Marketing Plan For Sharebox: Innovation In Sharing

Overview of the Organization

According to Haslam et al. (2014), a marketing plan is described as an inclusive document or often termed as blue print, which helps in structuring the advertising as well as the marketing efforts of an organization for the future year. Moreover, the marketing plan helps in portraying the activities of a business that are included in the achievement of the particular marketing goals within a specified time frame. The purpose of this report is to prepare a marketing plan for a Melbourne-based social enterprise start-up named “Sharebox: Innovation in Sharing”. The scope for this report include the aim of the particular firm to become the trusted global partner for the businesses that are committed to create positive effect on both local and international markets. However, as the company is a start-up business, the quantity of fund might act as the major limitation for the preparation and the implementation of this marketing plan.    

The organization Sharebox is a Melbourne based social enterprise start-up business that aims to become an iconic institution of Australia and the products or the services it provides include export of the philosophy and business model across the world in “Sharing Excess Capacity”. The particular company was founded as “Banana Brigade” in early 2000s that used to carry banana-laden trucks and distributes bananas to the slum kids in Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai (Sharebox.org 2017). Since these years, the social enterprise is continuously refining its model to sustainably meet the demands of the susceptible at a global scale. Based on these, both the earlier and present marketing efforts of the firm can be understood as nowadays, the firm intends to get globalized. Thus, the firm should incorporate unique marketing strategies for grasping the worldwide market for running the business effectively. The current customer of the firm includes the Not-For-Profit sector. The other firms who also intend to provide an online platform to match the corporate excess capacity to meet the published and particular requirements of the similar sector are considered as the competitors of the particular firm.   

The industry of social enterprise is defined as a sector, where each firm incorporates various commercial strategies for maximizing the improvements and developments in the well-being of the environment and the human beings. This might also include the maximization of the social effect along the profits for the exterior shareholders. In Australia, there are certain legal structures that a social enterprise should follow for better running of the industry as a whole. These structures include – incorporated associations, companies limited through guarantee, co-operatives and indigenous corporations (Petrella and Richez-Battesti 2014). It has been found that each of the structures have both benefits and downsides, thus, based on both, a particular structure is implemented by any social enterprise of Australia. Moreover, it has been found that in the Australian social enterprises, the size of the committee plays an important role especially for the start-ups. Generally, a good committee is comprised of 4 people as this helps in regulating the business efficiently. In addition to these, it has been found that the social entrepreneurship has become one of the rapid growing sectors in Australia as this particular industry of social enterprise positively affects the economy of the country.

Industry Definition

Moreover, based on detailed analysis, it can be said that the particular social enterprise industry grows continuously over last five years. In addition to these, it has been noted that a growth of about 37 % of the social enterprise industry took place in the last five years (Nfplaw.org.au 2017). Thus, it makes the social entrepreneurship industry a noteworthy contributor to the domestic economy (Australia). Additionally, it has been found that certain social enterprises have join forces for the disability employment social enterprise. The firms that think for the disable people, provide employment opportunities to those disable persons who have experienced long-term unemployment and mental illness.            

The important factors that help in running the particular industry of social enterprise successfully include the following:  

Element of trust – There are mainly four elements of trust and these are reliability, competence, communication and integrity. It has been found that the social enterprise sector implements all the four elements of trust. Thus, the particular industry has grown by about 37 % within five years.

Quality of product moving – It has been found that some of the social enterprises of Australia intend to expand its business globally. Thus, in this specific case, the quality of the products moving, especially those moves in the international commerce are verified (Baker 2014). For instance, eco-friendly, usable products are used.

Awareness to the public – Public awareness and proper communication are considered as an important factor for the social enterprises of Australia. The reason behind this is that the promotion of the particular firm will help the people to know about the business or the particular firm across the world.

Logistics – When a social enterprise of Australia intends to become globalized, then the factor called logistics play the most vital role. The reason behind this is that the in the transportation system, logistics take an active part.

Excess capacity logistics – The excess capacity is a particular situation, where the actual production is lower than the quantity of production is achievable for the specified firm. Therefore, this indicates that the demand of the particular good is low and the business is capable enough to supply the products to the market potentially and for this purpose, logistics is considered as an important aspect. The excess capacity logistics helps the social enterprise to use additional capacity to provide clients with a special order price and to develop more sales at the month end.   

