International Marketing
Ecovoit
Granges julien; Donnati Adrien

Table of Contents

Introduction

I Company presentation

1. Type of enterprise 4 2. Business type 4 3. How it works 5

II Marketing plan

1. Location of markets 6 2. SWOT 7 3. Segmentation 9 4. Princing strategy 10 5. Promotion 11 6. Distribution channels 11

Conclusion

Introduction

For this presentation of international marketing, we first began by searching an area for our company. We study both in Rouen but we live at about 1h30 of distance in car. We use both carpool. It is from here that we get the idea.
In the first part we will present the company and in the second part we will present our marketing plan.

I Company presentation

1. Type of enterprise

We have chosen this name for our company because it is a mix between « ECO » (which refer to ecology) and and « COVOI » (which refer to covoiturage which means carpool in french).

Ecovoit company is a website, we don’t have any shops. This website permit to users to find or post carpool advertisements where and when they want.
Carpool consists in sharing his car during one ride and thus, share toll and petrol costs. This phenomenon has taken an large sweep and continues to grow because of the economic crisis and the decline of purchasing power. Today the price of petrol and the car maintenance, which can be added with the potential costs of tolls are so high that owning a car has become a luxury. Carpooling allows drivers to cushion their costs, and passengers traveling to attractive price ; it’s win-win.

We have chosen this type of company for many reasons :

First of all, many peoples don’t have car and use the train or other transportation ways but they are often very expensive and their price still continu to increase. So our company is going to allow to these people to improve their everyday life by offering them an alternative, another way to travel.

In second, for the environment. Indeed, lots of people use their car alone and cars have on average four seats so its an huge energy waste. Because road transport accounts for about 20% of carbon dioxide emissions. This gas is one of the main greenhouse gas responsible of global warming. We must not forget that the temperature rises more and more rapidly, and if nothing is done to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the temperature should increase by more than 5 degrees from now to 2100.

Finally, carpool permit to meet new peoples and nowadays have a wide network of acquaintance is very important. Both a social point of view (making new friends to be happy), but also a professional point of view. A student seeking a work placement can meet a company manager looking for a trainee or someone who can obtain a string pulling. 2. Business type

Our business type is P2P, that is to say peer to peer. In other words, our website allows users to meet each others but we don’t sell anything. Each user can be buyer or seller, driver or passenger. 3. How it works

Our website is very easy to use. Each user have just to create a profile, which allowing it to be driver or passenger. The profil have to contain some basic information : name, age and vehicle.
To create an advertisement or search an advertisment users have to enter their criteria: place of departure, place of arrival, date and time.
Drivers have also to give some additional information to allow passengers to choose the ride that will correspond their most : if they like to talk, if they like listening music, if they smoke or not, if they accept pets and the baggage size allowed.
Not any of these steps are paying and an account can be used by several people, although it is advisable to have its own account with a profile picture so that other users can well identify you.

In addition, we have implemented a scoring system. After each ride, drivers and passengers will be able to give a rating (1 to 5 stars) and a comment on their profile. Thus, if a driver or passenger is not very warm for example, all other users will be informed by reading his comments. This will avoid any bad experience.

Our service is simple, we allow to users to meet together and for each booking travel, the wedsite debits a commission of 20% above the price set by the driver. It can seems expensive, but it’s not. We can take an example to demonstrate this ; you are french and you want to go from Paris to Lyon. If you use Ecovoit, you will pay on average 28€ for the driver’s price, plus 5.60€ for the website commission, so a total cost of 33.50€. In comparison, if you take the train, you will pay on average 90€ or 45€ only if you are student because the french train company give an half-price reduction for student. So you will make a nice economy, and some other benefits (some drivers are willing to drive you directly at home).

II Marketing plan

1. Location of markets

Our main competitor in Europe is called blablacar. It was created in 2004 and was called formerly Covoiturage.fr. This company is today the main carpool company and by far, with about 10 million users in 2014 in many european countries (cf map below).

