This business plan is a simulation of the First Financial Weekly, reprinted for the reference of some entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs can be through an in-depth analysis of this business plan and a more in-depth understanding of the nature of the business, such as the design of their own value and analysis, which is in fact the core of the business plan.
Note: This business plan is based on a comprehensive analysis of Taobao's market performance, demands, and available resources, and is purely fictional.
Our product is the future Facebook of China.
It will be the largest social shopping network,
which aggregates 300 million registered Alipay users, more than 2.5 million Taobao sellers, tens of thousands of mall sellers,
and even connects to the Alibaba B2B marketplace.
Here, manufacturers, sellers and buyers can be effectively connected,
to reach the best match of resource information, production information and demand information.
If this network of buyer-seller relationships can be woven together,
there are many more possibilities for it in the future -- including becoming China's largest real-name social network.
Taobao's original SNS platform, Tao Jianghu
Project summary
Product description:
1. One of the largest social shopping networks. The social network simultaneously reduces the cost for sellers to display and promote their products, and for buyers to discover them, while enriching the path to purchase and bringing about a true long-tail effect: the best-selling ones are not just the ones that used to appear prominently through advertisements? The product is not the only thing that sells well.
2, the most effective B2B2C model. Alibaba B2B users, and Taobao sellers, buyers docking, to achieve the resources of all parties, production and demand for information to effectively match.
3, the longer term future. If 300 million registered Alipay users, millions of Taobao sellers, tens of thousands of mall buyers can form an effective, based on the relationship between buying and selling interpersonal network, then this network has more possibilities in the future.
Market Analysis
Target Market Setting:
All Taobao sellers, including C2C sellers and mall buyers.
All Taobao buyers, especially active users of Alipay accounts.
Market development and ranking:
In the U.S. and most of the world, Facebook has become the largest social network for all and has launched an open platform service? service;
But in China, the real-name registration system, user profiles are real and trustworthy, personal information is complete and reached a certain user scale of universal SNS community has not yet appeared.
E-commerce enterprises have to carry out community-based marketing, but also in the exploratory and experimental stage.
Market Trend Forecast and Market Opportunities:
1. Market Trend
Social networking and community-based marketing will become more and more popular.
Note: The use of social means can benefit all parties. But the specific form of products and services, Taobao has not yet a clear answer. Right now can draw on the product model more from the extension of SNS to e-commerce, or itself is a social shopping product. And Taobao needs to do, is to look for shopping sites to SNS direction change possible, there is no experience to learn from.
2. Market Opportunities
The effective deployment of SNS can further revitalize the whole network traffic.
To sellers: the use of social marketing tools, social communication means, social statistics and tracking services, social customer service solutions, which can further reduce the cost of sales, the word-of-mouth effect of social communication can lead to more transactions, the scale of online transactions is likely to increase significantly.
For buyers: Social shopping experience is more enjoyable. They are more likely to accept "friends' recommendations" than advertisements. The means of discovering products are also richer.
For brand advertisers: Through social networks, we can accurately find out the shopping information needs of users and their circle of friends, and push ads or launch marketing campaigns in a targeted way. Previously, advertisements were directed to stores or product categories, but now the advertisements are directed to specific individuals. The value of the ads is increased.
Competitive Analysis
Industry Monopoly:
The SNS deployed by e-commerce companies has not yet emerged as a representative monopoly in the country;
Among the established SNS communities, the community for all, which is registered with real names and covers a wide range of users, has not yet appeared either.
Rivals:
1. Tencent - "friend community" + microblogging strategy
Advantage: Relying on the QQ client, which has more than 600 million registrations, Tencent's "friend community" had a monthly reach of more than 100 million users by October 2010, and the number of users was more than 60 million. " user monthly coverage has reached 131 million people; by February 2011, Tencent microblogging registered users have also exceeded 100 million people. In terms of traffic, by December 2010, Tencent's C2C platform Tencent Paipai had the second highest number of monthly page views after Taobao. Meanwhile, Tencent also owns the second largest third-party payment platform in China, Caipaitong. In the last two years, Tencent has continued to lay out its B2C business through acquisitions, the most recent of which was the purchase of the country's third-largest online mall for 3C products, Yi Xun, in addition to Jingdong and New Egg.
