Competitive Business Analysis

As competitive analysis is a critical part of any company marketing and execution plan, we've decided to take a closer look at our competitors on different fields. With this evaluation, we want to establish what makes our platform unique, and therefore what attributes and features we need to play up in order to attract our target audience. We've evaluated our 4 main competitors for users: TripAdvisor.com, Yelp.com, MenuPages.ie and TheDiningRoom.ie according to the main features we propose

We've also decided to evaluate your competitors by placing them in strategic groups according to how directly they compete with us for a share of the users time and ventures money.

As we can see from this graph, we haven't got direct competitors as none of the websites/applications provide full nutritional information - however, we are competing on many other fields, such as information, "Book a table" option and whats important - exclusive discounts and deals, where our revenue share is lying. Here, we've done competitive analysis of what we are offering compared to our main competitors:

We've Got a New Name!

We've gone through the whole business model canvas and updated each segment there. We have our viewpoint on how our Startup should look like and what it should offer (at least initially). So we had to choose the name that reflects it. FitOne was the initial project name because we thought there was a different problem we wanted to solve, but by conducting many face-to-face interviews and also survey it turned out that the problem is not that much of a problem (e.g. providing food to fitness people). We have gone through the renewed value proposition earlier in this blog. The name had to reflect what we offer in a fun and cool way. It had to cover the idea that we are offering food information and enabling people to make informative food choices. The research for our Startup name included checking whether the name already doesn't exist and also, whether such domain would be available as we need to build the website and app for it. Opinion of only two people (which our project group consists of) not necessarily reflects what wider audience would think. Therefore we decided to ask wider audience using yet another (!!!) survey. Here's the summary of 199 responses:

We also liked the most popular one here. And we are happy to introduce you to our new name, logo and slogan (and different variations):

 

Post by: Laura

Some Brainstorming on Revenue Streams, Partners & Resources

We have worked on the research that would help us determine the revenue streams. In order to be able to actually set up the platform for the activity we had to explore what resources and partners we would need to get involved. First of all, we need to build a platform - website and app. What is the best solution for that? Build ourselves? Where to host it? These and many other questions got answers when we interviewed a Cloud Solutions Specialist from Google. Did you know that many startups use Google Cloud platform to kick off their businesses? There are opportunities for support (e.g. free credits, discounts etc.). From the interview and Google Cloud Solutions site, here's what information we got and we are considering to use it.

Google has one of the largest and most advanced computer networks. Google’s backbone network has thousands of miles of fiber optic cable, uses advanced software-defined networking and has edge caching services to deliver fast, consistent and scalable performance. Using Google Cloud platform would allow us to develop, deploy and iterate our application without worrying about system administration. Google manages the application, database and storage servers so we wouldn’t have to.

As per suggestion of our Google Cloud specialist it would be optimal for us to go with Google App Engine. Features include:
Popular languages and frameworks. It is possible to write applications in some of the most popular programming languages: Python, Java, PHP and Go. We can also use existing frameworks such as Django, Flask, Spring and webapp2.
Focus on your code. Google takes care of the database administration, server configuration, sharding and load balancing. With Traffic Splitting, we can A/B test different live versions of our app.
Multiple storage options. A traditional MySQL database using Cloud SQL, a schemaless NoSQL datastore, or object storage using Cloud Storage.
Powerful built-in services. App Engine makes you more productive by eliminating the need to write boilerplate code. Managed services, such as Task Queues, Memcache and the Users API, let you build any application.
Familiar development tools. We can use the tools we know, including Eclipse, IntellIJ, Maven, Git, Jenkins, PyCharm and more. The App Engine SDK allows to test applications locally in a simulated environment and then deploy the app with simple command-line tools or the desktop launcher.
Deploy at Google scale. Some of the world’s most popular web services are built on Google's platform. It is possible to scale up to 7 billion requests per day and automatically scale down when traffic subsides. Basically this means that the system allows the application to grow with our users.

As for the costs, we have already clarified that it may be possible to get approx. $500 credit which depending on the usage (the system works so that we pay for what we use) may enable us to run approximately for a year. To add, there is special support for Startups available. The offer says: "$100,000 in credit and 24/7 support for eligible startups. Focus on building your product and don't worry about complex infrastructure. Google manages your application, database, and storage servers so you don't have to." This offer is available to startups that meet the following criteria:

And one more thing. Potential investors may be interested what happens if and when the usage of app grows beyond the credits available. For this we may be eligible for Sustained Use Discounts.

