A Business Plan For An Online Store Marketing Essay

In this computerized era, shopping online has never been so common and popular. This is the new trend where people nowadays actually prefer to purchase stuffs via online. Why? They don’t have to go out all the way to a shopping mall, they get to find really good and cheaper bargains and online goods actually comes in more variety! These are also the purposes of us setting up a blog and introduce our services and goods via online.

Customers can actually go to our blog (www.crowns-and-roses.blogspot.com) or go to our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Malacca-Town-Malaysia/Accesorized/143106969046004?ref=mf#!/pages/Malacca-Town-Malaysia/Accesorized/143106969046004?ref=mf) and browse for our products. Right after they’ve made their decisions, we will process their orders and within 2-3 days they can receive their purchases already. Convenient, isn’t it? Our main business is to introduce affordable and good quality bags to all the females out there. Every girls love to buy bags. Hence, the business! We will also introduce a wide range and variety of different designs that you can never get in brick-and-mortar store in shopping mall.

Scope

Our scope will be just click and mortar store. We do not have any capital to set up a brick and mortar store yet. We are currently just students, on top of doing this business for BEL subject, we ourselves also would like to try some other alternatives to earn some side income for us.

Get Help With Your Essay

If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help!
Find out more about our Essay Writing Service

Next, we will only sell our products within Malaysia only. Anyone from Malaysia will be able to purchase our products. Our target market are more to females, aging between 15 years old and above. Females above 15 years old and above appear to be more financially stable than females who are below 15 years old and hence, they are able to purchase our products.

Males are welcome to purchase our products as well if they intend to buy our products and give it to their mother or siblings or even friends. We expect our main customers to be Malaccans. This is simply because we will promote our products more to friends around us, and also because of the availability of COD, where people actually prefer to not pay for the additional postage fees.

Limitations and Assumptions

Our main limitations will be capital problem. We do not have much capital to do all ready stocks and buy hundreds of stocks for our customers to choose. Therefore, we will find a supplier who can supply us stocks, and our main job is to help her promote her products. And for every items sold, we are given some commissions. This method does not include any costs, and at the same time we can earn money. So why not?

Secondly, our limitations will be transport problem. We are still students, and most of us do not have cars here. The only transportations available will be bus and taxi. In order to COD with a Malaccan customers, we will normally ask them to come to collect their goods around MMU Melaka. We are unable to choose other pick up points like Jusco or Melaka Sentral or Tesco simply because we do not have transport.

Lastly, our knowledge in creating blogs are really limited. We are unable to hire professional webpage designer to help us design a really user-friendly webpage. We can only count on our own to come out with a webpage to publicize our products. Therefore, our website is just mediocre and not that appealing to people who have high requirements on blog designs. Besides, our blog also lack of certain functions.

Stakeholders

Our first stakeholders will be our customers. Most of our fund will come from our sales revenue. Second stakeholders will be the bag supplier from Taiwan, where we purchased our stocks under Batch A from them. Our third stakeholders will be our main bags supplier from Malaysia, which falls under Batch B products. Last but not least, we are our own business’s stakeholders because all the 5 of us come out with RM 550 total as a capital to start up our business.

Acronyms & definitions

There are a few acronyms and definitions where you can find in our blog. Here we are going to explain them all out to clear our customer’s doubts.

EC simply means Electronic commerce. PM means personal message, where customers can directly send us any ‘pm’ in order to reach us. B2C simply means business to customers business, which exactly explains what we are doing. Click and mortar means we only have online stores, do not have any brick and mortar stores out there. While brick and mortar simply means a physical store outside. COD means cash on delivery, where our customers pay us on the spot we deliver the goods to them.

Business Plan

Executive Summary

Electronic Commerce requires each of us to form a group consists of 5 people. And we are required to set up a blog and sell our goods to our customers via online. Firstly, we will be setting our blog via www.blogger.com. The link to access our blog is www.crowns-and-roses.blogspot.com. We basically get this idea from a group of American hard rock band named Guns N’ Roses. To make it sound more girlish, we changed to crowns and roses. The title for our blog will be ”Accessorized!” Simply means that our products can be your accessorizes for your outfit of the day. We try to figure out and come out with some simple yet sophisticated layout, making sure that everyone loves the blog layout, feels attracted to it, and at the same time its user-friendly. We will have a few clickable links on our blog sidebar, where customers can view our products by categories. Not only that, we will also provide delivery method, payment method, Terms and Conditions for our customer’s references. The main objective of our blog is to make the customers feel that our business is trustworthy and reliable.

