Business Plan For Assessing Competitor Strategic Business

Opportunity Analysis

Describe about the Business Plan for Assessing Competitor Strategic Business.

To be successful for “Folks Starters” it will need a functional marketing strategy. Opportunity analysis measures the resources of the company by increasing the sales and gaining a competitive advantage among the competitors. This involves external environment analysis and the market analysis. There are several different types of market analysis, however the strategies undertaken is highly suitable for this type of company. The Opportunity analysis also takes into the consideration the competitor’s analysis. It is worth mentioning after such analysis a strategic implementation plan will be developed ultimately disclosing the final marketing strategy.

Opportunity analysis can be defined as the detailed review of the prospect for a business within the potential market (Hollensen, 2015). Opportunity analysis enables a business to sustain in the long run by generating profit from the available market opportunities. Folks Starters identifies the potential opportunities for its business, which are as follows;

Facilitates competitive analysis: Opportunities analysis will enable the “Folks Starters” to remain competitive by analysing the competitive landscape of business for long term profitability. As this facilitates more opportunities for the business to establish and grow.

Economies of scale: Folks starters identifies that an all round growth of business is largely based on the achieving economies of scale. The business can achieve economies of scale by keeping its fixed cost constant and reducing the instance of growing variable cost (Pfeiffer & Blank, 2014). This will help the business in capitalising on the opportunities with large profit margin.   

Demand forecasting: An opportunity analysis is incomplete for business unless it forecast the demand of the current trade engaged by them. Thus, conducting an opportunity analysis will enable the business to focus on the probable demand for the fashion clothes with higher return on investment.   

Target marketing: Once the opportunities has been analysed by “Folks Starters” it will establish a targeted marketing plan. It is because of the fact that the each customer is different from the other and hence, targeting the segmented customers will provide an insight into the customers mind (Upson et al., 2012).

It can be concluded that opportunity analysis is an important tool in start up to any business as this helps in expanding the market so that the business can understand the attributes and features of fashion clothes.  

Figure 1: Opportunity Analysis for Folks Starters

(Source As created by Author)

Statement of Issues

E-commerce business can at times be challenging for a new business start up. Below listed are some of the potential challenges or issues which Folks Starters can potentially face;

Personalization: Personalization is one of the single most challenging aspect for a e-commerce business and at times it can be highly competitive in relation to the retail stores. As personal touch can be difficult to replace when one is selling through online mode.

Shipping challenges: E-commerce can often come up with issues pertaining to poor integration of supply chain, higher delivery charges for product and inadequate courier facilities may make customers frustrating.

Market structure:

E-commerce business is accountable for generating billions of dollars globally and the figure is growing rapidly. The price effects regarding internet shopping and e-commerce have received intentions from every corner. Market structure concerning the latest fashion trend in Australia is more likely to affect consumers than just prices. The tool of e-commerce facilitates the consumers to discover lower product from lower price sellers. This enables the new entrant to deliver higher product at either same or reduced cost, which will facilitate the new starters to grab greater shares of business away from the higher cost competitors. Although landscape that is more competitive is created by existing business firms but with the help of lower search cost reduction structure and price margins for business that have applied towards price implications.      

Market segmentations consist of the process of division of broad market usually consisting of existing and potential customers exhibiting similar sort of shared characteristics.  Below stated are the market segmentations of “Folks Starters” which are follows;

Locations: The primary step in market segmentation is breaking down the major visitor populations in the vital locations for better understanding the differences indentified in their behaviour. The business identifies the local markets in order to tailor their product to meet the customers fashion needs. To further segment is customers, Geological segmentations is adopted to build the systems into an optimised manner for identification of visitors by locations.

Source Type: The business will identify the customers coming from in order to make smart business decisions. “Folks Starters” potentially identifies the originating source of visitors arising from search engines by understanding the behaviour of the customers in comparison to the social media sites having large number of preference.

The distribution channel adopted by Folks Starters towards building their distribution channel for e-commerce network consists of the following strategies;

Determining transportations: The approach of the company is usually to begin with the service strategy in order to meet the demand of the customers from both perspective of delivery and transportation mode. On the delivery side, Folks starters must knowing specifically the customer’s needs along with their basic premises in order to provide more comfort to customers with reliable delivery strategy (Lee et al., 2015). Folks Starters will also look to expand their modes to hire third party in order to move their freight through ground parcel or alternatively setting up a private fleet.