Weaknesses: Tencent's friend community is an SNS product, while microblogging is closer to the media, and Tencent is still in the exploratory stage of how the users of the two interoperate with each other and how e-commerce demand is imported.
Note: Among its many competitors, Tencent is the Internet company with the largest number of users in China and has a strong platform, while Sina and Jingdong are trying to transform themselves into platform-based companies. Competition between platform-based companies needs to take into account the interests of upstream and downstream partners, as well as the health of the ecosystem, in addition to successful products and operations, and Taobao needs to be prepared for that.
2. Sina - Sina Weibo to Macklin
On March 2, 2011, Sina announced that it had purchased a 19 percent stake in Macklin, a clothing and apparel B2C company. Sina first launched Sina Mall in 1999 to test the waters of e-commerce, but it didn't gain much traction.
Advantage: The purchase of McCollum is another step in Sina's e-commerce efforts, and the new weight is the popular Sina Weibo microblogging site. Sina Weibo currently has more than 100 million registered users, and its open-platform plan provides a possibility for Sina to change from a media company to a platform company. On this platform, the combination of the user base with accounts and payment methods can stimulate potential e-commerce demand.
Weaknesses: Sina Weibo's media attributes are too strong, and it has already launched a "group" product, but its shift to SNS is just beginning, and whether it can realize a wider real-name system for users in the future will be one of the tests.
Note: Sina Weibo is a product that integrates features of both Twitter and Facebook, and if it can maintain its current traffic and user activity, it has a good chance of becoming China's Facebook.
3. Renren - Group Buying and E-Commerce
Renren is going public in the US in early April 2011, and its F-1 filing shows that it has 117 million active users, compared with 33 million, 83 million and 110 million in the previous three years.
Advantage: Renren's predecessor is SchoolNet, which was founded in 2005 and was acquired by Oak Group in 2006, and integrated with Oak's 5Q Campus, making it one of the largest SNS sites in China in terms of users.
Weaknesses: Renren's revenue sources are mostly focused on advertising and paid value-added business models, and in June 2010, Renren's Nuomi.com was officially launched, entering the group-buying field. According to Renren's F-1 filing, more than 60% of Nuomi's users come from Renren. However, Renren's layout in the open platform and e-commerce field is not clear at the moment. Campus users still account for the majority of its 110 million users, which is still a long way from a Facebook-style real-name SNS for the whole population.
Competitive advantages:
1. Taobao is already the largest e-commerce platform in China, with a large user base, active visits, and a wide range of intrinsic business and commodity information communication needs.
Till December 2010, Taobao had 2.35 billion visits per month, with 178 million orders placed and a turnover rate of 7.6%. (Avery Data)
The second-ranked Paipai: 267 million visits per month, with 8.033 million orders placed and a turnover rate of 3%. (Avery Data)
The third-ranked Jingdong Mall: 167 million visits per month, 3.21 million orders, and a turnover rate of 1.9%.
Taobao Mall brands and merchants in the number of more than 30,000 kinds of brands and tens of thousands of brand merchants, including official directly-managed stores, authorized agents and dealers.
Number of individual sellers in the C2C category: over 2.6 million.
2. Real-name authenticated Alipay users with real and reliable identity information and a reliable credit verification system.
Number of Alipay users: 300 million registered users nationwide, with about 50 million to 80 million active users.
Note: The real-name system of user transaction accounts and the sizable access traffic are undoubtedly the biggest inherent advantages of Taobao. Effectively guiding those active users to implement SNS from some products and some categories may be one of Taobao's future programs.
Alipay market share: occupies more than 50% of the third-party payment market share in China.
Number of external merchants: more than half a million.
Daily transaction volume utilizing Alipay: over 2 billion.
Further extension of Alipay's platform: launching clients supporting Symbian, iOS, Android and other mainstream cell phone operating systems to capture the cell phone payment market; it has begun to penetrate into the field of TV payment.
3. Taobao open platform takes shape
The developers gathered on the open platform can be buyers and sellers under SNS. The development of rich application tools to enhance the experience and promote the positive development of this model.