Business description

The main products that we are going to sell in our blog will be bags. We will be having a few series of bags for sales. Firstly, PG bags. This PG bags are a very well known brand in Taiwan. Sadly, Malaysia doesn’t have this bags selling in any shopping complex. This brand is so famous because it is always updated with the latest fashion trend, always comes out with new arrivals, and most importantly, the price is very reasonable. Most of the bags price range are within RM 20- RM 60, which are affordable to all females. To make sure we get the authentic products, we have searched for a middle man to help us purchase the bags from Taiwan. So our products are directly imported from Taiwan and 100% quality assurance. Money back guaranteed if they are not authentic. We will price our products within RM 20-RM 60 as well. Selling bags bring us desirable profits, and the stocks are easy to handle as well.

Operational plan

Operation plan is all about how the business will operate and how for us to deal with the customer when they are purchasing our goods. Our blog business will be operating everyday including weekend too. The duration will be 24 hour and 7 day a week without rest. The blog will be updated with new products from time to time so that our customers can purchase latest design of the bags that suit them. Besides, there are also a chatbox in our blog, to those customers who are in doubt regarding our products, can always leave the questions at the chatbox there, and we will reply them according to their questions as fast as possible. The stocks of the bag will be replenished once the ready stock for now is finished, currently we have 18 bags ready stock, the customers can get their stocks right away with COD or postage method. For the dealing method, we will use poslaju for the postage method or we can also have a COD( cash on delivery) session around MMU Melaka with the customer if only they are willing to come over here to get the bag. For the posting rate, it is RM8 flat no matter how many bags you purchase. Only applicable for residents in West Malaysia. For east Malaysia residents, the rate will be RM 12 no matter how many bags you purchased. Regarding the payment method, we have both Cimb account and Maybank account, both of the accounts can be used to pay for the bag. This will make the customer more convenient as they can pay online without going through all the hassle by going to the bank to deposit the money in the bank.

Financial Report

Targeted Sales (units)

Week 1 – Week 2

Week 3 – Week 6

Week 7 – Week 9

Week 10 – Week 12

Week 1 – Week 2: There are no sales for this period because of the preparation for business

plan. This is when we discuss, plan and decide on what to sell and which

supplier to get from for our online business.

Week 3 – Week 6: Within this period, we start to create our blog and Facebook to advertise

and start to promote to our friends. We got not much response from

customers because this business is still new to them. While promoting our

products, the bags that we order directly from the supplier in Taiwan has

finally arrived at the end of Week 6.

Week 7 – Week 9: After few weeks of promoting our products through blog and Facebook,

our online business finally start to have some feedback from our

customers. Therefore, we target to sell about 5 bags for the beginning and

from what we had targeted, we actually manage to reach our target sales

within this period of time.

Week 10 – Week 12: From the response that we get from our customers, we target to sell

around 10 bags in these 3 weeks. Our online business is quite successful because we had achieved our target sales again. Although the profit is not much but we hope that our sales will slowly increase from time to time.

Below is the income statement of Accessorized e-commerce business:

Income Statement

For the Three Months Ending August 31, 2010

RM

Net sales 795.00

Less: Cost of goods sold 666.80

Gross profit 128.20

Expenses

Postage 24.00

Net profit 104.20

MARKETING PLAN

Market analysis

Target market

Our target market will be female. Nowadays, not only teenagers move towards fashion but also middle-age female. Female teenagers are the most important target market. Throughout the trendy world, female teenagers are getting trendy and very particular about fashion. We are taking this opportunity to target female market as selling the most fashion bags. By selling best possible price, we believe that they will be affordable to purchase our products and we have faith in attracting them towards our fashion bags. Besides that, we will target middle-age women as one of the popular markets too. As adults, they are mostly having a fixed income so that they are willing to spent more money in order to purchase their lovely and interested products.

Positioning

We will set up in customer’s mind to show that our online business of selling bags is something that brings fashionable to them. Nowadays, female love to buy many types of bags in order to match with their dressing according to occasion. To make our business more attractive, a lot of display photo are post in the blog so that customers can have moe clearer picture about our fashion bags. To do this, customers should well know about our bags each time they recall the word of ‘fashion’.

Pricing strategy

Online business is something that brings convenience to customers and not something trouble. By starting up online business, we able to eliminate many cost. In order to making profits, we should develop few types of pricing strategy so that a best possible price can be achieved. First of all, we develop product line pricing. Product pricing is types of technique to set the price steps between various types of bags in a product line with a different price. Throughout our blog, we have categorized several of bags into different range of price to allow customers freely choose their favourite bags. Another one is psychological pricing. We fix our bags to price below RM50 so that customers are affordable to purchase. Based on psychological approach, we price each bag into RM29.90, RM39.90, RM49.90 rather than a round figure of RM30, RM40, and RM50. This is a marketing strategy to influence customers’ mind that the products are cheaper than round figure. Customers are more likely to purchase our products due to this attractive strategy.

