There is an old saying in China from Mencius:
The desire for food and sex is part of human nature. And there is also an
Chinese phrase called：some people are beautiful enough to
feast the eyes(秀色可餐). Those sayings help us to explain the idea to make these two companies
cooperate together. The fashion industry is all about beauty and when
appropriate people wear beautiful clothes, it will give the audience the
feeling of enjoyment, just like the delicacies for eyes. So beauty and
delicious cuisine are similar in the nature, and this similarity in nature
makes our Taste-your-fashion more reasonable and more easily accepted by
customers.
value creation from
taste-your-fashion.com
1．Operation
-This online platform has several functions
First,
it’s an interaction platform for customers and our two companies. Customers can
write down their suggestions and ideas in this community. We, two companies,
can gain the feedback from them and give out our opinions and standpoints.
Second,
it’s a display platform for customers and our two companies.
Customers can show their special taste in fashion and food here with their
friends. We, two companies, can also display our theme designs of fashion and
food together in it.
Third,
it’s an e-commerce platform to suit the convenience of our
customers. Customers who have no time to order their needs can use this
platform to make their order. We will receive their orders and provide them
what they need as soon as possible.
-What are we selling?
-Who are our targeting customers?
We are
more focusing on a niche market, actually. Since our offline customers are
targeting on those young and fashion women, the new website’s targeting
customers are consistent with the physical shops’. These women have fair buying
power to pay for our not cheap products, foods and fashion goods. Besides, they
would also like to pursue the gourmet and fashion trends and hold theme parties
at home for entertainment.
When
we were consulting with each other, we did care about the value creation part.
The taste-your-fashion.com can help us in marketing promotion and customer services.
One
part is the display showed in the website. It becomes our two companies’
official website to release our brand products to our current customers. Besides,
our cooperated theme products will attract more potential customers through
this platform.
Another
part is the online membership points. We are encouraging our customers to be
active in this online community. They can click into this website and join in
the online activities designed for them to gather membership points, like
sharing of customer experience,ranking for new theme designs, etc. Then, they
can use these membership points to exchange coupons and free gifts to consume
in our two companies.
2) Customer services
Although
it is just a platform for us to share customers, we still pay attention to
superior customer services. As mentioned before, it is a platform for
interaction and e-commerce. Interaction platform as it is can help us gather
customers’ personal information and focus on services for them. For example,
the customers can make comments on the community, whether they are positive or
not. Then, we can give them feedback of our standpoints or solutions on the
community as well. This can enhance the customer relationship actually. It
shows that we do care about them and still provide the best for them.
E-commerce platform as it is can help customers to make orders easily. It is
suitable and available for customers who have no spare time to buy our products
in our physical shops but want to get our products as soon as possible. In this
function, we can retain more current customers and attract more potential
customers actually. Moreover, it also provides an opportunity for our customers to make special orders. For instance, one of our customers wants to hold an Easter party. Then, she can make order though this platform to tell both of us. Then, we will arrange our designers to contact with her and give her specific theme designs of fashion cloths and food in the party. After all, we regard the taste-your-fashion.com as a multifunctional platform for both of our two companies to provide superior customer services. It will create value for us through the customers’ reaction in this community.
First,
it is about the design of website. As an opening website, we should make sure
that the customers can easily click into and browse through our content. So,
the structure of our website should be logical and clear. Besides, the web
design should be user-friendly. Customers have no much patience to learn how to
operate in the website actually.
Second,
it is about the customer services. We are not only the display platform on the
Internet, but also an interaction and e-commerce platform. So, we should focus
on customer services. We need timely online customer representatives to serve
those potential customers. Being enthusiasm and patient will let potential
customers feel good and be willing to purchase from us. We also need complete
after sales services to serve for current customers. These customers would like
to share their purchasing experience in the community. So we should serve them
well to gain their satisfaction.
Third,
it is about the promotion for current customers. As mentioned before, membership
points can exchange to coupons and free gifts. These promotion methods are
quite effective to retain the current customers and encourage them to consume
again.
