CRICKETMANIA - Exclusive Branded Cricket Apparel And Essay.

Assessment for eCommerce Management requires you to complete an individual piece of in-course work worth 100%. To complete this requirement and demonstrate satisfaction of the module learning outcomes (as listed in Appendix 2), you are required to:

4develop a new venture proposal for a web store and present your proposal as an infographic supported by a portfolio of relevant research, analysis and design artifacts.

4build a prototype web storefront implementing your Internet business idea using proprietary software, publishing your prototype eStore to the school intranet.

The USP of the website is that it provides exclusive items for Cricket  players. The Corporate Livery and Logo for the company has been developed considering the value of the brand and the sports it is associated with. They all speak of the same values that can be related to the brand. The customers would get the best prices in the market for the branded products because of the exclusive deals company has with the suppliers. The replica store offers branded apparels and accessories that look exactly the same as used by world renowned Cricket  players but would be available at much less prices than the original brand. The store would also offer customization of products with one’s brand name or logo printed on the sports item purchased. The customers of the website would be the Cricket  fans who would like to associate with the sports and with the players. The customers would also include the companies looking for sponsoring the players in their games and are going to get the clothes, accessories and sports items for them to use with their own logos and names printed on the products. This would give the company or brand a visibility in the sports (Issuu Inc., 2017).

In the year 2014, 17% of the buyers of sports clothes, footwear and equipments had purchases done for Cricket  as obtained from the Mintel Reports on Sports retail. The consumer expenditure on sport goods was £3,750 million in 2014. While buying sports goods from a new retailer, the key considerations included low prices, good website, recommendations from others, trying option and unavailability of option with other stores (Team, 2016). 

As per the Mintel data study  on sports purchaser on internet, 62% of the buyers make purchases for low prices while 27% like to purchase from a good website. Considering these trends, the company can target up to 89% of the internet sports buyers by building an engaging website and offering discounted products online.

The key reason behind people buying sports goods are for playing or as patrons of Cricket  sports. Corporate buyers purchase them for the players of the Cricket  team that they would be sponsoring any sports game. They want to make purchases that are authentic, good quality and are available at best prices. However, most stores offer all kinds of sports goods and thus, several times when a specific sports like Soccer is chosen, the availability is often a problem and personalization of the items can take time. With exclusivity of providing soccer sports goods by PROCRICKET, this pain of the buyers would be relieved (Crompton, 2014). The benefits that they would receive from the purchases on the website include:

• Low cost items
• Exclusive items
• Availability of replicas of big sports people
• Higher availability and fast delivery
• Availability of exclusive items related to Cricket  sports
• Updates on latest items offered at exclusive prices

Target audience

The sports goods consumer not makes direct online purchases but use omni channel to get information and triggers that push them into the journey to purchase (Joshi, 2017). The journey of the customer who would be purchasing cricket sports goods online can be explained as below:

A buyer first conducts a research on the product he or she wants to buy for which it would search the soccer items online and would browse the catalogues available on different websites. A comparison is then made based on the available products and their prices. Once informed about the product, the customer may like to visit a shoo or use a kiosk or read reviews on the website before selecting a product for purchase and then an order would be placed online. After placing the order, the consumer may make some changes in the order or post on social media platforms like Twitter the experience with the product. In this journey of the sports goods buyer, the company can get in touch with the buyer in different ways including through website, through contact centre, via a store, cataloguing, mobile communication, email to buyers or prospects and social media interaction. Each of these modes can serve as triggers to push a customer toward the later stages of buying (PAWAR, 2014).

While organization would take care of the customer needs and their communication patterns, there would be other market forces. These forces can still affect the performance of the organization in the market as they can also influence the customers and the market directly or indirectly. Thus, it is important to explore the power of these forces that the company could be experiencing so that appropriate strategies can be made to deal with them in the best possible way.

Porter’s five forces theory can be used here to determine the power of buyers, suppliers, rivals, substitutes, and new entrants.

Buyers: Buyers have many options and can easily switch to another brand or store if the desired product with desired quality of the sports good is unavailable. In addition, they take decisions based on the lowest prices offered. As there are already many players selling sports goods in the market, the buyer would have many options.  Thus, they have a strong bargaining power (Shamir & Johnson, 2014).

Suppliers: As the company has the key value provide to customers through low prices, the company needs to have strong and healthy relationships with suppliers to be able to make it possible. Thus, suppliers of the company have a strong bargaining power as their prices would affect the final prices of goods on the website. The company does not manufacture any products of its own but is only a reseller and thus, the suppliers have significant bargain power.

Consumer behaviour

Rivals: There are many existing companies selling sports goods online and thus, completion is high. However, when considering only a single sport that the company has chosen, the rivals may not have the high edge in the segment. Thus, it can be said that rival organizations only have a moderate influence (Shank & Lyberger, 2014).