Blablacar in Europe

Our service is much like that of Blablacar and this company already possess an good reputation where it is installed that is why we will offer our services in others country markets, where Blablacar is not yet present. Indeed, Blablacar is already well-know and attacking it directly on its market could be a mistake. Moreover, it exists a lot of potential in several countries such as Scandinavia, Switzerland and Austria for example. So we will begin our activity in these countries and, according to the results, we will or not implant us in Blablacar markets.

2. SWOT Analysis

Strengths | Weakness | * Less expensive than many others common transports * High number of registered * High schedule flexibility * Improves commuting option * Simple and user-friendly App and website * Convenient | * Internet connexion is needed to use Ecovoit * Paying service (exist free other website) * User can’t know the driver before, (just consulting the profile) | Opportunities | Threats | * Government help * Increase of petrol price * Increase of connected devices * Public interest * New international market | * Electric cars * Emerging of more and more new competitors. * Could be an unpleasant experience |

Strengths
One of our principal strength and a principal strength of the carpool as well is that we are less expensive than many others common transport such as the plane, the train and even the bus on some ride. This strength give us a real competitive advantage against others player on the transportation market.
We have a high number of registered of users on the website as passenger but also as driver. Our high number of driver registered allows having high schedule flexibility and also allows improving commuting option. Passengers have a large choice of scheduled departures going to many destinations.
As our business is based on the website available from computers, smartphone or tablet, it was very important to developed a simple and user-friendly platform. So that we done, and it is strength of the company.
So if we summarize the main points we talk above make our website and Ecovoit really convenient for users.

Weakness
The main weakness of our company we can see is that an Internet connexion is needed to use Ecovoit. The reservation can only be done online (website, App). Even if there are many people that have Internet access (2,3 billions on the world) it removes those who haven’t and can be a shortfall for the company.
We have developed a paying service business so we connect drivers and passengers together but we take a commission on each reservation. Actually it exist website who are doing the same but for free. Of course they have not the same quality service (high flexibility schedule, destination etc) than our but some users may prefer have less quality for more saving.
The last threats we can identify is that the passenger can’t know the driver and how he use to drive before the ride and in return the driver can’t know the passenger before. This can be an obstacle for potential users. Actually users can just consult the profile of the driver/passenger and we try to improve this way in order to reassure user.

Opportunities
The emerging market of carpool is encouraged by government because it is a friendly business environment, and solve problem related to the traffic for example. So we may have financial or political government help in the future that can be benefit for our development.
The need for carpool users of reducing expenses from the petrol consumption is one of the main they push them to use carpool. Indeed the increase of petrol price and represent more and more a high cost for many people. This situation can be benefit for the company because carpool represents a solution for reduces cost related to petrol price.
As I said before, there are about 2,3 billions of people who are connected to Internet through the globe and this number is still increasing. The technology development and the increasing of connected devices can allow us to be more visible by people. Indeed more people connected there are, more visible we are. This allows us to make wider our influence.
We have so many international markets to conquer and especially emergent market. The way of how emergent countries develop themselves created good installation (such as road installation), more access to Internet and emerging of new way of life with new need create good condition for development of carpooling business.
Last opportunity we have is public interest. Carpool market is an emerging market and people and governments are enthusiast about this new way of transport. People see carpool, as the example that society has to follow. Indeed by doing carpool users have a benefit for us (economic, convenient etc.) a benefit for the society (less traffic flow) and a benefit for the earth (ecological). So public interest can be benefit for us because people talk about carpool and bring us new users.

Threats
The development of electric car is a real threat for us. Indeed development of electric car technologies quickly increases for 10 years and now starts to be active for common consumers. This is also a growing market and even if buying an electric car is big investments it will be more benefit for the consumer because there is now need of petrol so can you imagine the saving it involve? Moreover electric car is more ecological than carpooling. Electric car represent the future of people transportation and it definitely the main threats we have to face in the future.
We have to face also to more and more new competitors. Carpool market is a growing market that attracts many entrepreneurs because it can be a really rentable activity due to low costs of maintenance.