After
all, conversion rate should be related to several conditions. We could not just
use methods introduced before to increase the conversion rate. We should create
and change our strategies based on the real situations. That is the smartest
way to deal with this problem.
2. The Key
Resources and Required Skills
-The Key Resources for Building a True Community
The aim of
tast-your-fashion.com is not only building to maximize the values for both Ants
Inc. and Forest Inc., but also offer and deliver value proposition to customers
through effectively and efficiently using their resources.
The following
key resources are needed to build a true community:
1) Physical resources: As the taste-your-fashion.com is a
virtual community, the extra manufacture facilities or building are not highly
required. Ants Inc. already has physical stores which could provide strong
backbone for further manufacture and delivery. What is the most important
physical resource are the IT infrastructures which are fundamental and
momentous for a virtual community. Because this community focuses not only on
one-way interaction of showing design but also supports multi-communication
between customers and company. It requires a qualified server to guarantee
every customer won’t come across bugs when they are searching items or sharing
opinions with other users. The importance of good operation of the website just
likes the physical stores daily operation that both needs good infrastructures
to guarantee customers enjoy a pleasant journey.
2) Intellectual resources (Knowledge Management): Taste-your-fashion.com is the production of intellectual creativity
from Ants Inc. and Forest Inc., so intellectual resources are the key resources
both our two companies value to support this virtual website. We rely on the
existing two brands, because this could bring the customers we already have in
physical stores to our taste-your-fashion.com. They are the early adopters and
keys to run smoothly in the start-up stage. Also because of the brands
recognition, if we provide superior service to the customers online, the nature
of virtual platform provides easy way for them to share with their friends or
family by just clicking the link. The brands of two companies will also attract
potential customers from each company and mix them up to maximize values for
both.
Besides the
brands, the proprietary knowledge also stands in the key points which bring
backbone for companies’ long-term operation. For our Ants Inc, it can be the
secret recipe of our cakes or private data of our premier customers, etc.
All the
intellectual resources are related with knowledge, so in the following skills
part we will demonstrate more details about the crucial skills for managing
both parties’ knowledge.
3) Human resources: Taste-your-fashion.com is in a highly
knowledge-intensive and creative industry. We don’t sell the cakes as what the
cakes cost; we sell our design and ideas of cakes which place added values by
our differentiation strategy. People are the highest important resource for us
to pay more attention to. If we can’t make good design to catch the fashion trend
of our partner Forest Inc. or satisfy the needs of customers, or we can’t
preserve the design achievements successfully, taste-your-fashion would face
the situation of losing customers, destroying image and copycat phenomenon. All
these consequences won’t produce win-win situation or maximizing values for
both companies. So the key points for design are to get the most creative
people and know how to manage them.
What the
requirements for human capital of virtual website different from physical
stores is that we appreciate people who are versatile. Those people who only
have creative ideas to design only what they think are not the right one we are
looking for. We need people with creativity and high assimilation ability,
because customers are always the lighthouse for our business. Designers should
assimilate customers’ taste and then add their creativity into the end product.
Also people working for virtual website should master basic to moderate IT
skills, extra IT workers are needed in taste-your-fashion.
4) Financial resources: Taste-your-fashion is established by
Ants Cafe and Forest,and thiswill reduce the risk for both companies. The risk
is not only in the operation but also in the finance stage. Two companies could
provide stronger financial support than only one company and reduce each of
their financial burdens when are seeking diversification in different virtual
platforms. They could make cash pooling which operates the cash debiting or
crediting each sub-account of taste-your-fashion, Ants Inc. and Forest Inc.
easily. This cash pooling also realizes the maximum using excessive cash and
makes every cash valuable.
-The Required Skills for Operating the
Virtual platform
Economic Value:
What the
taste-your-fashion.com provides to customers directly is not physical
substances, it offers vast information that customers could not get in the
physical stores. Both companies catch the economic values through the
information captured in virtual website to prosper the sales even the whole
brands. The cycle for information operation is producing, distributing and
selling.
