Fundamentals_of_E-Business

Table of Contents Serial No. | Title | Page Number | 1 | Introduction | 2 | 2 | Segmentation | 3 | 3 | Online Customer Relationship Management | 6 | 4 | Pricing | 8 | 5 | Individual Reports of Group Members | 10 | 6 | References | 25 | 7 | Bibliography | 26 | Introduction In this time of globalisation and major developments in information technologies, E business has evolved as one of the most important aspects for an organisation to be successful and at the same time to be competent at the local or global level. In this group report we would be looking into the effects of E-business activity on an organisation. For this particular report our target industry is the newspaper industry and the three newspapers selected for this particular purpose are as follows: 1. The Independent 2. The Indianexpress 3. The Metro. The overwhelming success of the internet has completely transformed the way businesses are done. The benefits that the companies as well as the customer get out of internet are tremendous and that’s why almost every industry has a substantial presence in the E-business field. The Internet has become an integral part of every person’s life and the benefits that people are getting through use of internet can be seen as one of the main reasons why companies need to have their presence over the internet. The rapid changes in the information technology have made it necessary for the newspaper industry to get into E-Business field. Traditionally the newspapers are paper based but in the last few years the number of internet user has increased by an substantial amount and more and more people now want to read the newspaper on their laptops i.e. online and hence due the huge increase in the demand of e-paper almost all the Newspaper companies had to shift their focus from the traditional way of doing their business to E-business or else they would lose the market edge or lag behind their competitors. E-Business in the newspaper industry is growing at a rapid pace and this growth has brought with it various advantages that these companies can get. The three newspapers mentioned above are no exception when it comes to E-business and we will see how these three newspapers are making use of E-business to achieve profits and to remain competitive. The analysis of the three newspapers E-business activity would be analysed on the basis of following factors: 1. Segmentation 2. Online Customer Relationship Management 3. Pricing. For this analysis purpose we have chosen the Independent newspaper’s E-Business activity as the primary focus point and the E-business activities of The Independent would be compared with the E-Business activity of The Indianexpress and The Metro based on the factors mentioned above. Segmentation Market Segmentation: As per Philip Kotler (2010), market segments result due to the similar needs of a certain set of consumers for the products they consume. The business organisation has to take care of such market-segments, identify it, decide the section to target and promote the business in that direction. Andreas Meier & Henrik Stormer (2009) suggest that E-business or E-commerce could be used effectively as a method to target your segments and reach customers in no time. Its important becomes truly clearer when the organisations in the media sectors come into competition with one another. As it is a clear know-how, a particular media organisation wants to reach to its customers first, get connected with them and reach them in no time. Their heart of the business is to provide media information like news, messages, articles etc so that the people could know about the latest happening around the local areas or around the globe. Our consideration of the specified three website in E-commerce for the newspaper business do have some difference in way they provide the information to the customer, in the way they target their customers and also the way in which they are promoting their business needs. Let’s see the various methods used in each of the newspapers organisations, one by one. 1. The Independent: Market Segmentation Used: Open to All Markets As per analysis done by Brian McNair (2009), The Independent accounts for major competitor in the UK media industry. It has proven to be among the market leaders in the industry. The main feature about the segmentation used by them is being open to every market, starting from local news to the global events and happening around the globe. It targets the market as a whole segment as such it works to address almost every section of consumers, different age groups, different demographical locations, different psychological factors like business, life-styles, personalities etc as well as almost all kinds of behavioural aspects of the users life stages. Consumer Market Methods Used: Geographic segmentation Brian McNair (2009, P97) puts forward the fact that The Independent has been successful in consumer markets owing to some very important strategies used by the organisation to promote itself. The value proposition to the customers gets improved more by using rewards or motivations approaches like e-vouchers, Email-newsletters etc. It helps in promoting the organisation values by allowing the users or customers to take part in it , allowing them to customize the e-business section to some limits, allowing them to see as a part of independent by providing a platform where they could develop their own sections or simple use social-media interactions with almost anybody anywhere in the world. The involvement of the consumers from all over the world with its business objectives is the very key factor for its existence in the market (Katsch, 2009). The very important e-commerce carried out by the Independent is the facility to provide customers the option to order the newspaper online. Moreover, the more customers come in part with the website; it looks at various behaviours of customer navigation parameters which determine the critical information like Important visited sections, the demand sections, most popular or any others information taken out that could help them to know the customers that are interacting with them through e-world. 