Post by: Laura

Partnerships

As in any other company, business partner can be crucial for our businesses, especially at the very early stage - it is important that both sides of the agreement to complement each other, but also that there are some common ground. As we've learned from a video, what defines a partner is shared economics, mutual success or failure, co-development and/or invention and a common customer base or a profile. There are also a lot of reasons to have a partner and one will depend on the stage on both partner. As per video, there are main five: shared economics, economics of scale, money and resources, access to customers, access to marketing/brand. It can be (but not limited to) in a form of strategic alliances, joint ventures, traffic partners, coopetition, joint business development and suppliers. For us, as an alpha start-up, partnerships are critical and can undermine the success of the business. At the beginning, we've identified a number of general partners, such as technical support and vendors (restaurants/cafes/bars). Later, we've realized that partnership is much broader term and can include a number wide range of partners and overlap other sections of our Business Model Canvas. First, we invalidated sports and health shops and we've decided to concentrate on restaurants and cafes. We've re-segmented our technical support to website and mobile application support and technical support for data analysis (for vendors and data buyers). We added Google Adsense as well as we feel they are playing an important role in our revenue stream as an advertising platform.

Customer Relationships

E-mail marketing keeps relationships strong on a shoestring budget.

Along with more traditional communication tools like email, client forums and online access to customer usage and billing data, focusing on providing a complete answer in response to customer (restaurants and cafes) queries and concerns and set reasonable expectations for getting back to them if we will need to do a research before making a response. 

Another important thing is includes seeking suggestions on new features that would interest the customer, as well as critiques of current features.

As per Customer Relationship video, there are 3 Parts of Customer Relationships:

Get - Acquire customers, get them to buy or use your product

Keep - Keep your customers using your product 

Grow - Grow the database (acquire new customers, sell to existing customers more products)

First, we have two customer segments: Website and Application users and restaurants and cafes. 

As to the second segment (B2B) there are paid demand creation activities such as PR, advertising, trade shows. All of these activities are designed to “Feed the funnel” at the early stage. To acquire customers (mainly restaurants and cafes), we are planning to mainly involve online channels, such as SEO, advertising and SME to acquire new customers. In order to keep customers, we are planning to roll out new features and updates on the ongoing course. As a growth strategy, we want to offer new restaurants special deals for being at the top of the organic search results. 

For B2C segment (product users) we want to get by similar tools: SEO & online advertising (search and display advertising), print media (in-flight brochure promotions, public transport posters) and Google Play and App Store and active social media promos/interactive campaigns for creating awareness and generating interest in order to get new customers. To keep them using or product and keep them interested, we are planning to offer free giveaways, contributor rewards, continuously updated services and offers (e.i. special deals aka Groupon). To grow our customer base, we want to use social media (Facebook sponsored Page Likes and Sponsored stories), referrals, loyalty programs and mouth-to-mouth channels. 

Post by: Julia Bespala

Revenue Streams for FitOne

We have had a closer look at our potential Revenue Streams. Just a short recap on what it actually means:

REVENUE STREAM = strategy the company uses to generate cash from each customer segment

 shouldn't be mixed with

PRICING =  tactics company uses to set the price in each customer segment

So this just simply means that we may want to trial several revenue streams and each revenue stream may have different pricing tactics. According to our learning materials from LaunchPad Central we came to a conclusion that taking into account our current MVP (and ideas for additional features) we could use 2 Revenue Streams: Intermediation fee and Advertising. We have also added this to our Business Model Canvas.

First of all we were trying to find pros/cons to each of the possible strategies and we made a list for ourselves.

On top of that, it looks like Fixed Pricing (vs. Dynamic) may be more suitable to our Revenue Streams.

Another thing we have considered - we are trying to reach two sides of the market (Multi-Sided markets model) - and in this case we are putting our users first. Therefore we have to figure out how to get users, how to become a high traffic website, get a considerable number of app users and in this way we are planning to deliver a good value to the "other side of the market" - however they should see the value in order to be willing to pay for it. We are also within Re-segmented market (however we aim to offer better value and features to our users).