Promotion plan

Promotion plays an important role in business. A well promotion plan should be develop in order to attract huge customers to buy our products. In promotion plan, we use direct marketing. Subscribe mails are one the way to promote our business which giving sufficient information about all the description related our products and delivery and payments methods so that customers can know more about our business hence they can promote their friends either word-of-mouth or through online. By mailing to one customer, it can be possibly indirectly spread the news to others. In addition, we will come out with lucky draw section through the blog. For those customersm are selected, they have chance to get a free gift.

Next, we use online media to develop an advertisement at Facebook, twitter or e-mail in order to create awareness about our blog. Facebook is kind of very popular media that used by everyone no matter what country you are. So we taking this opportunity to create a group named “Accessorized’ and place a lot of display photo in Facebook. Not only that, we will take real photo with the bags to show that the reality of the bags. Customers can have a clearer picture about the quality and design of the bags. If customers have any inquires, we able to communicate diherectly with customers and reply them from time to time. Besides that, delivery and payment method, term & condition are stated clearly and details hence customers will be convenience when they feel interested and can making order directly from us. This may pass an effective message and information to create awareness about out blog and the related products for customers’ understanding. Furthermore, Facebook can show that number of people like our page and information can be updated quickly so that customers can get the latest and effective news for our business progress.

Last but not least, sales promotion is an effective strategy that affects customer’s purchasing decision. The promotion include that we create member special benefit which purchase one bag can automatically become a lifetime member. Members are entitled 5% discount on every purchase of bags due to limited time to period. This is a sales promotion to attract more customers’ delight and satisfaction. And also, customers who purchase 2 bags or more simultaneously will entitled free postage. By implementing sales promotion, customer attraction can be achieved towards our fashion bags.

Distribution plan

There are two types of delivery method which available to customers. First method is Cash on delivery (COD). Customers can make cash payment directly when they are nearby to us. The areas are only available in MMU Melaka. For instance, as we are MMU student, students who study in MMU purchase our products are able to pay cash payment and can get the products directly.

Another way is postage where our products are in delivery services by using postage. Customers may charge postage fees when they purchase our products. We are using pos laju to deliver our bags. To remind that our business is within Malaysia only, so there will be two different prices in West and East Malaysia. For West Malaysia, it will charge RM8 flat whereas East Malaysia is RM12. No matter how many bags customers purchase, the charge are the same.

Demand forecast

To determining the forecast regarding to quantity of a product that customer will purchase, we focus more on female. Females love to shop and they are probable to buy our products. In addition, they treat bags as a fashion and they are most likely to buy many types of bags in order to suit with attire according to occasion. Thus, we can forecast that females are our target more and they will demand more. We will be doing a survey regarding the popularity of products to prove that our forecast is reliable and to estimate the quantity of our products that customers will purchase. Estimated people who involved with this survey will be approximately 50 people.

Questionnaire

This survey will only perform to 50 female:

Do you like our bags?

YES NO

Have you ever purchased any products through online shopping before?

(state what products)

____________________

Which price range appear to be affordable to you?

RM20-30

RM30-40

RM40-50

RM50 and above

OTHERS_________________

Do you think our bags are fashionable/up to the current trend?

YES NO

Which type of bags will you prefer as stated below?

Sling bag

Handbag

Wallet/Purse

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Example of competitor

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

Internal

External

Positive Negative

Our strengths (S) are to provide some tips for the buyers to differentiate between the authentic and fake products. We are definitely selling authentic products where the bags have their own brand sign in it. Customers are confident to buy our products with a full trust. We also provide some tips and tricks to match bags with the attire of the day by our models. In addition, customers are able to search for all the detailed information about our products, order and delivery service and payment method throughout our attractive blog. Feedback and Q&A from our customers are highly encouraged so that we can to communicate and solve problems faced by customers.

Our main weaknesses (W) is that customers cannot try the bags on their own to identify whether the bags really suit their preferences or not. This is because most of our stocks are from Taiwan, it is not like any other physical shop whereby customers can look at the quality, examine the quality of the bag and also try the bag on themselves before buying the bags.

Next, we will be discussing on opportunities (O). In the trendy world, teenagers like to match their attire and also, our bag designs are trendy and fashionable. Thus, we have the opportunity to attract female to purchase our bags. They see bags as kind of fashion and they will feel interested towards our fashionable bags.

Our main threat is that there are already have many bag sellers selling in the online market. An example of online competitors that selling bags are: www.baobaopifa.com.

baobaopifa.jpg

From the website, customers are allow to return the bags if they found any faults in the bags. This appear to be a benefit to customers but we are unable to do so. Thus, we must offer reasonable price and make attractive promotion to compete with those competitors in order to maximize our sales. And also, some of the customers prefer to purchase the bags at physical shop because they feel that it will bring more guarantees. For instance, Ecco shop is one of the brand selling various types of bags in a real shop. It is one of our competitors because Ecco shop does not only sell bags but they have also clothes and wallet.