2. The Metro: Market Segmentation Used: Local Marketing Tony Harcup & Peter Cole (2009) reveals that The Metro is one of the good competitor companies in the media and news sector in UK. The target segment is based on the approach so as to tailor the needs and requirements of the customer groups based in the local areas or neighbourhoods. Their marketing activities focus more on getting close and more relevant to the consumers. It basically tries to highlight the major events happening in the local area, some of them could be in areas like entertainment, showbiz, lifestyle, etc. Consumer Market Methods Used: Demographic and Psychographic The metro tries to target a particular age group of the society, basically the younger generation who are much enthusiastic in gossips, showbiz, celebrity news or local happenings (Gripsrud & Weibull , 2010). Though this section of consumers are less oriented in buying the news paper additions, still the metro finds it challenging to keep them involved in its section of the market. The psychographic part of the market which the metro targets cover mostly the culture oriented or outdoor oriented or simply the lifestyle perception of the society. Certain personality characteristic of the society or also included in this section of media industry. An approach to improve the social interaction among the users or the consumers is provided so as to give them a social touch to the website. Comparatively, the metro lags behind the independent in getting the involvement of the customers with the business objectives of the company. The customers don’t have a facility to order it online as such a reason for shift over exists for a customer at any point of time. 3. The Indian Express: Market Segmentation Used: Local Marketing Indian Express is a daily newspaper for the consumers in India. It has adapted to its market segmentation as Local Marketing, covering the news and events happening in the local areas or neighbourhood based on cities in India (Mehta, 2009). They have been successful in building rapport with consumers throughout the time by uniquely highlighting the main issues in local parts of cities. They try to get close to the customers and provide them information about current issues, latest happenings, financial or social change in policies etc for the respective cities in the local editions. The Local Marketing approach used here proves to be fruitful for its business objectives as they maintain a very good quality of contents and highlight the main causes of local societies. In Comparison with Independent or Metro, its stands out as a very good competitor in media industry doing excellence in local regions. Market segment has been very well identified and effectively used to build a good position in the media market. Consumer Market Methods Used: Geographic Indian Express uses a very good strategy as Geographic segmentation to target its consumers (Kotler, 2010). It uses the local edition in almost every state of India; thereby the neighbourhood factor helps them to bind the Customer to them. The local markets in geographic marketing strategy helps them to come closer to the customer, allowing building a large market share in India or building a larger amount of consumer around the sub-continent. Use of Live Market statistics, Cities latest news, and social networking approach to share among users or customers seems to be adding a value to their e-business approach. In Comparison with The Independent Newspaper, a better chance of building a large customer sections prevails due to its diversity identification of the people in India with respective to local areas where they live in, as such provides a forum where consumers get united under the same brand name which caters to their respective needs. Online Customer Relationship Management In the field of E-Business customer relationship management is one of the most important tool for building and maintaining customer loyalty. According to Kotler (2009), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is described as the process of carefully managing detailed information about individual customer of a company and all customer touch points in order to maximise customer loyalty with the company. Kotler (2009) has defined the touch points to be any occasion on which a customer encounters the brand or the product and these occasions could be anything from actual experience to personal or mass communication or even to casual observation. The information gathered from all these sources is of crucial importance because this information is then used by the company in order to monitor the behaviour of their customer and it also helps companies to understand the actual needs, interest of the customer (Anton& Hoeck, 2002). This customer information provides the company all the necessary data i.e. the knowledge regarding the customer and based on this knowledge the higher management takes and implements decision in order to increase the brand awareness as well as brand loyalty with the new as well as existing customer. In newspaper industry also the Online Customer Relationship Management is very useful in order to get detailed information regarding customers. The way in which the three newspapers are using Online Customer Relationship Management can be explained in detail on the basis of the CRM frame work strategies (Kotler, 2009) as follows: 1. Reducing the rate of customer defection: In E-Business a company needs to have strict policies in order to reduce the rate of customer defection. This particular aspect is of immense importance because if a particular customer is not satisfied with the service that he is being provided he will immediately shift to other company as there are many other competitor business firms on the internet (Anton & Hoeck, 2002). From the perspective of the Independent newspaper’s E-Business activity, reducing the rate of customer defection is mainly dependent on the technical and quality management team of the Independent because when it comes to providing services to customers over internet there is no physical presence so available hence whatever help or assistance that a particular customer needs that must provided over the internet only. The most common thing that today’s customer demand from Independent, The Metro and The Indianexpress is to provide them options of sharing the information that they find on these websites immediately with friends and families through facebook, twitter and other famous social networking websites (Silver, 2009). These are the common demands that every customer has and its upto the companies to satisfy these needs. The Independent, The Metro and The Indianexpress have taken this particular aspect into consideration and they provide these facilities to their customers. The presence of these options on the websites gives all the three newspaper a good insight into what the customers are more interested in or what they love to read, discuss which could be very helpful in coming with promotion ideas to help them build loyalty amongst their customer group. 