The macro force analysis can be better understood by the help of the DENT-PC analysis. The detailed analysis of the demographic, economical, natural, technological, political and cultural factors of the social enterprise industry will help in understanding the macro-environment of the particular sector.

Macro Factors	Trend Description	Influence	Opportunity/ Threat
Demographic	Women are more disabled than men More than 4 million Australian populations possess certain kind of disability. In detail, 1 out of 5 people suffers from disability. 18.6% of Australian females and 18.0% Australian males have disability. Aging Population 50.7 % of Australians or 1.8 million people are aged 65 and have disability; in comparison to 1 in 8 i.e. 12.5 % are aged below 65.  It has been found that 2.1 million working Australians of age 15 – 64 years have disability (And.org.au, 2017)	o – Disabled women are at greater risk than the disabled men, i.e. both outside and within home, of abuse, violence or injury or negligent treatment or neglect or, exploitation or maltreatment o – Other susceptible as sufferers of crimes from both people and strangers who are known, yet it has been found that offenses against disabled women are never accounted to the agencies of law enforcement – disable women are less likely to obtain service support than the disabled men (Wwda.org.au 2017)	T- 5
Economic	The unemployment rates of both women and men with disability were considerably dissimilar (9.3 % and 9.5% respectively). People having speech disability or sensory had the lowest rate of unemployment i.e. 7.7%. On the contrary, people who live with psychological or intellectual disability had the uppermost rate of unemployment (20.0% and 20.4% respectively). Moreover, people with a thoughtful center activity restraint also had a superior rate of unemployment (10.3%) than those having a gentle interior activity restraint (9.5%) (Hollensen 2015).	-Thus, it can be said that the total numbers of disable men who are unemployed are more than number of disable women. In other words, jobs are more available for disable women. -People who have sensory and speech disability obtain various job opportunities. Thus, others who possess intellectual and psychological disability suffers from unemployment.	T- 2
Natural	Style for recycling; expenditure habit (extreme spending); carbon footprint, global warming;	All these negatively affect the society and the people suffer from global climatic change.	O/T – 5
Technology	App Crowd funding – propone TFN	The modern technology affects the disable persons both positively and negatively. Some of the modern technologies might create barrier to the disable people by making the process difficult.  On the other hand, some of the technologies make the process easier to disable people.	O- 5
Political/ Legal	The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is the modern method of providing shore up for the people of Australia with disability, their cares and families. Moreover, the NDIS will offer around 460,000 Australians beneath the age of 65 years with a stable and major disability with the sensible and essential supports they require to live a normal life (Flint and Schumann 2017).	From 1st July of the year 2016, the NDIS will be pioneered in all stages in the region of Australia over 3 years for ensuring it is booming and sustainable.	Opportunity 4
Cultural/Socio	Wages gap As per the statistics of the United States, men having disabilities earn 55 % more than the women having disabilities (Dodge 2015).	It implies the women who suffer from disabilities have poor economic condition, as they are paid less and this is the reason for lower unemployment rate.	Threat 4

Based on above analysis, it can be said that the increased percentage of disable persons in Australia have lead to growth of the social entrepreneur industry.        

It has been found that the primary stakeholders of the social enterprise include – businesses that serve goods, disability of the customers, disability service provider, sharebox, logistics firms, volunteer, government, contribution from the public, philanthropy, sponsorship and Swinburne student. Based on the stakeholders of the firm or the particular sector, it can be said that the fund that are gathered from the government, sponsorship will help in running the business successfully (Zeriti et al. 2014). Moreover, the high percentage of disability persons or customers will help to expand the business and will also make it popular.           

Critical Success Factors for the Industry

The main competitors or the strategic groups of the firm of the social enterprise sector are:

Gumtree – The Gumtree is mainly known as Gumtree.com and it is a British community website and online classifieds. The classified ads are either paid or free for depending on the category of the product and geographical market. It has been found that in the year 2010, in the month of November, the particular British company was the largest website within the U.K. for local society classifieds. Moreover, this was one of the crown 30 websites within the U.K. that obtains about 14.8 million unique visitors each month as per the year 2010’s traffic audit (Armstrong et al. 2014). Additionally, it is number 1 classifieds site in Australia, U.K., Singapore and Africa.    

Op shop – The charity shop is a retail organization and is run by charitable firm for raising fund. Thus, the charity shops are termed as social enterprise and sell various products like books, clothing, DVDs, CDs and furniture that have been contributed by the associates of the public and are generally employed by volunteers.

