...- Strategy Case Analysis Executive Summary Executive Summary eHarmony is uniquely placed in the online personals market through strategic innovation eHarmony is placed in a highly competitive market * Different segments exist within the market- e.g. free do it yourself, niche sites, paid do it yourself, etc. each having many players * Emerging threat from substitutes like social networking sites * Direct competition launched by biggest competitor ‘Match’ through its ‘Chemistry’ offering eHarmony’s key valuable resource is its vast bank of customer data that it uses to match customers based on its proprietary algorithm, and its brand/reputation * Data bank is rare and inimitable for competitors or new market entrants, making it a critical resource leading to competitive advantage * “Match for life” reputation as a result of rigorous registration process attracting customers interested in long-term relationships eHarmony offers a higher value to its customers in comparison to its competitors in terms of specialization of service offered, efficiency and quality of matches and the detailed screening process Going forward, eHarmony should focus on expanding service offerings (offering services for parenting, weddings, etc.) and explore geographic expansion to other English speaking Western countries * Expansion would be re-enforcing with eHarmony’s critical resources like its intensive R&D capabilities, customer loyalty and reputation ...
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...------------------------------------------------- eHarmony Case Analysis ------------------------------------------------- Summary While meeting people online to find a viable partner is more popular now than ever, online matchmaking industry initially faced challenges stemming from the stigma attached to it. The stigma subsided with time as more successful relationships evolved from online dating. Currently, people frustrated with traditional dating process which takes time and patience, prefer to meet people online for several reasons. Primarily, the convenience and accessibility is a huge benefit. There are over 20 million singles online and eHarmony states that one in five marriages started from an online relationship. Using online service not only allows you to meet other singles outside of your geographical area but also your social circle that you share common interests with. Online dating allows singles to search for a mate twenty four hours a day, seven days a week which works perfectly for a busy professional. Secondly, online sites like eHarmony provide matchmaking tools that can suggest single who are compatible with your values and beliefs, these tools make finding a potential mate easier than if you were randomly trying to meet someone in the real world. Lastly, it allows the singles to build a rapport before dating someone thus reducing the awkwardness of a first date. All of these factors play a role in eHarmony business strategy to differentiate the company from its...
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...eHarmony If you are single and looking for long-term love, eHarmony.com Inc. wants to find you the "perfect mate." With traditional values and modern matchmaking possibilities, eHarmony.com has taken the electronic dating scene by storm. eHarmony has united more than 10,000 couples in marriage in its short history and, during 2008, had more than seven million registered users. Background In 2000, eHarmony was founded by Dr. Neil Clark Warren an evangelical Christian who worked for 30 years as a psychologist specializing in counseling married couples. He also authored two books, “Finding the Love of Your Life” and “Date…or Soul Mate?”, the former selling over one million copies. After a successful career of counseling married couples and research into marital problems, he came to one solid conclusion. In his biography on eHarmony’s website he states, “In almost every case, these were two persons who should never have married each other! They really didn’t belong together. They thought they did, but they were not well matched”. From there, he identified 29 dimensions that he found were consistently present in successful marriages. Dr. Warren found online dating as an opportunity to take his match making theories to a new level. eHarmony’s competitive advantage is that it established its credibility by using a scientifically developed questionnaire based on Dr. Warren’s 29 dimensions. The questionnaire does not just ask for personal hobbies and interests...
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...eHarmony Case StudyCentral Issue In the new world of making a name for yourself, one of the most important characteristics of human culture has begun to be lost. Love, relationships, marriage, etc. have all begun to be swallowed by the notion that in order to be successful in this world, your full attention, time, and money must be put into your career. Before the 20th century, life was simple and universal. Men “brought home the bacon” while women stayed at home washing dishes, cleaning the house, raising children, and cooking meals. Most married a stayed married. Divorce was highly frowned upon and therefore never happened. However in the turn of the century, the age of technology and equal rights activists have brought a large change in the way our society is run today. Nearly half of all marriages now end in divorce and very few last more than four years. Not all of this is due to the selfishness and desire to stray from monogamy as most would think. Much of it has to do with the fact that people are so consumed with being all they can be and not putting in the time required to have that special connection with another human. eHarmony was created to provide a way for members of society to easily meet potential significant others and “date” over the internet while not sacrificing time in their workplace. The initial response of the public was wary. People felt embarrassed that they had to use technology to find that special someone rather than go out and do it...
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...Case study: eHarmony Concepts of a case study: General to specifics. The economic, strategic and business logic of the industry. What are the choice, pros, cons, trade off. Intro eHarmony: online dating site for marriage-minded individuals. It combines extensive relationship questionnaire, patented matching system and guided communication. Information good of eHarmony: individual match. Match: eHarmony biggest competitor. I. Overall view of the industry | Size | Information flow | interaction | activities (work, random encounters) | 3 | 1 | 3 | brokers (family, friends) | 2 | 2 | 1 | market (parties, bar, club) | 1 | 3 | 2 | Interaction: how easy it is to get a relationship out of random encounters, friends etc. Information flow: information you give about yourself and information you learn from the other. From this table we can deduce that there is no perfect and best channel. Every channel has a significant disadvantange. Hence there is a potential of overcoming these difficulties through online dating. Companies have to add value and capture as much of this additional value as possible. II. How much of that value can a company get? For this we need to do an industrial analysis. How structurally attractive the industry is. Suppliers and buyers are the same group of people. They are the customer supplying information/profiles. They have a very strong power because they can go to another firm. But the limit of...
