Case scenario:
Prehistoric Computers is a company located in Anywhere, Arkansas that sells refurbished laptop computers to individuals and small businesses through direct-mail marketing in the Midwest. Prehistoric Computers has a central office with a staff of 10 employees and a warehouse located 10 miles away where laptops are refurbished and shipped. There are currently 25 employees working in the warehouse. Sales last year were $5 million. Prehistoric Computers' current overall business goal is to increase sales by 200 percent with aggressive global marketing strategies. The company currently incorporates no e-business practices.
a. What are the e-business trends dominating the market today? How do these trends affect Prehistoric? What are its competitors doing?
I need help with the question, "What are its competitors doing?" I only need about 100 words. My response to the first part of (a) is....
According to Ana Rincon (2005), the most recent trends in e-business are as follows:
Restructuring and category reorganization - Some larger corporations are joining hands or acquiring dot.com skeletons, and creatively restructuring themselves to tackle the future.
Shifting from transaction-based customer to relationship-based customer interactions - Many companies are shifting from transaction-based customer interactions to relationship-based customer interactions, which bring a completely different set of performance metrics. These new e-business key performance metrics are becoming essential ROI tools to gauge the success of differing e-strategies. Companies can now track customer behavior, and use the insight they gain to strengthen their bonds with their customers.
Linking all facets of the value chain - customer, partners, and suppliers - Additionally, they also need to be able to link all facets of their value chains, including customers, partners, and suppliers, leveraging a high-performance network infrastructure, through which they can model, measure, and maximize return on investment and value chain relationships.
RSS Feeds - Not only has the usage of RSS newsfeeds grown, but marketers are attempting to leverage them for advertising. Protocols like Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and Atom have caught on among bloggers, allowing them to make their content available to anyone to pour into their own web pages. (Rincon, A., 2005)
Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) -Businesses and consumers are finally becoming aware of voice calls over the Internet, in growing numbers. VOIP is finally catching on and going mainstream.
Video - Close to 50 percent of Internet households have graduated beyond dial-up and entered the world of always-on Internet. Not surprisingly, the growth of rich media advertising has closely mirrored the growth of broadband connections.