Salvation Army – It is a Protestant church of Christian and global charitable firm that has been outlined in a fashion of quasi-military. This firm reports a global membership of more than 1.5 million and this is comprised of adherents, officers and soldiers, who are known as Salvationists. This organization was founded by William Booth and Catherine for bringing salvation to the destitute, hungry and poor people by fulfilling their both spiritual and physical requirements. It is located in around 127 nations, regulating charity shops and operating shelters for those who are disaster relief, homeless and humanitarian assist to establishing nations.     

In order to perform the customer analysis, data regarding the customers have been collected from the secondary resources. Thus, depending on the secondary data, it can be said that the primary customers of the social enterprise are the businesses and the community. Therefore, the social enterprises are comprised of both business to business (B2B) and customer to customer (C2C) operations. In case of B2B, the social enterprises provide an online platform for matching the corporate additional capacity for meeting the published and particular requirements of the Not-For-Profit sector (Dodge 2015). The main stakeholders of B2B are the NFP organizations and the corporate. On the other hand, the C2C include child-friendly online platform and the people those who are disaster relief, homeless and humanitarian. Moreover, it can be said that the social enterprise focuses on the well-being of the mentioned people and fulfills their both spiritual and physical needs.     

The marketing and the non-marketing capabilities of the organizations like social enterprise can be clearly understood from the source of resources. There are various charitable firms like Salvation Army who possesses membership across the world and are comprised of adherents, officers and soldiers. It has been found to regulate charity shops and operating shelters for those who are disaster relief, homeless and humanitarian assist to establishing nations (Baker 2014). Moreover, it has been found that the charitable firm raises fund for running charity shop. In addition, council, communities and City Yarra also act as the source of the resources.

Strength and Weaknesses

Macro Force Analysis

Strengths	Weaknesses
· Passion and Vision · Network and have great connection · Strong plan	· Lack of structure · Difficulty to get Volunteer irregular

Strengths – The passion as well as the vision of the firm Sharebox is to become an iconic institute in Australia that will export its business model as well as its philosophy across the globe in “Sharing Excess Capacity”. Thus, it will help in getting the firm more popular and will also help the firm in becoming a globalized organization. Moreover, it has been found that that the firm has widespread network (Sharebox.org 2017). Thus, the key stakeholders of the organization Sharebox include NFP organizations and corporate. Finally, the strong plan of the firm also helps it in operating the business.

Weaknesses – The firm Sharebox has a lack of structure. The particular organization has been found to fail to implement accurate legal structure within the organization. The government of Australia has outlined various legal structures based on which social enterprise should be constructed. However, the accurate legal structure has not been implemented by the specified firm Sharebox. In addition to these, it has been found that the particular firm Sharebox faces difficulty to obtain volunteer irregular (Sharebox.org 2017). Thus, these seem to be the greatest weaknesses of the organization Sharebox.             

Opportunities	Threats
· Assistance from the Councils · Assistance from the communities · Assistance from City Yarra	· Competition
Rate: 4/5	Rate: 4/5

Opportunities – The main opportunities of Sharebox include the assistance of the City Yarra, communities and councils. The particular firm provides an online platform for matching the corporate excess capacity for meeting the published and specified requirements of Not-For-Profit sector. The key stakeholders of the firm are NFP organizations and corporate and thus, these act as the opportunity for the firm Sharebox (Sharebox.org 2017). Moreover, the particular firm gets sources of resources from the City Yarra, communities and councils. Therefore, all these also act as the opportunities for Sharebox.

Threat – From detailed analysis, it can be said that the social enterprise Sharebox has only one main threat and that is competition. Core competencies might negatively affect the popularity and customer base of the firm.           

Conclusion 

Therefore, it can be concluded that the social enterprises plays an important role in the domestic economy of the country Australia. Thus, it has been noted that the growing rate of the social enterprises in Australia also increased constantly for five years by 37 %. This has resulted into economic development of the country and the charitable firms have been found to provide various resources to the social enterprises. In this report, the social enterprise named Sharebox has been studied and analyzed in detail. Based on the detail analysis, it has been found that firm has an intention to become iconic institution in Australia that exports its business model as well as philosophy in “Sharing Excess Capacity” across the world. However, it has been detected that though the firm Sharebox has various strengths and opportunities regarding operation of its business, it possesses certain threats and weaknesses. Thus, Sharebox should overcome all its barriers and should convert its weaknesses into its strengths for better running.  

References

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