3. Segmentation

We can share users by the main reasons they use carpool, indeed we can make out people who use Carpool for relatively short distance for example those drivers who has to drive every weekend to its place because they are working in another city and they have to struggle a high cost. This people use carpooling frequently. And we can make out users who use carpool for relative long distance travel; it is people that can not face high prices of using train, plane or people travelling to destination not covered by train

According to a study, 41% of carpool users are women and 59% are men. But the most important statistic is that 76% of users are between 18 and 35 years old. This percentage can be compare with the percentage of people who are most often connecting to Internet. On average in Europe 74% of 16-24 years old are connecting to Internet and 85% of 24-34 years old are connecting to Internet as well. (Information from marketing senior.com)

On the chart below we see that 22% of carpool users earn less than 1000€ per month, 26% earn between 1000 and 2000€, 24% earn between 2000€ and 3000€ and finally 28% earn more than 3000€ per month. This shows that the economic reason is not the only one that pushes people to use carpool and that is why we have to focus on all this social categories.

4. Pricing strategy

The carpool market is an emerging market but get progressively more competitive. We need to get a competitive advantage against competitors. The pricing strategy can be a good way to differentiate us from the competition. In this way we decided to adopt a penetration pricing strategy.

The penetration pricing strategy allow to:

1. Attract many users who are sensitive to the price

As we had seen above, 78% of carpool users earn less than 3000€ per month and 48% (almost the majority) earn less than 2000€. Transport prices are increasing and we can think that a lot of carpool users are looking for decrease them spends concerning transport. This led us to conclude that the demand is quite elastic to the price. This is why a penetration pricing strategy can allow us to get more users on Ecovoit’s website.
Indeed our principal competitors have established commissions on the price fixed by the driver around 20%. We decided to fixe our around 13%. We want to keep this commission until create users loyalty and increase our price progressively but stay less expensive than the competition.
We can have this strategy due to the relatively low cost of the website maintenance.

2. Take quickly market shares from the competitors

Increasing market share is one of the most important objectives of business. Indeed having important market share means having big revenue and more customers than competitors.
By a penetration pricing strategy we want to take market shares from the competition and by having more users we could realize scales economy.
Moreover carpool is based on user experience; this is why more users bring to more users (if they are satisfied) due to the word of mouth. It is a virtuous circle.

3. Dissuade potential entrepreneurs from going into the market

As we already said, carpool market is an emerging market and the low cost of website maintenance can attract many new entrepreneur to get into carpool activity.
The penetration pricing strategy we led shows to these potential new competitors that this activity is not very lucrative.
Indeed when they see the commission we take on the price fixed by the driver (low commission) it will dissuade them from going into the market because the will judge the business is not profitable enough.

4. Promotion Our promotion campaign is mainly based on webmarketing (promote a product, a brand, a service or an idea on internet) because we think it’s the best way in terms of cost and efficiency to make known our company.

Thus, the company is present on the main social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+. It allows users to be informed on potential news on the website (shift operation, update of the website, applications release and so on) but also on events. Indeed, we plan to organize many competitions for special dates (Christmas, summer holidays etc ...) with many prizes to be won, from a voucher to a trip. Of course, participants will be registered to Ecovoit, which will lead to new users.

In addition to our webmarketing plan, we will advertise directly to universities because our most targeted customers are students returning at home on weekends. For this, we will install promotion stands where we will speak about the benefits of carpooling and when we will distribute Ecovoit stickers for their car. Participants will also win tickets containing a code. Each code will allows us to get a ride reservation without comission debit by the website. Thus, they could try to book a ride without additional costs and if they are satisfied, they could continue to use the carpool. This is a kind of « free trial » with at the end a potential customer more for us. Knowing that about 80% of people are satisfied with carpool, so it will be very interesting.

5. Distribution channels

Our distribution channels are the website and the App because we can reach many potential users and be visible by many people. Indeed Internet is the most convenient option to meet drivers and passengers and allow having an efficient system. We have recently developed an App available on smartphone and tablet to allow users to do reservation every place they are.
Moreover Internet (Website) and the App are really cheap distribution channels and stands out as the evident way to developed the business.

Conclusion

To conclude, we represent a young company which wants to get a place in a growing market. This new market is very innovate and correspond with its period, in terms of relations and environment. Our main competitor, Blablacar is already well installed, that’s why we will implement an effective strategy and a business plan well organized.