2017
Late 60’s Chevy Parts
LATESIXTYSCHEVYPARTS.COM
BLAKE DUHAMEL
KELLY FISH | Global Ecommerce
Opening Statement
For this project, I chose to build a classic car parts website where customers
would be able to purchase items at a fair price. The parts that are sold in this website
can be created in-house, found by our employees whose job is to scour the United
States searching for parts, or they can be traded from customer to customer on the
forums. The forums allow customers to see how other builds are progressing and to
also answer any questions they or someone else might have. Eventually customers
would be able to check out the calendar section for their country and see if there are
any events going on. The website's name will be latesixtyschevyparts.com. I chose this
name because the website is solely focused on these particular late model vehicle
parts. In this paper, I will discuss how Porter’s four strategies are used, Value
proposition, egg diagram, how the business makes its money, and how we plan to
change for each culture in the future.
Porter’s Four Competitive Strategies
To understand why the four strategies are used in this paper, I will explain what
each does. Business all around the globe use the four competitive strategies to help
them choose which competitive advantage would best support their chosen market
strategy. The four categories include Focus, Industry wide, Cost, and Differentiation.
The focus strategies are used when a business is selling their goods in a small niche
market and an example of that would be a business that sells a certain sports team
memorabilia. The industry strategies are used by businesses when they are selling their
products on a large market scale such as Walmart.
Figure 1.1
I believe that my global e-commerce business would fall into the Focus
Differentiation because it is more geared towards customers looking for specific
Chevrolet car parts. While the classic car restoration market is large, we believe that by
selling only Chevrolet parts we can provide high quality parts for a healthy price to
customers. Doing this causes our market to be quite small, however by competing in a
focused market we can better respond to customer questions or ideas that they may
have. The cars that we have chosen to sell parts for seem to be some of the most
popular searches that owners are looking for.
Value Proposition
A value proposition cluster is used by businesses to help show what kind of value
the product can bring to the company and market. It can also be used by the customer
to look at a product and to help show them how much of a value this purchase could
bring to them. The steps in the value proposition cluster are the Target Segments, Key
Benefits Offered, and Unique Capabilities. The Target segments step is used to show
who the business would like to be marketed to. The Key Benefits Offered step can show
the business how their product can help the customer when it is purchased. The Unique
Capabilities step shows the business how they can set themselves apart from other
businesses in that market to show customers that they are better.
Figure 1.2
The Target segment for my website is geared towards people who are looking for
replacement parts for their late 60's Chevrolet vehicle. While this target might seem
small compared to other segments such as electronics, the classic car community is a
very close group that helps others out with problems. Customers can also come to my
website and talk to other classic car enthusiasts about parts they can't seem to find on
the website or anywhere else. We are also targeting people who are looking to start
restoring an old car of theirs and they just aren't sure where to start the process.
The Key benefits of my website is growing inventory that we would hope to
acquire, a calender that shows when we would be hosting or sponsoring an event, and
a forum for customers to come talk to others about. My website hopes to build the
inventory of parts that we have by having employees who search the United States for
the parts and also by having customers maybe sell parts they may have to the website
for discounts on their next purchase. The calendar on the website would work by
allowing customers on the forum to send our moderators any event details such as
swap meets that they may have. The forum on my website is important because it
allows customers to interact with others which can create relationships which also might
lead to more people coming to visit the site.
The Unique capabilities for my website include experienced employees who
know what to look for, friendly support staff, and a place for customers to come visit if
they would like to talk to others about their current restorations. We hope to train our
staff on how to make a good buy when they are out in the field looking for future
inventory and to also be trained on how to create high quality parts on site. Our friendly
support staff is able to answer questions that customers may have regarding prices and
the forums that have been talked about earlier are unique to how customers can interact
with others which can help create friendly relationships.
After compiling all of this information, we can create a strong value proposition.
My value proposition is that we hope customers can come to our website and enjoy the
smooth experience that they may have with the website, support staff, and the members
of the forums. We want our customers to visit our website and enjoy themselves so that
they can recommend us to other people that they may know.
