Analyzing the Business Model of a Virtual Community

Eight Key Elements of a Successful Business Model

Essentially you need to build on the 8 elements of a successful ‘Business Model Value Proposition, Revenue Model, Market Opportunity, Competitive Environment, Competitive Advantage, Market Strategy, and Organisational Development. 8 Key Elements of a Successful Business Model

 

1. Value proposition

2. Revenue model

3. Market opportunity

4. Competitive environment

5. Competitive advantage

6. Market strategy

7. Organizational development

8. Management team

 

Add screen shots (from the Uber’s website or its social media pages to support your argument) and annotated images to make your work more detailed.  In this unit you are encouraged to be as creative as possible and explore social media tools extensively and how your selected online community/website (It cannot be a retail a website) used social media tools both internally and externally. Relate your work to the visionaries in the field (see the Reading List / References list below), and material taught in class, class readings, and your own experience. This narrative must contain but is not limited to the following items

 

•  A critical review of the virtual environment type, its application & target audience.

 

•  A related description comparing the environment to theoretical material

 

•  Your own views of the tools and usability aspects.

 

•  A detailed review of its money generating potential. Including how it makes money and its underlying business model.

 

•  Links and references to referenced and related materials.

Word Limit 1500 words excluding title, student numbers etc. and the bibliography. The word count should be stated on the cover page. A falsely stated word-count is an assessment offence that may result in a penalty, including the award of a zero mark.

Format:

• The report should have a cover sheet showing its title, student number/ID and the word count.

 

• It should be created in Microsoft Word and use a ‘business report’ style.

 

• Pages should be numbered, and use justified font (Arial 11points) throughout, with a list of contents.

 

• Formal / Academic referencing of all sources used, in APA 7 edition format, is required.

 

• It should have a minimum of 10 or more references (approximately 500 words).

 

• Report should draw on lectures as a framework to analyse a virtual community/website (it cannot be a retail website)

 

• Reports must be submitted with a ‘Turnitin’ check site report, via Turnitin.

 

Building a Platform of Business Model 2.0

References Must reference sources using the APA 7th format. Guidance on this method of referencing can be found at www.referencing.port.ac.uk. Reference should be made to the primary source, except when the primary source can no longer be obtained. Poor citation of sources will result in a loss of marks.

 

Marking Scheme Assignment 

 

Review of an Existing Virtual Community (Microsoft Word Report) 60% of the marks will be awarded for coverage of taught elements in your online community/website analysis

 

• A review of the 8 key elements of the business model wrt the website that you are analysing 60 Marks 40% of the marks will be awarded more subjectively, as follows

 

• How well is the presentation is composed wrt content  10 marks

                                                

• How well images captured illustrate community content and function  10 marks

 

• How well the report is referenced (poorer marks for excluding key papers)  10 marks

 

• For reports displaying a good degree of merit  10 marks

 

The total of these marks will be ratio’d to count for 60% of the module’s marks.

References

Te Fu Chen. (2009). Building a Platform of Business Model 2.0 to Creating Real Business Value with Web 2.0 for Web Information Services Industry. International Journal of Electronic Business Management

 

Rajiv, & Lal, M. (2011). Web 3.0 in Education & Research. BVICAM’s International Journal of Information Technology, 3(2), 16–22. Web 3.0 in Education & Research.: Discovery Service for University of Portsmouth (ebscohost.com) 

 

HENDLER, J., SHADBOLT, N., HALL, W., BERNERS-LEE, T., & WEITZNER, D. (2008). Web science: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Web. Communications of the ACM, 51(7), 60–69. https://doi.org/10.1145/1364782.1364798 

 

Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003  Constance Elise Porter, A Typology of Virtual Communities: a Multi-Disciplinary Foundation for Future Research, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 10, Issue 1, 1 November 2004, JCMC1011, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2004.tb00228.x 

 

A. Fortino and A. Nayak, "An architecture for applying social networking to business," 2010 IEEE Long Island Systems, Applications and Technology Conference, Farmingdale, NY, USA, 2010, pp. 1-6, https://doi.org/10.1109/LISAT.2010.5478285  

 

Matthew S. Smith. 2008. Social capital in online communities. In Proceedings of the 2nd PhD workshop on Information and knowledge management (PIKM '08). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 17–24. https://doi.org/10.1145/1458550.1458554