Substitutes: Substitutes of the sports products are easily available in the flea market that has replica items. However, the company has include the offers of replica with quality much better than the flea market goods, the power of substitutes may be diluted to some extent. However, price conscious buyers may still make a purchase from them. Thus, it can be said that the company has a medium level of threat from substitutes.

New Entrants: The Company is only a reseller and any new entrant can easily become a reseller in the market. Building an ecommerce website for selling goods can also be managed at low costs as the technology is low cost and thus, company can have a significant threat from new entrants in the space.  However, the low price and exclusivity model of the company cannot be easily replicated by small resellers and thus, the threat from the new entrants can be considered to be of moderate level (Smith & Stewart, 2014).

The product range includes boots, keepers, replicas, Cricket s, teamwear, equipments, clothing, fitness products, sneakers, and goods for kids.

Product Range	Brands & Items
Bats	MRF, Adidas, Chase, SF, Slazenger, Newberry, Puma, Salix, Kookabura, Hunts County
Balls	New Balance
Batting Pads	Milichamps, Salix, New Balance, Kookabura,Slazenger, TON, Newberry, Gunn & Moore, Hunts County, Adidas
Batting Gloves	Salix, New Balance, Kookabura,Slazenger, TON, Newberry, Gunn & Moore, Hunts County, Adidas
Junior	Gloves, Playing Wear, Cricket sets, Shoes, Wicket keeping, Body Protection, Helmets
Clothing	Slazenger, New Balance, Kookaburra, ONeils, Adidas, Aero, Nike, Puma,
Accessories	Bat Cover, Bat Face, Batting Inns, Stumps, Bat Grips, Bat Mallet, Bat Toe Protector, Bat Linseed Oil, Sunglasses
Footwear	Adidas, Nike, SG, NB, GN, Kook

Images of all the products in defined categories and brands have already been collected. Some examples of these images are shown below:

The descriptions of the products would be small with only some details including the brand name, product name, size, price, and quantity. Besides this, there would also be a small description highlighting the benefits of the product. For instance, in the case of a Speedgrip socks, the description would include details like 2X grip and slippage reduction as its benefits.

Competitiveness can be defined as the performance of a brand or an organization in the target market. At the company level, competitiveness would require improvements in the productivity of the company while at the industry level; it would be defined by extent to which an industrial sector is able to satisfy the demands of consumers and workers. The industry is already competitive as there are many players selling sports goods and huge variety is available. IF the organization needs to be competitive then it has to ensure that it is able to meet the needs of the target customers. As the company is exclusively selling the goods for soccer players and enthusiasts and have the tie ups with product companies in each category, the company would have enough goods to satisfy the needs of buyers and thus, would be sensitive (Jhamb, 2002).

Porter's five forces analysis

There are already many players selling sports goods in UK such as Cricket Store Online, Cricket Supplies, and Cricketer shop who would be the major competitors. While these competitors sell all the cricket sports goods, CRICKETMANIA would create a niche with selling only branded goods and would also provide personalization  (Ebin, 2015).  The websites of these three competitors were analysed using freeform approach to analysis.

To understand how competition website are targeting prospect customers, how is website performing and what features are included on their website. The competition websites include https://www.cricketstoreonline.com, https://www.cricketsupplies.com/, and https://www.cricketershop.com/.

SEO analysis would be done for the competition websites. It would involve gathering of intelligence. Some tools would be used to run the analysis for each of the website such as similar web which can be used for understanding the marketing strategy of the website. The data would be extracted from different sources by these tools including web surfing panels, ISPs, data partners, web traffic, and web crawlers. Variables included in the analysis would be monthly visitors, bounce rates, page visits, referring sites, traffic from channels, display ads, paid search traffic, audience interest and keywords.

The researcher would directly observe the codes of the competing websites to analyse it by collecting information on title tags, meta descriptions, links, anchor texts, javascript, and URL.

The picture above shows analysis of a web page in the United States detailing the CEO analysis. It shows total desktop visits, monthly changes, traffic share, category traffic, business categories, countrywide traffic and traffic sources.

The approach would be taken using certain online tools like Alexa, Quantcast, and SEMRush for analysis. Besides this, the analyst would directly see the code to observe title tags, meta descriptions, links, anchor text, javascript, and URL check.

The results of the analysis of the competition would reveal what parameters bring results to the competition.

The estore should be able to get as many visitors as possible for the company.

For marketing, the company will make use of digital marketing involving email marketing, SEM, and social media marketing channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin. On these platforms, marketing messages would be posted including messages like latest offers, key brands, and exclusivity of the website.

Following Marketing strategies would be used for the digital marketing of CRICKETMANIA:

• Goals would be set for achieving specific targets through social media marketing
• Traffic would be driven to the website through the use of relevant and good quality content, using appropriate keywords on the website, optimizing web pages and images.
• A marketing funnel would be created through the use of call to action, lead magnets, opt-in offers, and other offers. For conversion, first, an awareness would be created about the brand and then interest would be generated, and then marketing messages would create desire so that customers or audience take an action.