Post by: Laura

Promotion channels for FitOne

One of the ways companies gain a competitive advantage in the market is through successful incorporation and management of promotion channels. A promotion (also called marketing) channel is a set of practices or activities necessary to transfer the ownership of product, and to move products from planning to successful implementation. This process typically consists of all the institutions and marketing activities involved in the promotion of a product. When developing our promotion channel mix, we've considered the cost, flexibility and quick adaptation to changing markets and demand.

As we learned from the video, marketing channel of  virtual product can be short, extending directly from the vendor to the consumer; or may include several interconnected (usually independent but mutually dependent) intermediaries. There are also two channels - virtual (that includes Dedicated/E-Commerce App and website, aggregators, social commerce, Flash Sales) and physical (for example, value added reseller and direct sales force)
and as most of the businesses, we are going to use both. 

As to our online promotion, the website is going to be our main platform and source of information for our users (simultaneously and later, one of the main revenue streams from advertising) with mainly SEO and Google Adwords as a main traffic source. To accommodate users on the go, FitOne application (both for Android and iOS and distributed through App Store and Google Play) will be developed with intuitive interface to include same information and easy GPS navigation of the restaurants for the users. Another important platform is going to be social media - Facebook page with advertising (Page Post Links and Page Likes) as well as Twitter and Instagram. We are going to use social media as one of the main platforms for announcing product updates, news, competitions, etc.


As for physical distribution channels we are planning to include, we want to create posters and leaflets to be displayed and distributed in restaurants and cafes as well ad print media: in flight magazines to cover tourist segment, advertising posters in public transport and related publications to attract the general public.

By Julia Bespala

Researching the "Other side of The Market" - Some Findings

Local restaurants, bars, cafes and mostly health shops fall in our "Other side" of the target market who's information we are going to use to serve our primary users who are searching for food/diet/nutritional information. So far we have managed to get 7 responses from various restaurant owners, chefs and personal. We wanted to find out whether such establishments in Dublin (to start with local area) actually have healthy food choices available, whether they are flexible to accommodate various customer dietary requests apart from the set menus and what are their attitudes towards consumer requests and choices. To add, we asked them about the current advertising and communication channels they use. This way we wanted to get an insight whether we as a third party could be considered as an option for driving more customers to them. So here are some of our findings:

Most of the restaurants have various food choices available. This means that if one of the restaurants does not offer gluten-free meals, then they may fall into a different category (e.g. vegetarian, offer low fat foods etc.).

 And most of the restaurants have the flexibility to accommodate various customer requests:

While we found out that most of the restaurants are quite flexible to offer meals according to customers' dietary requirements as well as information on it, their thoughts about customer needs actually vary. From their attitudes it actually became clear that they may not be aware of their customer attitudes and expectations (e.g. referring to one of our previous blog posts on Consumer Survey about Calorie Count) - that most of the customers are thinking about their food intake, but not always can stick to their plan. This can also be explained by the fact that restaurants still want to drive Sales and sometimes forget about customer experiences. So here are some opinions on some statements we asked our restaurant reps to validate:

As seen in the below table, restaurants do not have enough information whether customers would actually choose lower calorie content food or not. They just simply do not have this knowledge/information. However we can confirm this referring to the Consumer Research findings as well as from our interviews we conducted.

As mentioned already at the beginning of this post, we asked the restaurants to give us an insight on what advertising/marketing and communications channels they use to attract the customer:

Most of them are using some sort of channels, however having interviewed only a small number of restaurants it is not yet conclusive how big is the gap between "totally being absent" from online and search and using only WOM or offline channels (apart from the website just being there) and active marketing online. We will continue to research this. For example this gives us an idea - if restaurants use only WOM, we can bring them customers additionally through our product.

Post by: Laura

Who's the Buyer on The Other Side of The Market? Restaurants, Healthy Food Shops

Time to check who's on the "other side" of the market! We have already determined the approximate profiles of the user (e.g. Active Amy and Traveller Tom from one of our previous blog posts). Now we went out there to validate our VP for Restaurants/bars, Healthy food shops and markets. These are our potential customers as well and this segment is going to be the one to consider getting the revenue streams from. This was decided based on the specifics of the offering - the main product is a website/app and users are usually not eager to pay for apps, so we have to find someone else who will pay. To add, from our group discussions on revenue streams (which we will discuss in further blog posts) we understood that Advertisers (both - restaurants in area and others) may be the source of the revenue as well, therefore we updated our Business Model canvas to include them there as well as a target audience.