2. Increasing the longevity of customer relationship: If a customer is very well involved with the company then it is more likely that the customer would stick around (Kotler, 2009). It is very essential for a company to make its customers more involved with the company so as develop loyalty. The three newspapers E-Business activity have utilised this particular aspect of Customer Relationship management very well. In case of The Independent, a customer can create his own homepage which is a great way of involving the customer. This particular options enables the reader to customise the homepage of the website and put those items or sections on the homepage that most interest him. From the perspective of the customer it is good because now he can get all the information that he wants from the homepage only where as from the perspective of Independent it helps the Independent to get valuable information regarding every customer and this information can be used in various way to serve the customer in a better way (Anderson & Kerr, 2002). On the other hand The Metro and The Indianexpress have provided their customers the option to sign up for their prospective newspaper online. This sign up process helps The Metro as well as The Indianexpress to obtain all the necessary information regarding the customer. The sign up process i.e. the option to create account on the websites helps in binding the customers with the company. The relationship that develops through this activity helps The Metro as well as The Indianexpress to get the competitive advantage and build a strong customer base (Anderson & Kerr, 2002). 3. Attracting and retaining customers: It is very important from a company’s prospective to hold on to its existing customers because to attract new customers is quite difficult and at the same time huge amount of money needs to spent in order to attract new customers but in order to be competitive a company need to attract new customer and at the same time retain its existing customers in the most effective way possible (Kotler, 2009). One of the various strategies that The Independent is enforcing to attract new customers and to maintain existing customers of its website is that they have tie up with various other companies in which they provide discount vouchers and other attractive facilities to their customer which is a good way of building loyalty among customers. On the other hand The Metro and The Indianexpress are developing effective new ways of communicating with its existing customers and also new customers. For this particular purpose The Metro as well as the Indianexpress provide the customers the facility to get their e-paper directly e-mailed to individual customers on a daily basis so the customers do not even need to visit their websites to read the newspaper. All these practises are proving to be helpful in binding the customers with the company. In present E-business scenario for the newspaper industry it is very essential for The Independent, The Metro and The Indianexpress to effectively manage their Online Customer Relationship Management activity so as to benefit from the constantly changing environment of E-business. Pricing As we have been seeing the various parameters on which the three websites are segregated and analysed, now the report tells about the third factor, Pricing and the types of pricing that is adopted by e- business websites in order to generate revenue in a competitive way and to satisfy the customers in a long run. There are different pricing strategies that are adopted by different companies in terms of e- business. The different types of pricing that is predominantly followed in e business are: a) Dynamic Pricing b) Static Pricing c) Reverse Pricing In context to the websites with which the report is dealing, that is the pricing strategy adopted by the three websites we are going to see the Independent.co.uk, the Primary website and the two secondary websites, the metro.co.uk and the Indian Express.com are adopting Dynamic pricing Strategy or not and if they are adopting, why they are adopting and if not why they are not adopting. Before going into the analysing part let us see the definition of Dynamic Pricing and what are the reasons why Dynamic Pricing is followed by a Various E- Business companies. Dynamic Pricing: According to Michael Schwind (2007), the process of Updating of Prices of products in real tile in accordance with various customers and various market conditions is called Dynamic pricing. There are various reasons, as per Frank Chevallier , spokesperson for Azerity and David Taylor & Alyse D. Terhune (2008), why e-business websites adopt dynamic pricing such as : a) Depending upon the customers, Customisation of pricing according to Individual customer and Business customers based on the past purchasing histories. Since the advent of Internet the collection of data base of customers has become easy which in turn made easy for e – business companies to customise the pricing for the various customers, e.g. Amazon.com, e-bay.com. b) Depending upon various situations and conditions the pricing of a particular products varies, e.g. Priceline.com where the websites customise products on the basis of value proposition, where Priceline.com has various services such as finance, travel, telecommunications, automotive. c) Depending on competitors pricing the company tends to change the prices in order to be competitive in their product or service industry. Dynamic Pricing in three websites: The Primary website and the Secondary websites which are under study does not adopt Dynamic Pricing model, in fact the three websites are not adopting any of the pricing model which is adopted by many e- business websites and the main reasons for not implementing dynamics pricing or any pricing strategy for that matter are as follows: 1) The e- news industry is a developing industry and all the newspapers magazine are trying to adopt internet as a tool to reach the large customer base and in that way The Independent.com, the metro.co.uk, and the Indian express.com which is a developing e- paper site which has large customer base in newspaper industry and now expanding its customer base around the globe thus adopting internet as a tool. Initially these websites are not adopting any Pricing models on e- paper as there are only few competitors. 