1) Knowledge management skills (Design): How to
design is a quite tacit thing that most ideas are embedded in designers’ mind.
At this point, how to manage the knowledge they have and transform them into
the real economic values requires good knowledge management skills. For the
explicit knowledge, such as the documentation of products or customer profiles,
they could be shared easily and freely between the two companies. But for tacit
knowledge, our two companies promote the communication of designers from both,
especially facing with a new theme order or festivals before. Clearly
communication through words could reduce most of misunderstanding and
uncertainty between both parties.
Design is
the source of the information showing in the website. It’s a production process
which demands high quality and fitted skills to satisfy customers and keep the
brand image. The design skills greatly determine whether taste-your-fashion
would win the market. Although some customers would consume when highly
promotion is added, the core for sales is your value proposition which means
the degree of design for taste and fashion.
2) Learning Skills: As what we demonstrate before, this is
a knowledge-intensive and dynamic industry. Everything is updating quickly
which demands people in this field continuing enrich themselves with new
knowledge from the theories, market and people around. For designers, they need
to catch the cutting-edge fashion and most advanced technology. Also they have
to share ideas with colleagues and the other party to make integration.
Therefore good learning skills are demanded in this business.
3) Web page design skills: Besides the raw design for catering,
how to show or layout your products to customers relates to the sales too. We
can always see some physical stores furnish themselves attentively and layout
their products in a thoughtful way. Why retailer put so much emphasis on the
showing process? Because what you layout has already show the retailers’ taste
and image, customers could easy distinguish whether your brand is fitted into
their expectations through just a glance. For the virtual website, it must
catch customers’ attention and guarantee they won’t close the tab when they
first visit, only did that you could develop further business or potential
economic values captured in the information.
4) Sales skills: Although taste-your-fashion provides
a platform for both companies showing the newest design, it’s also a forum for
customers communicating their ideas and opinions. Companies should pay more
attention to the discussion between customers than contacting with themselves.
Because during the discussion, we could easily find what customers want and the
comments from other customers just play as a market research to test publics’
taste and opinion. It’s a free and direct resource for salesman to determine
how to approach those customers and explore more consumption among them. The
communication and projection ability embedded in sales skills are quite
important to obtain economic value.
Working Over Time?
1) Financial skills: In the start-up period, both
companies reached an agreement about the investment portion for
taste-your-fashion.com, so it’s not a big problem for virtual website operation
under the financial limit. However, if the website will work over time, it’s
indubitable for companies to concern how to finance more money rather than all
invested by their two to expand business for the virtual website. To master
good financial skills to manage existing money and finance more capital is a
vital foundation.
2) Leadership skills: In both physical catering and fashion
stores, we have good structure of management. For taste-your-fashion.com, we
still need to aware it’s not a totally accessory but a real new community which
also needs additional people to manage. Ants Cafe and Forest could send out
some people to establish the management team for virtual website, and their
mission is to motivate staff and influence them to perform at the highest level
they can. While the management tactics may be not same with managing staff in
physical stores, because virtual companies value knowledge and creativity, so
empowerment leadership style may fit into this new organization. The management
way still needs more thoughts for the senior managers.
1. Comparison between
an online community and a physical community
1) Online Community
An online community
is a virtual community that exists in the Internet and whose members show its
existence through participating in membership ritual. Meanwhile, an online
community can be the form of an information system where anyone can post their
ideas. In addition, online communities have also become a supplemental platform
of communication among people who may familiar with each other in real life.
Many means of online communities are used in social software separately or in
combination, including text-based chat rooms and forums that use avatars,
voice, or video. Significant socio-technical change is the main reason for the
proliferation of such Internet-based social network.
2) Physical Community
Physical community
is composed of a group of people whose identity as a group lies in their
interaction and sharing about similar interests. Plenty of factors may affect
the identity of the participants and their degree of adhesion, such as belief,
intent, resources, preferences, risks and needs. For the physical community, it
is a more socially connected and specific place for its members. In addition,
physical activity has been seen as an essential component of physical
community. For example, all of the physical community’s members are gathered to
have a running competition.
