Strategies And E-Business Operating Criteria For Cool Work's Online Essay In India.

Assessment Background and Requirements

Cool Works is an established Australia-based retailer selling home appliances. For the last 20 years, the company has been focusing on market within the country, as well as overseas in US, Europe and China. Besides its physical stores, the company has an online retailing arm in those countries since 2010. Since early 2018, the top management found that the company’s sales have been marginal at best. Furthermore, the drop in profit margin is largely due to the saturated market and intense competition in those countries. To resolve this problem, an idea of venturing into new markets was proposed in the last board meeting. Therefore, Cool Works has engaged Lightbulb, the consulting company you work for to conduct a feasibility study and propose an implementation plan for their new venture. You and your team have been assigned to take up this assignment.

Given that Cool works has little experience in the new and emerging markets, your team has minimal information to begin with the project. The only thing that is clear to your team is that the company is interested in one of four markets: Indonesia, India, South Africa, and South Korea. More importantly, the top management would like to invest in e-commerce (instead of physical stores) in the view that online means would incur lower upfront cost and thus lower risk.

After the first round of discussion with the client, an outline was drafted. Your team need to pick one of the four markets and the proposal should address the following:

1. The strategy of your proposed online venture

a. A discussion of the value proposition of your online venture

b. An analysis of the environmental and industry conditions that support the feasibility of your online venture such as government policy

c. A competitor analysis that supports the unique competitive values of your online venture

d. A explanation of the revenue model(s)
 

Factors to Consider for Developing an Online Venture

Cool work is a well established Australia based retailer home appliance selling shop.  The company is willing to invest capital for the Indian market. Instead of Physical store they are interested to invest for the Electronic commerce business or online business. In order to develop the online venture the proposed strategies and E-business operating criteria are illustrated in this report.

In order to develop an online venture for any business organization the main factor on which the company needs to focus- operations and functionalities (Li and Karahanna 2015). It is the role of the business developers to consider necessary components for the implementation of the online venture.

Value proposition of the online venture

Value proposition is referred to as an important element that is needed to be considered for the extension of any business whether in India or any other country. This is again highlighted as an important thing in web pages. With the help of value proposition the interest of the consumer their desires and ideas can be captured within a frame for evaluating the important aspects accurately (Ariyani and Mandiri 2015). For the Indian market business value proposition is highlighted as a main factor for driving the E-commerce business. For compelling value proposition in the Indian market certain criteria those are to be analyzed:

Figure 1: Value chain model for the online venture

Source: (Source: Wang, Cavusoglu and Deng 2016, pp-200)

In order to develop the online venture for “Cool work”, value chain model should be considered. As the company is willing to extend their business in Indian thus supportive activities are to be done by the Indian government. The infrastructure of the online venture, technical support, procurement and HR management approach is required to be enough supportive.  On the other hand, certain primary activities should be serves in terms of operation, inbound logistics, marketing and sales, services and outbound logistics.

The functional value of the consumers: The products and service offered by cool work spotlight on convenience should have an issue resolving ability to deliver it as more comprehensive one.

Emotional value: The product and the services should be pleasant and attractive.

Symbolic values: Consumers should give probable comments on the purchased products or given service (Liu et al. 2015). This should have to be focused on the social responsibility, and support of the Indian government. Again this can also be derived from any other well known Indian brand.

Importance of Value Proposition for Developing Online Business in India

Economic values: Depending upon the nature of Indian economy, tax orientation and supportive social quality for any opening of new brand enough economic values should be provided to the consumers (Amboala et al. 2015). Besides financial advantages the other energy conservation, time savings and innovations should also be served. 

End value: All the above mentioned categories are to be represented in the end values. Healthy customer-centric values are to be considered for the end values.

The aim of the cool work home appliances delivery shop is to develop such an E-Commerce website for their consumers so that people belong to the different geographical domain can access their site to buy products. However, the business extension is expected to extend in India.  Again before the final implementation of the value proposition of the E-commerce website the developer is required to test the website professionally. During testing the website still is any components are found to be missed then that should be incorporated before the final implementation of the website for the consumers. In order to accomplish the project successfully it is necessary for the system developers to consider some values that they are willing to deliver to the consumers. In a nutshell, the value proposition is referred to an as clear statement (Baumgartner 2014). For the development and E-commerce business extension for cool works company, the exact design details of the value proposition are elaborated below:

• Explanation of the features of the products and the detail description of how these products can resolve the issue of the consumers of this company.
• Improving the situation of  the consumers with developing accurate product details and designs
• Specific benefits regarding quantified values are to be considered by the E-commerce developers.
• The details ideas should be shared with the consumers, and the review of the other consumers are also should be shown  to others
• Specific features of the products are to be shared those will insist the consumers buy products from their online E-commerce store.
• The value proposition of the company regarding strategies and products should be shown in the home of the cool works home appliance suppliers

An analysis of the environmental and industry conditions that supports the feasibility study

Before extending the E-business, the owners should ensure the legal, industrial, social and ecological support availability in India.