Legal considerations would be taken care of by asking a few questions about the website including:

• Is the website legally mandated to make its pages accessible?
• What accessibility policies have to be complied with?
• How will the website meet the needs of the audience of the website?
• What are specific guidelines and conformance levels needed?
• Does the organization know the consequences of a failure?(W3C, 2005)

Considering the legislative needs of the website, policies, business rules, and legal statements have been prepared on the website highlighting the  compliance needs of the website.

Product range

The website uses a  unique colour scheme of orange and light blue colour reflecting upon sports scheme. Functionalities enabled on the website include:

• Promotional codes
• Easy checkout
• Optimized Code
• Reporting tools
• Payment options
• SEO coding
• Email marketing integration
• Search features
• Content management system for managing brand logo, product addition, select options, attachment of videos, and setting of page URLs

The key attributes of the products listed on the website would be description, size, and price. Besides this, there would be some extended information such as pictures and colour variations. Useful information on the website would be the about page content, purchase terms & conditions, and contact details. Some pages of the websites contain the catalogue or brochure containing details of the products available for sale on the website. For this, the guidance has been taken from design principles and other company websites have been explored to get design ideas. 

The shopping cart would display the image, product name, price, coupon details, discounts, size, colour, and quantity of the selected items. It would then provide a submit button to take the user to the payment page where there would be multiple payment options including debit card, credit card, net banking, and digital wallet. After a payment has been made, the over would go to the company and the buyer would get a confirmation email from the company with details of expected delivery dates.

Estimated Set Up Costs for this development would be $725,000 and Estimated Running Costs would be $25,000 monthly. 

Break-even analysis

Break even point in sales = Fixed Costs/ contribution margin ratio

Assuming average cost of goods sold on the website is $300

Total  yearly Sales					= 500 × $300 = $150,000
Total Variable Cost					= $25,000 × 12 = $300,000
Total Contribution Margin					= $1,500,000 – $300,000= $1,200,000
Contribution Margin Per Unit					= $1,200,000 ÷ 500 = $24
CM Ratio					= $24/300 = 8%

Break even point in sales = 725,000/ 8% = $9,062,500

To break even from the investment done on the ecommerce website development, the company would need to make a sales of minimum USD $9,062,500.

There are a variety of hosting strategies available to be used for a website such as outsourcing the hosting, use of dedicated servers, having SLA agreements with the hosting service provider, or using content delivery networks. While use of dedicated servers can be a huge cost to an organization, use of SLA or outsourcing hosting could be much cost effective. For the current website, a hosting service provider is used with a content management system provided through an SLA agreement.

The key business rules and policies of the company include:

• Access and use of the information on the website would be decided by the local regulatory laws and regulations
• All content including text, images, and logo belongs to the company and cannot be reproduced without permission by anyone else
• The confidential information obtained from the customer during making payments would not be saved
• Any posts that are harmful, unlawful, defamatory, vulgar, etc. would be deleted from the website.

For the current venture, the evidences would collected from the competition websites, other blogs, and books related to the website development. The infographic contains the details like statistics and key concepts related to cricket market and website development steps.

References

Crompton, J. L., 2014. Potential negative outcomes from sponsorship for a sport property, s.l.: Routledge.

Ebin, A., 2015. Favourable trends continue to drive substantial growth in the sporting goods retailing sector and foster M&A transactions, s.l.: CapitalMind.

Issuu Inc., 2017. The Cricketer Good Gear Guide, s.l.: Issuu Inc..

Jhamb, P., 2002. Regional Competitiveness of Sports Goods Clusters: A Proposed Conceptual Model. IUP Journal of Business Strategy, pp. 1-4.

Joshi, H., 2017. Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions , s.l.: Delloitte.

PAWAR, A. V., 2014. STUDY OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE MARKETING ON INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION, s.l.: D.Y. Patil University.

Shamir, M. L. & Johnson, L. F., 2014. The 5 Competitive Forces Framework in a technology mediated environment. Do these forces still hold in the industry of the 21st century?, s.l.: University of Twente.

Shank, M. D. & Lyberger, M. R., 2014. Sports Marketing: A Strategic Perspective, s.l.: Routledge.

Smith, A. C. & Stewart, B., 2014. Introduction to Sport Marketing. 2nd ed. s.l.:Routledge.

Team, M. P., 2016. FASHIONISTAS CAUSE SALES OF SPORTSWEAR TO SPRINT: UK SPORTS GOODS SALES ESTIMATED TO SURPASS £7 BILLION IN 2016, s.l.: Mintel.

W3C, 2005. Legal and Policy Factors in Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization, s.l.: W3C.