Risk Assessment

We understand that every single business does carry risk. It is just different by the rate of risk that the business carry. Although there are many interruption on business that caused us to bear a huge risk, but we decided to accept it as a challenge towards the success. First of all, doubt of product quality will always be the main concern how people will think about when they do online shopping. Customer cannot touch, feel, see, and try on the product before they purchase. Hence, they will feel insecure, especially those who are having their very first transaction with the seller. We tried to overcome this problem by snapping real photos of the bags by our models. By looking at real photos, customer can have a clearer picture on the size and quality of the product. Besides, we also have this so called Chat Box and testimonial page that will allow customers to leave their comments if they have any satisfied or unsatisfied comments to voice out. Through the real feedbacks from customers, others will have more confidence on what we are selling on. Next interruption is that we are facing is selling price of our competitors. In fact, there are many seller that are selling exactly the same things as what we have. Sometime they are selling at a much lower price than us simply because they want to clear stock. In other words, they might be selling at a loss. We cannot follow this as we need to earn some profits to retain our ongoing business. So, how do we compete? What we can do is just to promise our customers on our product’s quality. We make sure that the price they’ve paid definitely worth the quality of the bags we provide to them. The next interruption will be our products are less attractive to certain category of buyers. At the beginning stage of our business, we are unable to sell as much as other retailers did. Hence, we do not have so much capital to increase our stocks to satisfy our customers who come in different tastes. To overcome this problem, we found a supplier that enable us to became an agent/middleman whereby we do not have to pay a single cent of capital. Although the profit was not that high but it is still able to sustain our business. Furthermore, we cannot serve those customers who prefer branded bags such as LV, and Gucci as our product status are not set as luxury line but just an ordinary product, hence this definitely caused us to lose certain amount of customer who prefer branded bags. Problem that we face during resources requirement process might also cost us a lot. First of all, the case run out stock is the most common problem among all. With the reason we are selling on first come first serve basis and each bag only limited to one unit, once the bag has been purchased, we are unable to satisfy another customer who shows the same interest. Besides, it might happen where products from suppliers do not match with what we have expected earlier on. Because this is not a face-to-face transaction, communication problem might happen during the ordering process. Hence, we have to seriously tell supplier what we exactly want and ensure that they provide the latest design for us in order to fit our customer’s taste.

Blog

blog1.jpg

This is basically the interface of our blog. The main reason why we chose this template is because of the girlish colors, which consists of pink and red combination. And also the huge image that a girl carries a bag, totally suits to represent our blog’s business.

Below we are going to explain our blog in details :

These are pages which consists of Home, Contact Us, Order Form, Testimonials and also Terms and Conditions. Customers can click on the button to access to the pages they want.

This is a .GIF file which we will update from time to time. It works as a place for us to inform what we want to tell to our customers. We made it into .GIF file so that our customers will be more attracted to animated images and not static words.

RSS button. Customers can click on the RSS button to subscribe to our blog and receive updates.

Twitter button. Customers can share our blog via Twitter.

Search button. Customers can search information within our blog by typing the keywords inside.

blog2.jpg

COD, CIMB Bank, Maybank are the three methods available for customers who want

to pay us the money.

Pos Laju and COD are how we deliver our products to our customers.

blog3.jpg

Here is a place where we will post all our contents. We will provide pictures, measurements, and also real pictures of the bags.

blog4.jpg

A category where customers can browse our products easier according to price and also availability of the products.

A chatbox where customers can drop us questions and also testimonials.

blog5.jpg

This will be a place where we promote our friend’s EC blog as well.

blog6.jpg

Visitors – This is a place where we check our blog view hits. Only unique visitors will accumulate the hits, not page load.

Archive – Customers can see how many posts we already had throughout the whole period.

Feedjit – This is a gadget where we can track where our customers come from.

blog7.jpg

Find us here! – Customers can also check us out in Facebook. Right after they like our page, they will be able to browse our products.

blog8.jpg

Made easier for customer’s browsing.

Customers can search keywords in our blog, see how many people are currently viewing the blog, like our blog via Facebook, share our blog to others, and chat with us in real time.

Made easier for customer’s browsing.

contact us.jpg

Contact us page – A page where we will provide the seller’s name, handphone number and also MSN address so that our customers can ask questions directly to us.

order form page.png

Order form page – Customers who have already selected their bags, will have to insert their information in the order form so that we can deliver goods to them.

testimonials.jpg

Testimonials page – A place where customers leave feedbacks to us via chatbox, and we will transfer them to Testimonials page so that other customers are more convinced to purchase our products.

TnC.jpg

Terms and conditions page – Customers must read and agree with our Terms And Conditions before they proceed in purchasing our products. This is to avoid any misunderstandings among the buyers and sellers.