Optimum distribution network: Once the transportation strategy becomes clear, Folks Starters looks to implement optimal distribution network so that the business can achieve balance amid service and cost. Ideally, the projections will be based on the revenue and demand, which the business anticipates to grow, and the products the retailers are anticipated to carry.

Implementation of new technology: The traditional distribution channel will be based on the new technology particularly including the bar coding, expansion of bandwidth expansion and implementation of Oracle will profoundly impact the distribution efficiency and effectiveness of the business.

“Folks Starters” identifies the combinations of globalized products offerings with the localised e-commerce business with the help of market findings and payment options. The goals of business are to transact, checkout and take payments and connecting globally while staying local. The current market trends identify the customer engagement and ensuring that customers have emotional attachment with the product. This means attracting customers to the websites with the objective of buying on site (Palia & De Ryck, 2015). This will eventually enable “Folks Starters” to create the brand affinity, which will ultimately result in conversation and average order value in other channels as well. A well-known market trends is observed where a consumer experience a seamless shopping experience by adding the desired product in a basket. This helps in driving investment by IT directors in commercial packages, CRM systems and more signification integration of commercial systems with POS.   

Below listed is the range of solutions for business to cover up its issues pertaining to e-commerce;

Personalization: Personalization, though considered as challenge but if addressed well it can be a huge differentiating factor for better customer approach in shaping up the online world. “Folks Starters” can make the use of intelligent tools such as web analytics or studying the behaviour of customers, which would eventually help the business to attract more customers.

Distribution Channel

Segmentations: It is imperative for a business to make customer segmentations, as not all the customers should be treated in the same way (Mullins et al., 2015). It is always necessary to divide customers based on which one can provide offers and promotions campaigns. Folks Starters can make the use of analytics target for its right customers.    

Financial viability is one of the most important elements in starting up a business. Failure to perform a comprehensive fiscal appraisal leads the entire business as a failure. “Folks Starters” relies on the cost effectiveness, which will enable the business to maintain the prices on the similar level of competition and increasing the level of profitability in order to attract the higher prices from the conscious customers (Frank & Pamela, 2016). Financial analysis methodology of attaining competitive advantage is through cost leadership is higher turnover of the business assets with low direct and indirect cost of operations by controlling the supply chain.

Conclusion & Final recommendations:

To conclude with sustainability of business on long-term basis is of utmost importance for any business life cycle. Failure to identify the plan for future may lead to business to fall into the declining stage and soon winds up because of poor sustainability. For a formulated growth of business it is important to create an impactful application of cross functional and integrated opportunity analysis. Below stated are the recommendations for integrated business planning which are as follows;

Developing a proactive information management strategy, which will, encourages the business along with the information technology team together so that it can define the opportunities to capitalise on the innovations.

Establishing a cohesive information management strategy in order to ensure that the information management systems provide the adoptions of innovations ultimately to support better decision making.

Reference List:

Frank, J. F., & Pamela, P. P. (2016). Financial Management and Analysis.

Hollensen, S. (2015). Marketing management: A relationship approach. Pearson Education.

Lee, C., Kang, B., & Shin, J. (2015). Novelty-focused patent mapping for technology opportunity analysis. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 90, 355-365.

Madureira, L. (2014). Market and Competitor Analysis: Real Exercise. The Art of Intelligence: Simulations, Exercises, and Games, 125.

Mullins, J., Walker, O. C., & Boyd Jr, H. W. (2012). Marketing management: A strategic decision-making approach. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Närhi, T. (2015). A Competitor Analysis for an Online Student Portal Start-up.

Palia, A., & De Ryck, J. (2015). Assessing Competitor Strategic Business Units with the Competitor Analysis Package. Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 42.

Pfeiffer, D.W. & Blank, S., Deere & Company, (2014). Operator performance opportunity analysis. U.S. Patent Application 14/445,699.

Titman, S., Keown, A. J., & Martin, J. D. (2015). Financial management: Principles and applications. Pearson.

Upson, J. W., Ketchen, D. J., Connelly, B. L., & Ranft, A. L. (2012). Competitor analysis and foothold moves. Academy of Management Journal, 55(1), 93-110.