Platform owners are far from invincible, and savvy suppliers have options for recapturing value or at least protecting themselves from abuse. In the following pages I present four strategies to help businesses reduce their dependence on power ful platforms. But not all threats of exclusion are credible. Consider the launch of the travel search engine Kayak, in But American Airlines realized that Kayak had its own vulnerability. It had promised to show users comprehensive results, and in many markets American was a dominant force, offering the most flights on key routes such as New York to Los Angeles and New York to London.
To be credible to users in those cities, Kayak had to include American flights—indeed, Kayak needed American even more than American needed Kayak—so American was able to negotiate superior terms. A direct link to AA. Furthermore, Kayak had to give AA flights fair prominence by objective criteria. It was a great agreement for the airline. Most other airlines agreed to pay Kayak for the users it refers and never considered requiring it to link directly to their own sites.
Real estate provides another good example of platform vulnerability. In most cities, agents have low market concentration: Sole proprietors remain viable, and midsize brokerages are widespread. One might expect a few powerful online platforms to extract high fees from real estate professionals. But platforms need to list all properties on the market; a real estate portal with incomplete listings is much less valuable to house hunters.
As a result, real estate websites have found that they must provide agents with significant value to induce them to join. For example, Zillow not only offers property listings without charge but also prominently names the agent marketing the property. And any agent who joins can receive messages directly from interested viewers. Competitors and consumers would rightly cry foul. The threat of such complaints prevents platforms from overtly favoring their own services.
In Google sought to acquire Yelp, but the deal fell through when the companies could not agree on price. Shortly thereafter, despite years of having been among the sites most often cited for restaurant searches, Yelp began appearing less frequently in Google results, while Google Local listings suddenly took prominent positions.
Yelp suspected that Google had fiddled with its search algorithms in order to promote its own review services.
Getting your customers on board is essential when making any charge of discrimination—indeed, in some cases the complaints originate with them. These programs were popular with sellers because greater visibility brought them more bids and sales. But users reported finding the site harder to use, especially compared with Amazon and other simpler, instant-purchase sites. Platform providers do push back on the idea that platforms should be compelled to treat all suppliers equally.
Building a platform can be expensive. Constructing the famous SABRE ticket reservation system in the s cost American Airlines about as much as a dozen s, so AA felt that it should be free to configure the system as it saw fit. Four types of traditional intermediaries include agents and brokers, wholesalers, distributors and retailers. In an age where it is easy for any company to set up shop with an e-commerce website, it may be tempting for a small business to eliminate intermediaries to maximize profit.
For a scaling business, however, this can create a lot of work in logistics and customer support. For example, if 1, customers were to buy a product directly from the producer in a single month, this would entail 1, separate shipments to 1, locations, and with a minimum of 1, customer interactions.
If you added customer inquiries about the product, returns and after-sale support — and all the customers who initiate a purchase without following through — you would have several thousand interactions with customers for every 1, sales.
Selling through three or four intermediaries with a weekly shipping schedule, the manufacturer would have only a dozen shipments to schedule each month with a fraction of the interactions.
Agents and brokers are nearly synonymous in their roles as intermediaries. In fact, when it comes to real estate transactions, they are synonymous to any client, despite the differences in their roles in the industry. Related Questions. How would you respond to this statement: A gross profit is calculated by taking the costs of goods sold and subtracting it by the revenue generated from the companies sales.
Yes, a company can have a positive gross profit and still have a net loss Explain the underlying rationale for global trade and explain the difference between comparative and absolute advantage. What are the essential factors for economic growth and increased development of global trade flows?
Why are they so important Under U. Why are some banks Do you think blurring the line between a business good and a consumer good is an effective marketing strategy? Which phase of the product development process do you believe is most important? Demand forecast and planning with empirical knowledge forecasts based on the demand within the previous period use statistical data and mathematical functions. Sales planning can be defined as a process in which demand forecast is converted into a feasible operative plan that can be used by producers and salespersons.
Stock planning allows the optimal level and location of finished products that meet the demand and the level of service of the end users. In principle, stock planning is used to calculate the optimal level of safety stocks at every location. The developed master plan spans the points of production and the distribution destinations, with the goal of synchronizing and optimizing production, distribution, and transportation. The term production planning means the development of a master plan for single factories producers.
The master plan is based on the availability of materials, factory capacity, demand, and other operation factors. The production planning cycle represents a complex process that is, in the majority of considerations, represented as the start of the logistics and distribution processes.
If these processes are considered from the other side i. Distribution planning means the development of a feasible and viable plan of distributing end products from the producers via logistics and distribution centers, warehouses, or crossdocking to end users. Distribution planning is based on the actual transport costs and requirements that represent single goods locations. Transport planning uses current transport prices for the minimization of dispatch costs.
In order to minimize the transport costs and maximize the usage of the fleet, transport planning means the optimization of both the external and the internal goods flow. One of the main transport planning functions is allowing and performing collective bundled transport of goods, and the inclusion of intermodal transport systems into the logistics and distribution processes.
The function of delivery schedule is to create a feasible realistic plan that meets the time requirements for the delivery of the product by the producer. The producer determines the optimal methods and time of delivery, taking into consideration the receiving of orders, the production schedule, and the availability planning of transport.
0コメント