2) As per a report produced by Financial Times (2010), Times Groups faced a severe fall in the viewership of e -paper of Timesonline.co.uk and thetimes.co.uk after they introduced registration and subscription charges for reading the e-paper on their webpage. First when they introduced registration for reading e- paper the percentage of viewership fell from 4.37 to 2.67 percent and when they also launched subscription charge, the viewership still drop to 1.43 percent. Thus the facts suggest that this might be one of the reason why the Independent and the other two websites did not choose any pricing model as this is too early to do so. 3) Another important reason why the independent.com and the other two secondary websites are not adopting dynamic pricing is that, there is no demand benefits associated with e- paper, i.e. the demand of the customer towards e-paper does not fluctuate frequently thus the three websites are not adopting dynamic pricing to meet the needs of the customers in terms of Pricing. 4) One of the main reasons why pricing is not a major aspect in terms of e-paper industry is that, there is not much Inventory and Transportation involved in providing the service to the customers. It is just a matter of transforming the information gathered in various fields such as politics, economics, sports etc into electronic media for the customers to read it. 5) The independent.com is primarily getting their revenue from their advertising partners associated with their websites, such as amazon.co.uk, and various others e-business websites and this is the case with the other two websites as well, where they have different advertisers who does online advertising on their e-paper websites which in turn fetching them the revenue to survive in the e-paper industry. Individual Reports of Group Members Individual Report Name: Student Id: Conclusion In the last few years E-Business has evolved rapidly because of the substantial increase in the number of internet user. This increase has led to more and more people shifting from the traditional way of doing business to E-Business. E-Business has opened a completely new set of opportunities for all the businesses. The overwhelming success of internet and the substantial increase in the number of internet user have made it necessary for The Independent, The Metro and The Indianexpress to focus its attention on to the E-Business. In the last few years the newspaper industry had to go through various changes like introducing e-paper because of the huge number of people using the internet. Also in recent years the number of people who read e-paper is growing at a rapid pace due to which almost all the newspaper now are taking the E-Business aspect of their industry very seriously. The analysis done has provided an insight in the way these three newspaper companies are doing their business. In this particular report we have analysed the effects E-Business on the newspaper industry. The three newspaper websites i.e. The Independent, The Metro, The Indianexpress have all utilised the E-Business way of doing business in order to grow and at the same time to be competitive at the global level. The three websites were analysed on the basis of Segmentation, Online Customer Relationship Management and pricing. The analysis of the three websites based on this criteria has revealed that in general all the three websites are coping quite well with the demanding nature of E-Business. From the analysis it is clear that The Independent is doing quite well in terms of segmenting their target market and utilizing their market to full advantage while on the other hand The Metro and The Indianexpress are doing quite well in terms of Customer Relationship Management but both Metro and The Indianexpress need to improve their segmenting criteria. One thing which has stood out to be quite unpredictable for the newspaper industry when it comes to E-Business is Pricing. In this particular case the three websites cannot apply dynamic pricing because of the nature of the business. For these newspaper websites one way of introducing the pricing factor is to put subscription charges on the e-paper but this particular move of introducing subscription charges for e-paper is not well received by customers when Times group introduced in June 2010. So when it comes to E-Business for newspaper industry we can expect it to undergo various important changes in the coming years. Recommendation The analysis done on the basis of Segmentation, Online Customer Relationship Management and pricing on The Independent, The Metro, The Indianexpress have brought forward various interesting aspects regarding the E-Business activity of the newspaper industry. In this analysis our target website was The Independent and the analysis of this particular websites has revealed certain positive aspect for the Independent but at the same time there are definitely few places where from the perspective of E-Business some important changes must be done in order to be competitive at global level. First of all we will look into all the positive things that have come out of this particular analysis for the Independent and they are listed as follows: 1. The Independent has been very successful in terms of identifying their target customers and thus it has helped The Independent to segment market very well which is very crucial from the perspective of business. The Independent has segmented their target market using geographic segmentation which includes local as well as global market (Kotler,2009) and this geographic segmentation has helped them to serve customers from all over the world as they are not just targeting local market. 