By the end of 2010, the development of: more than 100,000 developers; more than 20,000 applications; more than 500 million API (data open interface ) daily call times; more than 200 API open interface; up to more than 30,000 units of a single application daily sales record.
Project Risk Analysis
Market Uncertainty Risk:
1. The buyers' SNS demand carries great uncertainty.
Whether buyers need to "socialize", need to socialize, etc., to be mapped out;
Buyers generally do not exclude advertising, but too much marketing, too heavy, the same will produce resentment. The scale of social marketing, the means of effective realization, is still difficult to grasp.
2. Between buyers and sellers, it is difficult to form an equal communication mechanism.
3. Privacy issues pose potential risks.
Not all users are willing to share their shopping lists, and not everyone who has shared their shopping lists is willing to show all the goods they have purchased.
R&D Risks:
1. The established product display and sorting system based on search and advertisement has serious contradictions with SNSization.
The root of the current business model, in addition to the traditional path of user search-discovery-purchase, is the method of product exposure in which sellers' paid advertisements occupy a prominent position. The high cost of promotion for merchants, the single means of product discovery for users, and the short time spent on the page are all far from the characteristics of SNS products.
The overall structure of the site must make changes.
Note: the overall structure of the changes to be made, this is the revolution of their own lives. This risk is not generally big. The deviation of the understanding of SNS, the lack of experience in related fields and the lack of professional talents will also be the obstacles to Taobao's development of social products and business, and the shift to SNS.
2. The lack of a professional team and sufficient experience in the development of SNS products has led to the failure of several products in the past.
Taojianghu: a primary product, did not realize the social display, recommendation and purchase mechanism, and the buyer group is not completely open, most users are only used for sunshine orders, or play some simple games, or become the advertising platform for merchants. For online trading, Tao Jianghu does not play any driving role.
Juhua, Taocin redemption: ultimately, it only becomes a promotional tool for merchants, by gathering users at a specific time, carrying out discount activities and selling discounted goods to promote transactions.
The above products are simply attached to the existing platforms, and the number of transactions they promote becomes the only guide, and the user relationship is too superficial to be considered a real SNS product.
Competitive risks:
1. Jingdong Mall and other rivals' SNS community marketing platforms, if successful, will pose a certain threat to the SNS-based market segments such as apparel and 3C products.
2. Facebook is very likely to enter China.
The world's largest social networking site has been inundated with news that it will enter the Chinese market.
Facebook registered the .cn domain name in 2007, and launched a simplified Chinese version in 2008.
At the end of December 2010, Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a low-key trip to China, where he visited Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and other well-known domestic Internet companies.
Facebookzai is currently the second-largest Web site in Taiwan, relying on famous online games such as Happy Farm.
Facebook's approach to China is unclear. From Groupon's experience, a joint venture is a possibility, and Groupon has already formed a joint venture with Tencent to form HighPoint. There are already rumors that Facebook will work with Baidu to enter China on a curve.
Once Facebook enters China, the absence of a representative "SNS for all" in the country may change, even though its advantages won't be realized immediately due to various restrictions.
Note: The threat of Facebook should not be ignored by any Internet company. But the Facebook that enters China is certainly not the original Facebook. In the shadow of this behemoth, products and services that meet the needs of domestic users still have their own space.
Management Risk Analysis
The high revenues and profits generated by search, advertising, and bidding rankings, a business model that has worked steadily for years, could create resistance to innovation within Taobao.
Note: The greatest resistance to making change in a company often comes from within. It's either from a wildly successful product, or it's from experience, or it's from a business model that's always worked. Whether truly determined to break the established model, to a disruptive innovation, directly related to the success or failure of Taobao SNS. This time, Ma Yun can still kill?
In 2009, Taobao network advertising revenue has exceeded 1.5 billion yuan, bidding rankings through car accounted for more than 80%. Comparison of that year, the network total **** completed 208.3 billion yuan of commodity turnover, the number of sellers more than 2.6 million. The total income from advertising accounted for 80% to 90%; while trading commissions and value-added services accounted for only 10% to 20% of the income.
Users' habit of relying on ads and search has been long established.
There is no real plan for how to guide users to the new social model.