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...Integrative Case Analysis – Competitive Strategy eHarmony Industry Structure and Value Creation/Capture From times immemorial, with the possible exception of Adam and Eve (whose marriage was probably made in heaven anyway), finding a life partner on Earth has been a difficult task. Wars have been waged, monuments erected and kingdoms won and lost, in partner-acquisition endeavors. People have used numerous techniques, institutions, practices and systems over time to try to perfect the art of finding a partner that they could be happy with. Yet no system is universally accepted as a formula for success. The Internet in the mid-to-late 1990’s offered the promise of making the partner search process more efficient, quicker (for some), less onerous, and less emotionally draining than other means. This led to the creation of a new Industry – the Online Personals Industry – which I would define as “a collection of online services built specifically to cater to the needs of those looking online for a relationship partner, whether for marriage or long-or-short-term companionship”. By leveraging the power of faster communication, access to a large number of candidates and intelligent learning systems to suggest possible matches, online personals sites had an opportunity to carve out a non-trivial share of the matchmaking or partner-finding “market”. Technology had the additional benefit of bringing together people from distant geographies (I have a Chinese-American friend who met...
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...eHarmony Business Case – Suraj Vadhul + Mauricio Jaramillo Executive Summary eHarmony, founded by Neil Warren and his son-in-law Greg Forgatch in 1998, is one of the leading online dating sites that helps singles in their search for long-term and serious relationships. Today, eHarmony has13.8% of the U.S. dating service market with over 33 million registered users. In the year 2003, eHarmony joined the elite group of companies in the online dating sector achieving a cumulative revenue of 1 billion. eHarmony has its operations in the U.S, Australia, Canada, U.K and Brazil. It has a widespread user base from over 150 countries. Neil Warren, who is the permanent CEO and founder of this company, started this as a match making site which implied its importance on compatibility rather than matching people on their hobbies or interests. eHarmony claims to use a complex scientific algorithm which gets the detailed user input and matches based on the developed algorithm. The results, according to the company, are staggering, as they claim that more than 600,000 people found their love on eHarmony. External Analysis Strengths eHarmony claims to have one of the strongest match making scientific algorithm which has appealed to millions of users and has steered them to stick with eHarmony, to find their perfect partner. Since eHarmony has always been highly receptive in the U.S, they have the selective user policy where not all the users who register get to access the site. A good...
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...eHarmony Case By: Mayra Trujillo And Jonathan De La Roca eHarmony was founded by Neil Clark Warren and Greg Forgatch. Mr. Warren being a psychologist focused on marriage and family also wrote 9 books on love, marriage and emotional health. He has also spoken on seminars and conferences as a relationship expert. Warren knowing he was good at his job decided to take his work to the next level, he did decided to help people with mate selection. However, his plan wasn’t just to match random people for a casual hook up but rather match those singles seeking serious relationships. Creating an online dating website that will help the most it can finding the mate for those seeking was going to be challenging but Warren was ready to take a change in this market. People have become more comfortable seeking for others online rather than in the real world for several reasons such as, saving time, convenience, security, and higher possibilities to get a better match. It’s more convenient to stay at home and eliminate candidates behind the computer in comfortable clothes rather than going in a date to get to know someone who you might eliminate as soon as you find out basic information about them and having to sit through the date dying for it to finish. Online dating makes it easier to decide if this person is worth meeting in person or if it’s going to be a waste of time. Online dating also gives people confidence to ask questions...
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...Description This course examines business and corporate strategy. The focus is on strategic management, the process of choosing and defining purposes and objectives, formulating and implementing a viable strategy and monitoring strategic performance. It deals with the organization in its totality and demonstrates how and why the various functions of business are interdependent and need to be coordinated if the organization is to perform effectively. The course elaborates on the applicability of the strategic management discipline to a variety of sizes and types of organizations. Prerequisites Students are required to complete all 5000-series Required Foundations of Management Core Courses before enrolling in this course. Extended Description and Objectives One of the classic definitions of strategy is as follows: “A strategy is the pattern or plan that integrates an organization’s major goals, policies and action sequences into a cohesive whole. Well-formulated strategies help marshal and allocate an organization’s resources into a unique and viable posture based upon its relative internal competencies and shortcomings, anticipated changes in the environment, and contingent moves by intelligent opponents”. (James Brian Quinn, “Strategies for Change”, Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1980). The field of strategy is concerned with understanding the sources of firms’ success and failure as a prerequisite for improving their performance. Strategy is thus viewed as an important determinant of success...