2. From the perspective of pricing The Independent have carefully prevented itself from following the footsteps of one of its biggest competitor The Times group who have failed in their attempt of bringing in the subscription charges for e-paper aspect into the newspaper industries because of the huge losses the newspaper industry is facing. However when it comes to Online Customer Relationship management The Independent needs to review their policies of customer relationship management. At the present moment The Independent is trying to acquire information about its customer primarily through their facility of providing the customer to prepare their own home page on their website but as seen with The Metro and also The Indianexpress there are better ways of collecting information regarding customer like providing user the ability to create accounts on the website. The better the information they obtain the better they would be able to serve the customers (Dyché 2002). So one recommendation for The Independent could be that The Independent should introduce the facility for the user to create an account i.e. sign up on the Independent’s website. Another aspect that the Independent needs to improve could be the way they communicate with their customers. Communication is seen as one of the most important aspect of establishing relationship with the customer (Harris & Dennis, 2007). This particular aspect of establishing is somewhat better handled by The Metro and The Indianexpress. The facility of creating account with their website provides The Metro and The Indianexpress the chance to communicate directly with individual customers and once a customer signs up on the websites of The Metro and The Indianexpress then these two website provide the user e-paper directly on individual customer’s e-mail which helps The Metro and the Indianexpress in meeting the customer demands in a better way. This particular facility helps customer to get all the information that he needs in his mailbox and thus makes him more reluctant to go to competitors which is a great way of binding your customer and retaining them (Harris & Dennis, 2007) So when it comes to The Independent there is scope for improving the communication with the customers by providing the customer ways to communicate directly with the website in terms of support. One important field in which the Independent could improve upon is better utilization of the Pricing factor. The Independent needs to give more emphasis on making profits through their E-Business by introducing the concept of cross-selling or even up-selling so as to overcome the losses they are facing due to decrease in the subscription number of their paper based newspaper (Kotler, 2009). In the analysis of the three websites we have found out that The Independent is doing a good job when it comes to segmentation of their target market using geographic segmentation (Kotler, 2009). However due to ever changing nature of E-Business The Independent needs to constantly review their segmentation policies on a regular basis so as to obtain and maintain their body of customers. The Independent has to constantly update their e-marketing strategies so as to constantly come up with various interesting ideas to bind customer to their business thus increasing the brand loyalty (Harris & Dennis, 2007). All these recommendation could help not only The Independent but also The Metro and The Indianexpress so as to remain competitive in the ever changing world of E-Business. Student Name: Student Number: Individual Report Conclusion: As already discussed in length, the three website in the media (newspaper) industry prove to be using their e-business strategies in a direction to improve themselves in the media market, analyse the customers to keep them and attract new ones and also be ahead of the dynamic market environment that is getting effected on day basis due to the immense power of e-commerce and internet reach to the consumers in no time. The recent globalisation with the help of e-commerce has enabled such industry to shift from their focus of traditional paper selling approach towards the much powerful e-paper or electronic paper version available at any point of time to consumer globally. This also enables them a very fast means of delivery to customer with absolutely no costs to deliver it. Customer could get access to the website at any time, look for updates or news and have them ready to share with friends. Evaluation criteria used in terms of Pricing parameter suggests a very large scope of improvement in the pricing strategies used by these websites. Their recent shift to the e-business could a reason for this and also the lack of the strategies for such environment could add more to this. They could gain by using this parameter effectively and efficiently with the help of strategies like cross-selling etc. Online customer management is a big challenge for the entire three website as it becomes difficult for this type of industry to get meta-data from the data of their customers. While the Independent lags behind in this aspect, the others two website are doing well in getting more information about their customers like Age, location, contacts etc . Being a news or article oriented sector of media in e-commerce, there is no substantial help in CRM as such awaits new trends to be made in this direction. Market Segmentation used by the three websites ,as discussed in the report, identifies their business target markets which in way is clearly defined for them and they seems to be doing very well in selecting the marketing strategies and dividing the consumer markets based on the identification factors like demographic, geographic, physcographic etc. Metro provides a very good example of much more clear market segmentation targeting a specific segment. To conclude, there are much more improvements to be made in media sector regarding strategies used in promoting their e-papers or e-commerce. Better marketing strategies through various channels is needed to assist them in achieving the business goals. Focus on online CRM has raised a need for efficient methods to know customers very well and help them in retaining and attracting more through internet. As such, we could expect much more advancement in technology and strategies in media industry that would certainly help these websites to perform e-business at an improved rate and gain competitive advantage in the market. Recommendations: 1. For The Independent: a) Improved Online Customer Relationship Management Approaches. Kotler (2010) has beautifully pointed out “ No customer, No Business”. Hence, customers are the backbones of any business model. The Independent , as earlier said, lags behind in Customer Relationship management owing to inadequate measures to evaluate customers or to build a database of customers to get insights of online customers. Business would only work when one knows what customers are we targeting (Katsch, 2008). It faces challenge in the e-market’s dynamic environment as such some measures should be taken to avoid start losing the market. Better online CRM approaches, Improved Customer Centric strategies as well the provision to offer Sign Ups to website should be the primary focus area at this particular time. b) Better market segmentation IN Lee (2009) emphasizes on using a better measure to know what customers you are targeting on. It is very important that you have this information at the very beginning to make sure it is the right direction to proceed. The Independent needs to identify itself more closely to a particular market segment, so that it could build a brand loyalty with customers those who use the services. Dynamic environment in e-business has given a rise to continuous evaluation of their segmentation approaches, strategies and other approaches which should be embedded effectively to review itself periodically so as to be sure it in not deviating from the expectations of market as well consumers. 