Firstly certain legal formalities should be done regarding statutory, regulatory and legislative measures

Proper registration is needed based on the business type:

• Company or LLP registration
• VAT registration
• Bank account
• Payment gateway
• Legal documents
• Proper adherence to the cyber law crime
• Compliance with the rest of the laws 

Cool work should follow the Intellectual property protection criteria. Products and service tax for the companies are also to be considered (Schoder, Ding and Campos 2016). Apart from this the necessary privacy policy statement and requirements are also to be followed. In order to develop any online venture certain essential environmental and industrial conditions are to be considered before doing the feasibility study of the online shop. Besides the United States and Australia, the consumers belong to India will be able to search and buy their desired products (Du and Tang 2014). Three different probable outcomes are there those may generate from the successful feasibility study. It is expected that with the help of the feasibility study and factors analysis the issues of the following will be resolves accordingly.

• The online system is entirely feasible within its domain of function and business operation. Simultaneously it also considers the other field for maintenance such as assumption, technology, location, market, finance etc
• Feasibility must be changed with some of the domain
• Infeasibility within the area that has been defined

Value Chain Model for Cool Work's Online Venture in India

Competitor analysis

 Advanced digitalisation and different entities have made it online shopping possible for the consumers to shop and make their purchase east in the big nation India. Quite attractive business entities are there which have established online shopping an excellent platform. The prices of the products are also less for online shops than the physical stores. Not only are these but many other new openers of India also willing to their business online.  India presents many high rating online shopping service providers such as Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, snapdeal, OLx, MakeMyTrip, EBay India, Shop clues etc. All of these sites provide quality and consumer-centric products and services. Cool work should develop the site in such a way so that it can give fierce competition to others. Additionally, it also must provide the array of an option to their clients to make the products easily acquired.

Explanation of the revenue model

From the online website development program after considering the design details, the expected revenue model of the company is also discussed.

Figure 2: Revenue model for the Cool Works

(Source: Wang, Cavusoglu and Deng 2016, pp-200)

The online venture must have Mobile commerce support also beside the E-commerce support. This above diagram shows that the developers are commercially dependent on the consumer and can gain huge profits from the accurate capital investment.

According to the revenue model from different sources, profit can be gained. For the online value, chain profit is available for both the developers and consumers. In mobile-driven value chain developers, distributors and consumers all will be benefited. There are different types of revenue models available in the market (Yaseen, Dingle and Adams 2015). For this particular design approach the steps those have been followed consider digital advertising, development of online marketing strategy, digital marketing business model. The reasons behind assuming the above revenue model for cool work is as follows:

• The developer has identified the target consumers of the company completely
• The value proposition of the online E-commerce design  has been completed
• The revenue model is developed considering all necessary adaption and adjustments

The operational and functional capability and competitive advantages of the company are growing every day but still, the organisation operates within Australia and United States only from the last 20 years. However, from 2010, the company has a created an online retailing arm in those countries (Wang, Cavusoglu and Deng 2016). As the marginal profit and sales of the company were growing tremendously but suddenly due to the saturation in the competitive market and the drop of the profit margin the company is willing to resolve this problem with some strategic plan implementation. In the last board meeting, the company ideated to propose new market. 

Design Details and Implementation Plan for Value Proposition of Cool Work's Online Venture in India

For this particular company, the designed Ecommerce website is accurate that has considered all necessary business processes. For extending the business of Cool work, besides the United States and Australia, the owners are willing to extend it in India too (). Different key business processes are there those should be followed by the online business strategy developer (Ariyani and Mandiri 2015). The key business processes considered for this work are mentioned below:

• Customer strategy and relationship development for improving the marketing criteria of the company
• Engagement with the employee development and developing strategies for improving the relationship with them
• Quality improvement of the online business through process improvement and change management
• Proper financial analysis, capital and resource management
• Customer acquisition and product and service quality development
• Technology as well accounting management

Order fulfilment process

After designing the details of the online website considering necessary components, it is necessary for the developers to consider the order fulfilment approach also. With the immediate booking and delivery of the products, proper payment gateway and order fulfilment process are needed to be developed by the website developer. As soon as a consumer books for a home appliance the border will be placed and in order to inform it that the order to places an acknowledgement message should be delivered (Yaseen, Dingley and Adams 2015). Three different types payment giving option should be there such as through debit card, credit card and cash on delivery. There should be an order return and order cancellation option also for those consumers who wish to cancel their orders.   

Figure 3: Order fulfilment process steps

(Source: Bilgihan 2016, pp-110)

The above diagram represents the entire process of order fulfilment that must be followed by Cool Work Company to expand their business in the desired location that is in India. The online venture started with the sign-up, log in and registration page. The consumers who are already registered can log in to the cool works website to search and book for their desired home appliances but those who are not registered need to sign-up to the website to access it.  

Once the orders are selected and booked four different payment gateway options will be shown to the consumers- cash on delivery, debit card, credit card or Paytm. After selecting payment options, the orders are ensured to be placed and packed for final shipping. Based on the business need, products warehouses should be build, so that customers from different location of India can get their required home appliances. 

Security mechanism including the hardware and software

In case of online shopping as there is a chance of direct online payment option thus, the developers should consider specific necessary security mechanisms. The security approaches to be followed are as follows:

 Encryption: Proper encryption algorithm is required to be deemed to restrict unwanted and unauthorised information access. The encryption key should never be shared with any third party.

Firewall: Application firewall should have to be developed to avoid both the financial and personal information loss from the data transmission channel.

Hiring technical experts: In order to make the online website much attractive technical experts are to be hired by the company. 

References

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