Putting together all the information, we came up with the Buyer No. 3 (not really calling them "a Persona" though).

Post by: Laura

Some Findings on Nutritional Information Issues

The idea of our startup is to provide our users a resource for their food choices - enabling them to find a place to eat out or buy products. Depending on our findings this may include cuisines (e.g. Indian, Italian), various dietary requirements (e.g. Vegetarian, Vegan), and nutritional information (e.g. calories). This blog post should give you an idea on what we found out on the latter.

Source: Calories on menus in Ireland
REPORT ON A NATIONAL CONSULTATION
June 2012

From our in-person interviews and survey conducted from consumer side of the market (168 responses so far) we found out that people have various food preferences and requirements. Some of them mentioned that they do not count calories per se but are sticking to a reasonable food portions. Others implied that eating out derives them from their healthy diet or they tend to intake too much calories.

Source: Calories on menus in Ireland
REPORT ON A NATIONAL CONSULTATION
June 2012

So with our solution we will be trying to address these (and many other) customer pains. One interesting finding was that even if the person does not really count calories, when they have them displayed on the menu, they will still go for lower calorie meals. This shows that providing customers with such information can impact their choices. To add, we came upon the Report On a National Consultation "Calories on menus in Ireland" created already couple of years ago. Already then the surveys were conducted and according to the report "Consumers who report using calorie information (15%) tend to make lower calorie food choices. In addition, there is evidence that calorie menu labelling creates a demand for healthier options – including smaller portion sizes." So our observations are actually confirmed by a nation-wide research. What is interesting is that the report also confirms that people who use the calorie information provided actually do purchase/ear fewer calories. 15% of the surveyed population already used the calorie information on menus at the time when the research was done. To add, here are some additional useful facts from the report:

A total of 3,130 submissions (2,666 consumers, 322 health professionals, 73 food businesses and 69 others) were received via the consumer survey. Ninety six percent of submitters want calorie menu labelling in all, or some, food outlets. Eighty three percent want calorie labelling in all food service businesses. Of the 13% who preferred calorie labelling in some outlets, their order of priority was: fast food outlets (95%), coffee shops and delis (63%), cinemas (58%), vending machines (57%), pubs (26%) and restaurants (18%). The main reasons given for wanting vs. not wanting calorie menu labelling was ‘empowerment to make informed food choice decisions’ vs. ‘calorie labelling is unnecessary and ineffective’ (46% vs. 3% of the total group respectively).

All of the above helps us to validate our hypothesis for the Value Proposition for the one side of the market (consumer) and the product therefore may enable people to make informed food choice decisions they are looking for (here we are referring to calorie count ONLY and not taking into account other information we may be able to provide). If the problem is calorie count, then consumers may be able to find a place within their calorie limit.

Source: Calories on menus in Ireland
REPORT ON A NATIONAL CONSULTATION
June 2012

However, the other side of the market (e.g. restaurants) may not completely agree to display the calorie count of their meals. This, according to the report is quite some problem. Implementing calories on menus may be a challenge if the menus are seasonal and changing often as it is the additional time and resources restaurants have to invest. McDonalds, Burger King, Subway and Insomnia are among the chains that have introduced calorie labeling on their main overhead menu display, but Beshoffs and O'Brien's Sandwich bars have not, an Irish Independent survey in Dublin city center showed. Supermacs has a small panel with calorie counts at the side of its flagship O'Connell St base, but not on its main overhead menu, meaning a customer would have to actively seek them out before ordering (Source: Independent.ie). So, theoretically this is doable. Nevertheless, Health Minister James Reilly has pledged to introduce legislation by the end of the year forcing every business that serves food to display calories on their menus, if they are not complying voluntarily (Source: Irishhealth.ie).

If the calorie labeling is forced by a law, then our product will have more restaurants to offer within the app. In our case calorie information is not the only nutritional information we are planning to provide, therefore restaurant attitudes may not have as heavy impact on our product, because there is much more information we can use. What matters is that the consumers are actually alert about their food choices and want to be enabled to make informed and healthier ones.

Post by: Laura