Week 5 - Business models & advertising model issues

Hey everyone welcome to week 5, this week we are discussing the different types of business models found on the web.

Brokerage – Brings buyers and sellers together to facilitate transactions. Brokers play a frequent role in business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), or consumer-to-consumer (B2C) markets. Usually a broker charges a fee or commission for each transaction. Examples of this could be Kogan or carsguide online.

Advertising – a web advertising model is an extension of the traditional media broadcast model. A website provides content and services mixed with advertising media, usually in the form of banner ads.
For example a portal such as google includes various data but has banner ads along the side.

Infomediary – Some firms function as infomediaries assisting buyers and/or sellers understand a given market. Information is collected carefully and analyzed and used to target marketing campaigns. This is useful to consumers when considering a purchase, such as flybuys – a customer loyalty program that provides incentives to customers such as redeemable points.

Merchant – Apple iTunes is a good example of a merchant model as it retails goods and services, the sales are based on a price list.
Or something like Dick Smiths that has a traditional brick-and-mortar retail establishment but also has a web store.

Manufacturer (Direct) – The web allows the manufacturer to reach buyers directly and thereby compress the distribution channel.
The consumer can purchase, lease, license and brand integrated content on items.
For example, Alien computers do this very well because you can order your personal, customized new computer and deliver it to your house.

Affiliate – Provides purchase opportunities where ever an individual is on the web including banners, pay per click and revenue sharing. It does this by offering financial incentives to affiliated partner sites, it is a pay for performance model if an affiliate does not generate sales, it represents no cost to the merchant, such as Amazon.com.

Community – based on user loyalty and the revenue is usually tied to advertising. An open content model such as Wikipedia was developed collaboratively by a global community or social networking services such as Facebook.

Subscription – where users are charged a periodic fee to subscribe to a service, they are usually incurred irrespective of actual usage rates and advertising models are frequently combined.
Online digital media providers like NBA.com and JB Hi-Fi online are  good examples of this.


Utility – can also be named ‘on demand’ based on metering usage or a pay as you go approach. Unlike the subscription model the metered services are based on actual usage rates, for example electricity and water or websites such as wordpress.com where you can buy usage for a certain amount of time (Rappa, 2010).




Question Two – Spend some time looking at the Technology report, particularly the country profiles and rankings. Use some of the data analysis tools to answer the following.
1) What is the Mobile phone use /100 population – compare Australia, USA, China, India.

The mobile phone use of Australia was ranked sixth with a 53.1 value. United States ranked  8th with a value of 50.6. India was ranked 107th with a value of 0.1 and China ranked 82nd with a value of 1.8.

2) Internet use / 100 population – compare Australia, USA, China, India.
For individuals using the internet Australia ranked 19th with a value of 76.0.
The USA ranked 22nd with a value of 74.0, China ranked 76th with a value of 34.3 but India ranked the lowest, 124th with a value of 7.5.


3) Compare main strengths and weaknesses of Australia in the survey.
Australia ranked above 20 in each individual survey except for the mobile phone subscriptions making this a weakness.
One must consider that in the past in Australia much effort had been made to develop land line infrastructure.


Developing countries like India and China did not have the likes of national phone line infrastructure like the developed countries such as Australia and the U.S. 
Therefore mobile phone subscriptions continue to grow due to the limited number of wired phone lines. (G Jenkins,2002)

Australia has many strengths in the area of data protection, compared to other countries, particularly when it comes to copyright law and protection. http://www.copyright.org.au/

4) What does the survey suggest to you about the Information Technology readiness of Australian business compared to Australian consumers?
  The survey to me indicates that Australia's information technology readiness in business  is about on the same level  with  Australian consumers.
The results of the survey indicate that the technology and the consumers are both ready.





Thanks for looking if you would like to donate to Allstar's blog for future posts and blogs Click the Paypal donate button.

References:
 Rappa, M. (2010) Business models on the web. Retrieved 8 April, 2013 from http://digitalenterprise.org/models/models.html

 Wilson R. F. (2009).The Four Basic Online Business Models. Retrieved 11 April, 2013 from http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/marko-hurst-business-models/

Jenkins G. (2002). Observations from the trenches of Electronic Government. Published by Ubiquity. Retrieved 11 April, 2013 from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=504686

Copyright Council, Australia. (2013). About us. Retrieved 11 April, 2013 from http://www.copyright.org.au/about-us/