Figure 1.3
Next on the components of a business model is to look at Marketspace Offering
(Figure 1.3). The marketplace offering is used by a company to show customers what
we as the business plan to sell to them and what information will be provided. The
offering also includes information about the company that we wish to tell the customer.
At latesixtychevyparts.com we sell replacements parts to help our customers
complete their restoration project. We believe in providing fair pricing to customers and
also price matching most of our inventory. We also want our customers to explore the
website to see that we have a calendar with event details incase someone is looking for
a car show or swap meet. Customers can also see on our homepage the about me
section which helps them understand what we as a business are about. If there are any
issues then customers are invited to click the contact us page to send an email about
any problems or ideas they may have.
The next step of the business model is the Resource System. The resource
system shows how we plan to benefit with other businesses for customers. These
benefits could include a partnership to reduce shipping costs for customers, a
partnership to acquire high quality materials for fair prices, and also a partnership to
have our website sponsor events for free advertising.
Egg Diagram
The egg diagram is used to show why a customer should purchase your product
and the decision process that they may go through when looking. If customers are not
happy with what you are selling then it might be wise to have someone perform an
outside decision process that they went through and then share that with the business.
Figure 1.4
After looking at the decision process you can see the many steps that customers
go through when deciding to purchase our products. The first step in the process is
Need Recognition, which happens when customers are deciding if they need our
product. Customers would need our products if they are performing restoration projects
on old classic cars that we sell parts for. The next step is to search for ideas and
offerings such as discounts that we may be giving out for a limited time. The customer
will then compare our product to competitors to see who has the better deal. The next
step is the purchase decision to see which product they would like to be buying. The
next steps are about how our website supports the customer with post sale support and
to help build a relationship which can have them come back to buy more products.
Revenue Model
The revenue model is used to show or describe how a business makes its
money. There are four types of ways that businesses can make money from their
customers. These four types are product, subscriptions, advertising, and transactions.
Product revenue is from customer buying our products through the website.
Subscription revenue is from websites offering customers the ability to pay a fixed fee
that can be monthly, annual, or semiannual for a service such as a Microsoft office
subscription that needs to be renewed each year to use the service. Advertising
revenue works by putting a company's details on say a billboard that customers will see
and then go to that business to purchase the product. Most of my websites revenue will
come from customers buying products through the website. Over time we hope to begin
advertising more to reach more customers. We also hope to begin to sponsor and host
shows that can help get our name to more potential customers. Lastly, we hope to start
some kind of showcase on the website where customers can showcase their build
progress to others.
Culture Consideration
Figure 1.5
Culture is something very important to our website. For a global e commerce
business to function, the power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty
avoidance, long term orientation, and indulgence should be compared between each
country that the website plans to sell towards. We based most of our website such as
the homepage, contact us, and product pages on a United States layout until a later
date when we will change the other languages views on the site. For the project, I
looked at United States, German, and Mexican culture. It is important to notice that
each of these countries are vastly different when comparing them to the others using
the hofstede country comparison tool. We also looked at Masculinity section in these
graphs and noticed that all 3 countries had about the same score. We used Masculinity
because in these cultures being big and fast is admired, which is something we feel is a
reason why our customers would enjoy shopping with us. We also ensured that each
customer can visit the website in their native language to help their buying process, and
they can also send our support any questions or problems they may have.
Conclusion
Each thing that was discussed in this paper was used in the creation of my
website to help create a place that I believe customers would enjoy visiting and come
back. In this paper, we discussed the opening statement, Porter's four competitive
forces, Value proposition, business model, resource system, egg diagram, revenue
model, and some of the cultural considerations. We strived to ensure that customers
can visit this website from the countries listed above and be able to connect to others
with the same hobby even if there is some kind of language barrier. We hope that
latesixtychevyparts.com will be a place for our customers to come visit and talk to
others if they every need it and to also purchase a part for their project that they are
searching for.