2. For The Metro: a) Improvement in Target markets Patrick Loh (2006) stresses more on the reaching to global markets rather being confined to the local markets. Global markets ensure a brand recognition throughout world and also opportunity at the same time. The Metro could use this opportunity in e-commerce by expanding itself in new areas , covering different geographical limits and hence attract more customers to it. It needs to see market globally and develop effective strategies that would ensure that the targets are met on time with a profitable factor in it. New strategies or new methods could be need of this hour to improve the services provided by the e-newspaper. b) Improving Pricing factor Jun Xu & Mohammed Quaddus (2009) provides a important insight for future e-business activity and also e-business activity for e-commerce in different economies. The Metro could use this concept of Pricing to its best value. It could introduce a concept of cross-selling into its web-design so that customers are busy when they arrive on the website. 3. For The IndianExpress a) Better Design and Better Strategies Jun Xu & Mohammed Quaddus (2009) talks about the importance of a better web-design or user-friendliness with the website. The strategies to be used to evaluate its market , require to be there in order to look at a better picture than before. It would ensure the long turnover for customer and more the time they spend on websites, the more loyal they become as they start with. b) Better E-marketing strategies Jun Xu & Mohammed Quaddus (2009) lays the importance of efficient E-marketing strategies to boost your business in e-commerce. The Indian Express needs to promote themselves more in e-business channel , have better methods or strategies to cater to the needs of online customer. Knowing a customer would reward back as profit in business. It needs to identify itself in this dynamic environment to compete with the others and be in the business rather than waiting or losing the opportunity. The above recommendations would help these industries to promote e-commerce through their websites more effectively and would also ensure that customers are reached in no time. Future developments provide opportunity and could be a crucial factor for deciding the market leader among this very new e-commerce media sector. Individual Report Name Student Id: This Report is the consequence of the Analysis made on the three websites: The websites of indianexpress, the metro and the independent. The three mentioned websites are analysed on the three parameters, SEGMENTATION, CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT and PRICING which are considered the most essential components of a website in order to remain competitive in e- business as there are lot of opportunity as well as a lot of competition. From the research made on these websites on the three criteria from various sources such as Books, Articles and other E – Source, there are a lot of outcomes and based on the outcomes, this report will suggest recommendations for a target website by how they can improve on it so that they remain competitive in the ever growing internet world. Recommendations: I have taken the Indian express.com as the Target website for giving potential recommendations for the enhancement of it so that it can have a bigger customer in e-paper industry base and these recommendations are based on theories based on various sources. Dynamic Pricing: In terms of dynamic pricing there can’t be many recommendations given for the Indian express.com as all the three websites are not adopting any pricing models. Tohamy (2010) says that dynamic pricing is still a growing concept and especially in e-paper this cannot be applicable at the moment as discussed in the original report the various reasons why dynamic pricing is not adopted in e-paper industry. Indian express.com can adopt dynamic pricing for certain articles on the e-paper like for the editorial page and for a particular portion of e-paper where the online traffic is more as internet has the facility to see the viewership of a particular website. Customer Relationship Management: Indianexpress.com is having the registration facility to collect the details of the customers, which helps them to provide their needs according to the age group, education and the work they do. This is one of the better strategy adopted by Indian express in terms of CRM. As per Philip kotler (2010) getting new customers involves more cost and time than in retaining the existing customers and in term of e-business the defection rate is very high as there are lot of companies are coming up with e-business websites and the cost involved in making a website is negligible in relative with the other costs in doing a business. Indian express.com is concentrating only one country, India for e-paper so they are able to get the needs of the customers and are able to judge it properly and retaining but still they can make it more interesting things for the viewership like, a) If a person is reading business column in an e-paper, there are can be a business forum to discuss the news in detail and similarly for other fields like sports, politics, fashion etc. b) Indian express can have chat facilities with other viewers and they can discuss about the topic with themselves. c) Indian express.com can arrange forum for all categories like political news, business news, sports news etc where they can discuss, debate and give inputs and at the end of each week they can announce the name of the person who has given the best inputs in the discussion and can be given any rewards. For e.g. If a student is giving inputs in business forum he can be given any gifts which will motivate him to come back again and read the e-paper and join the forum for future discussions. d) Keeping the example of facebook, in customer retention, how they make their websites so interesting some people are even addicted to facebook as said by nick 0’ neill (2007) so indian express also can adopt some of the strategies such as networking anong various people who read the e-paper where they