Description of the business
This proposal will discuss the setting up of an E-Commerce business that will essentially deal with the sale of electronic devices over the internet; such electronic devices include watches, cameras, phone and phone accessories and computer accessories. The site will thus be about the sale of these products online to anyone in the world. The site will thus have payment affiliates who can be Payoneer MasterCard, Metabank, eBay and Moneybookers. These affiliates have well established online business transactions. The manager of the website will be a system administrator who will be responsible for maintaining and updating the site and owned by shareholders who will be founders of the website. The website will be located in Kentucky, USA and will be launched at the end of the year. The website will be launched as an online business because of the geographical location of the target market that in this case, is all over the world.
Plan of operation
The business will obtain its products from the companies manufacturing the products and thus act as middlemen for the marketing of their products. In this process, it will be essential to form business to a business relationships with the manufacturing companies in order to get the supply of these electronic devices constantly.
In this sense, therefore, it is important to have the website functioning and to meet the requirements of a good website before launching the website. In his book (Buchanan, 2002) details, the plan of operation, in this case, will assess the unforeseeable possibilities and manage how they are going to be addressed. The other consideration, in this case, is the domain name from a web hosting company. The domain name should be simple if possible. After accessing the domain name, it would be imperative to consider the rates of web hosting companies and their reliability. It may be important to use a more expensive but reliable company if you want to be successful in the internet business. In his studies, (Baker 2008) states that downtimes of a website can chase potential clients.
Financial plan
Since this is an online or internet business, the major cost will go to the web designing process, web hosting company and the site manager responsible for updating the internet or checking all the ongoing activities on the website. A typical expense table of an internet business structure will be as follows;
Specification
Financially online business is the best because there are no costs related to the structure, the cost of location, unlike the physical business.
Marketing plan
In his studies, (Applegate 2005) claims that the visitors of the website can include all demographics because of the nature of the goods that will be sold online. The income levels of the people expected to shop in the online business proposed will be expected to be living over $10 per day. This will give an opportunity for people living in poor countries of the world to access the products of the company.
Competitor analysis
In his book, (Siegel 2003) claims that since there is a similar business operating online, alibaba.com is one of the most known and successful in business transactions. Its analysis of the strengths and weaknesses will give an overview of the reality in the ground concerning the market niche and good strategies.
Alibaba.com strengths
- It is well developed in its online operations
- It has many branches in several countries in the world
- It has a substantial market niche.
Alibaba.com weakness
- Its pricing is high in most cases
- The response of the customer care is slow because of the number of customers.
References
Applegate, E. (2005) E-Commerce Today. London, Rowman & Littlefield.
Baker, M. (2008) The Strategic Marketing Plan Audit. London, McGraw-Hill.
Buchanan, W. (2002) The Complete Handbook of the Internet. New York, Springer
Siegel, S. (2003). The Ernst & Young Business Plan Guide. New York, John Wiley and Sons.