3) The differences between an online community and a physical community
There are some
differences between an online community and a physical community. In the one
hand, the online community has the nature of relationships and even the choices
of people’s identity. It provides people many activities from home, such as
shopping, reserving products and paying bills. However, the physical community
must have a specific place to organize activities.
On the other hand, in the online community people can talk to others completely in their convenient methods or situations without seeming offensive or rude. They can show themselves the way they want to be perceived, such as exaggerating good qualities or hiding bad qualities. They can be more honest and open when able to “hide” behind their screen. They can observe the person they are talking to the way they want to see them, and focusing on or imagining the behaviors they want that person to show. There is less of a focus on physical attributes or facial expressions, and more of a focus on conversational skills and personality.
2.Comparison between an Virtual Community and a Web Portal
1) Virtual Community
A virtual community
is a social network of individuals who interact with each other through
specific social media, potential political or geographical boundaries in order
to pursue mutual goals or interests. Virtual communities all encourage
interaction, sometimes focusing on a particular beliefs or interests, or just
to communicate. Some virtual communities do both. Community members can
communicate with each other through chat room, message boards, virtual worlds
or social networking sites. 2) Web Portal
A web portal is a
website that gathers information together from various resources in a uniform
method. Apart from the standard search engines character, portals provide other
services, such as news, email, databases, stock prices and entertainment. In
addition, portals provide a new way for companies to provide a consistent view
with access control and procedures for multiple databases and applications.
Some famous public portals are MSN, Yahoo, Baidu and so on.
3) The differences between a Virtual Community and a Web Portal
There are many
differences between a virtual community and a web portal. First, the purpose of
a virtual community is providing a platform for people to communicate, but a
web portal aims at providing various information or news to its browsers. A web
portal brings plenty of information together and posts them in the website. In
addition, the web portal can be classified based on the function
differentiation, such as search portals, news portals, stock portals and so on.
However, in the virtual community plenty of communication platforms can be
founded, such as chart room, message boards, forum and so on.
Second, the amount of information provided in virtual communities and web portals are different. In most of virtual communities you can only find limited information about a specific and concrete interest or belief, because virtual communities are used for a variety of professional or interest groups. However, in web portals there is a lot of information because web portals are, for many users, the starting point of their web browser.
Finally, virtual communities are aimed at a group of people who have the similar interests or beliefs. Because virtual communities all encourage interacting people having a particular interest, the members of virtual communities are limited and only focus on a particular group. However, web portals face more wide users because a web portal is just the starting point of web surfing and it aims at serving almost every user.
3. Our Virtual Community
Our virtual
community is really a community that provides a platform for members to
communicate with others. First, in our virtual community we use website to
organize members together and the virtual community is a social network of
individuals who interact others through the Internet. All of our activities are
organized in the website, so members can take part in our activities through
the Internet at home and participate in every time when they are convenient.
Second, our virtual community provides many interactive modules for members in order to imitate their passive to communicate with other members and our company. For example, there is a voting module in the website. In this module, members can choose their favorite caters and designers of the corresponding season. At the same time, they can also participate in the design team to give their ideas about next season’s design. Moreover, we also develop a forum for members to express and discuss their opinions on specific topic every week.
Finally, our virtual community can attract people who have the similar interest and belief. For example, all of our members are those people having a strong interest in fashion and caters. They would like to chase fashion trends and taste delicious caters. In addition, they also have the interest to participate in design and have their own opinion about costume design and food design. Meanwhile, the most important thing is that most of our members are the loyalty customers of both of our companies.
Therefore,
considering on above analysis we believe our virtual community is really a
community and it can enhance members’ interests on our company.
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1. Alexander
Osterwalder (2010), Business Model Generation. Canada: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc.
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4. Keith
Ferrazzi(2012), How Successful Virtual
Teams Collaborate, Harvard Business Review
6. Sue Boetcher, Heather
Duggan, Nancy White (2002), What is a Virtual Community and Why Would You Ever
Need One?