can discuss, comment about the various news. Market Segmentation: As we have discussed the definition of market segmentation and its impacts in the group report, I will straight away take you to the recommendations for Indianexpress.com in terms of Market segmentation. Broader Reach: a) The name of the websites theindianexpress.com itself says that it is restricted geographically to Indian market. So they can attempt to expand its customer base around the globe by adopting a wider segmentation policy by giving news that is occurring around the globe. b) As indianexpress.com is having a strong segmentation in terms of Indian market they can adopt specific segmentation policy for rest of the countries as well like if they want to reach UK market they can brand their e-paper as unitedkingdomexpress.com and similarly for other countries as well. Conclusion: The main reason why in recent days all the physical newspaper are coming to e-paper is because there is a strong decline in the physical newspaper reading according to the survey taken by audit bureau of circulation, America association for newspaper. After analysing the three websites on the three parameters indianexpress.com, theindependant.com, and themetro.com, each of them are having their market share in a good proportion in their own limits in terms of e-business but considering the future potential of e-business in terms of e-paper each of them can improve their strategies in all the three parameters. There is always scope for improvement in marketing of a particular product or a service, in that way I conclude my report by saying the metro.com and Indianexpress.com should try to reach as many people as possible around the globe so that in future when more people are switching to e-paper, and when all the competitors are adopting pricing models these websites will be able to generate better revenue. The e-paper is the reflection of the physical paper so each country must be having various newspapers which are very popular in their own country so as of now we cannot expect e-paper to have global reach for their websites but they make attempts for the future purpose considering the potentiality of thee-business and the ever growing internet. Pricing and dynamic pricing could be a major aspect in future in terms of e-paper may in another five to eight years so now they should build their customer base in order to stay competitive in future. NAME- STUDENT NO. - CONCLUSION- As per the analysis done on the three newspaper websites based on the criteria’s of business i.e. market segmentation, online customer relationship management and pricing in the report which shows how the three websites are doing their E-business on the internet and trying to capture the market to improve their business. The internet is a huge industry and capturing almost all the areas of the E-business is quite a challenging job. Internet is very famous amongst the people as with it we can capture the world very easily and quickly. People are addicted about the internet because of that the concept of E-business is born. Now a day E- business is very important for almost all the business and it is changing drastically on each day. It forced the news paper industry to come to the E-business. Because of that newspaper industry invented the concept e-paper and now almost all the newspapers are doing E-business. The websites we analyzed are doing good E-business and they are implementing the changes happening in the E-business but on the other side they have some drawbacks also which they need to improve to stay competitive in E-business. The Independent is very good at the market segmentation but not having strong customer relationship management. They are not trying to gather the customer information but on the other hand Metro and Indian express both are doing quite well in terms of customer relationship by giving registration option through which they are collecting customer information and contacting their customers. But Metro and Indian express are not doing market segmentation up to the mark they are just concentrating the local market where they need to improve as compared to The Independent. As per the pricing is concerned all the three newspapers are not doing dynamic pricing. They are generating profit from advertisements and channel partners. Because at the moment there is no scope for pricing in e-paper but in future they may charge as a subscription charges to their customers in the same way as the Times group is doing since June 2010. RECOMMENDATIONS As per the research done in the report all the three websites are doing quite well in the E-business according to aspects like market segmentation, customer relationship management and pricing. But still there is scope for improvement in their business and they need to improve in some aspects. In my analysis of these three websites I have selected The Indian Express to foucs my recommendation. The Indian express is doing quite well in terms of managing online customer relationship management as we know having the detailed information regarding the customer is a great way of building loyalty with the customer (Kotler, 2009). So keeping this in mind The Indian Express should bring in more and more different ideas of getting the customer involved with their websites. On the other hand The Indian Express is not doing the job of market segmentation well as compared to The Independent. The Indian express in concentrating on local market and they are doing it quite well by grouping customers according to states of the country and proved to be successful in capturing the local market very well (Kotler, 2009). Now they should think globally and they should do everything globally to grasp global market which can give them nice platform as well as business by capturing global market. It will defiantly help them to improve their business. The metro and Indian express are having the login option from where they are gathering the information about their customers and maintaining a good relationship with the customers but the Independent is not having such option which they can give to their website to improve their customer relationship. If they know the contact details and age group and other basic information about their customer they can handle them quite well and they can maintain good relationship with them by knowing what their needs are and what exactly they want (Kotler, 2009). The main thing to maintain customer relationship management is to contact the customers. Which Indian express is doing but they need to improve it by giving some comment box like facebook is doing and because of that they are capturing their guests very fast and making them addicted about that (Shih, 2009). They can contact their customers through email. They can provide their customers about latest offers they are providing through emails which gives satisfaction to the customers. All of three are not implementing any pricing aspect because at the moment there is no scope of pricing for newspaper industry in E-business. As The Times tried this in 2010 as a subscription charge for their e-paper but they failed to do so because it was totally new concept in the market and all the people were new for that concept and in market the Times group competitors were still offering free e-paper. The Indian express can do pricing for some aspects like editorial pages or some important news where they have some scope and from that they can slowly improve it to the future by charging their customers (David Taylor, Alyse D.Terhune 2008) which can help them to generate revenues and at the same time help them overcome losses that they are facing due to decrease in the number of paper based readership of their news paper. If based on the recommendation if the three website continue to constantly update the facilities they are providing to the customer then the E business could prove to an great way of making the three newspaper websites more successful and profitable in near future. Individual Report NAME : STUDENT ID NO: CONCLUSION: According to our report we have analyzed the three E-News Paper websites, THE INDEPENDENT, THE METRO AND INDIAN EXPRESS. As we all know that this three news papers are doing well in E- news paper business. The three newspapers are giving information globally and as it is we all know that now a day’s E-news papers are very useful but the e-paper is still a new concept and it could take at least five to six years for people to have regular access to e-paper. But this is the right time for companies to build their e-paper websites in the best way in terms of market segmentation, online customer relationship management and pricing. The independent e-paper has started adopting segmentation in a broader range thus trying to reach the global market and they have tie up with many social networks like facebook, twitter and many social network websites in order to have a wide range of customer base. This globalised segmentation of their website will help them to have a better market share in future as many would transfer from physical newspaper to e-paper and when all the e-paper are starting to adopt pricing for subscription the independent website will have an extra edge in terms of revenue generation. Whereas the other two e-papers, the indianexpress and the metro have a restricted market segmentation that is the metro is restricted to fashion and the Indianexpress is restricted to geographically to Indian market so these two website can take a leaf from the book of theindependent website in terms of segmentation and can benefit in future. RECOMMENDATIONS: According to the Audit bureau of circulation survey taken by the Newspaper association of America (2010) many people are now getting the access of internet around the globe due to its rapid growth and there is a strong decline in newspaper reading. Thus I recommend for the metro .com what are the pricing strategies in terms of dynamic pricing can be adopted and these can be adopted by other two websites also by which is under discussion as the other two websites are also not adopting any pricing models at the moment. Dynamic pricing: As of now there is no scope for dynamic pricing as it is still a new concept and they can think about various pricing models in future, so there are not many theories to back up my recommendations for dynamic pricing for e-paper. As we have discussed in the group report the times groups have tried the subscription charges for reading the e-paper and have noticed there is a decline in a traffic for their websites so my recommendations is to have a strong customer base by providing a high quality to e-paper to a large number of customer base in order to have an advantage in the future. Market Segmentation: In terms of market segmentation the metro e-paper is restricted to fashion and celebrity news and they are doing very well in that field in the UK region but I feel is that a) The metro can try to reach global market and once they started to have the global presence they can experiment in other news as well like the sports news, politic new, business news and so on. b) The demographic segmentation is also restricted to teens as they are mainly focussing on teenage people so they have very small segmentation in terms of geographic and demographic segmentation which, might be good in physical newspaper but in the evolution of internet the e-paper are getting very popular thus many people are now transforming into e-paper so the metro should try to do segmentation for all age groups. Customer Relationship Management: It is the most important concept in terms of e-business as the tendency of the people to switch to other websites more than in the physical world. The main reason is that almost all the companies are coming into e-business so the access to different companies in easy for the people as they get to see the information of products of different companies in a single window just sitting in the room. The metro has adopted registration facility where they can get the demographic information of people and thus provide them the needs according to the information gathered. This is one good thing about the metro website in terms of customer relationship management. Some of the recommendations could be to make more interesting for the people by making them to participate in some online competition and making them involve in giving their own news latest news in fashion. They can gather information from the people and can give it back to them, in the way from one group of people to the other. For e.g. they can get the latest fashion news from one part of the world and can give to the other part of the world, so that all the people are aware of the latest fashion news around the globe. But as of now the metro is concentrating only few countries. References 1) Marketing management 13th Edition By Philip Kotler & Kevin Keller (2009). 2) E-Business customer service. Santa Monica, CA: The Anton Press. By: Anton, J., & Hoeck, M (2002). 3) Customer relationship management By: Anderson, K.,& Kerr,C. 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