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...XXX10.1177/1529100612436522Finkel et al.Online Dating 2012 Research Article Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science Psychological Science in the Public Interest 13(1) 3–66 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1529100612436522 http://pspi.sagepub.com Eli J. Finkel1, Paul W. Eastwick2, Benjamin R. Karney3, Harry T. Reis4, and Susan Sprecher5 1 Northwestern University; 2Texas A&M University; 3University of California, Los Angeles; University of Rochester; and 5Illinois State University 4 Summary Online dating sites frequently claim that they have fundamentally altered the dating landscape for the better. This article employs psychological science to examine (a) whether online dating is fundamentally different from conventional offline dating and (b) whether online dating promotes better romantic outcomes than conventional offline dating. The answer to the first question (uniqueness) is yes, and the answer to the second question (superiority) is yes and no. To understand how online dating fundamentally differs from conventional offline dating and the circumstances under which online dating promotes better romantic outcomes than conventional offline dating, we consider the three major services online dating sites offer: access, communication, and matching. Access refers to users’ exposure to and opportunity to evaluate potential romantic...
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...Introduction Today there is great interest in the technology class BIG DATA, connected with the continued growth of data that have to operate large companies. The accumulated information for many organizations is an important asset, but handle it and benefit from it every day becomes more and more expensive. In my essay, I will try to describe the concept of "big data" and explain how it works. What "Big data" means? The concept of big data is rapidly gaining popularity. However, the exact idea of what constitutes a concept is not at all, especially for people outside the IT-sphere. The easiest way to explain this ignorant man on a practical example. Two years ago, a huge network of Target stores began using machine learning in the interaction with customers. As a training sample used data collected by the company for several years. As markers of specific customers to use banking and nominal discount cards. Algorithms analyze how and in what conditions were changing consumer preferences, and make predictions. And, on the basis of these forecasts, the buyer makes all sorts of special offers. In the spring of 2012, a scandal broke out when the father of twelve years old school girl complained that his daughter sent leaflets with suggestions for pregnant women. When the network is already prepared Target recognize the error and apologize to the aggrieved customers, it turned out that the girl really was pregnant, even though she and her father at the time of the complaint did...
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...Running Head: DISHARMONY AND MISMATCH Disharmony and Mismatch: The Truth about Online Dating Isioma K. Ehiobu CAS 4703-993 April 27, 2011 Disharmony and Mismatch: The Truth about Online Dating Five years ago American journalist, Thomas Friedman, wrote a book entitled The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. His main reason for writing this book was to point out that the world in which we live in was being flattened by technology. What he meant by the term “flatten” was that the things that couldn’t be done decades ago due to the lack of technology are now being conducted today at a fast rate because of how advanced the technology is today. Take for instance, the Internet, decades ago not that much could be done on it but now it allows people to communicate with one another across the globe. He goes into detail as he talks about the workflow software, which was one of the ten forces that flatten the world as it contributed to the improvement of the Internet (Friedman, 2006, p. 78). Now it allows people to interact with one another through various means like social network, emails, and now with the upcoming of Internet dating. Internet dating, once considered taboo, is now an effective way to meet others like ourselves that we may have otherwise not met in a public setting. Today, this type of dating appears to be replacing our traditional ways when looking for a soulmate, especially for those who have had an unsuccessful face-to-face...
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...Chapter 12 Business Intelligence and Decision Support Systems Goals of the Chapter The primary objective of this chapter is to recognize the importance of data, the management issues that relate to it, and its life cycle. Other objectives include relating data management to multimedia and document management, explaining the concept of data warehousing, data mining, analytical processing, and knowledge discovery management. An Overview Section 12.1 – The Need for Business Intelligence – The section serves as an overview of Business Intelligence and its use in business. It discusses the problems associated with disparate data stores where data are not integrated into a single reporting system. The section discusses the technologies involved in Business Intelligence and the vendors involved. It also talks about predictive analytics, alerts and decision support. Section 12.2 – BI Architecture, Reporting and Performance Management – This section discusses the modes of data extraction and integration into a standardized, usable and trustworthy one. It also discusses the different types of reporting systems available to organizations, data mining, query and analysis. The section provides an insight into Business Performance Management (BPM) as a way for business managers to know if their organizations are achieving their strategic goals Section 12.3 – Data, Text and Web Mining and BI Search – This section discusses data mining technology, tools, and techniques. Information types...
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...keep track of inventory, pay employees, buy new merchandise, and evaluate sales trends. Store operations would grind to a halt without the support of such information systems. Support of Business Decision Making . Information systems also help store managers and other business professionals make better decisions. For example, decisions about what lines of merchandise need to be added or discontinued and what kind of investments they require are typically made after an analysis provided by computer-based information systems. This function not only supports the decision making of store managers, buyers, and others, but also helps them look for ways to gain an advantage over other retailers in the competition for customers. Support of Strategies for Competitive Advantage . Gaining a strategic advantage over competitors requires the innovative application of information technologies. For example, store management might make a decision to install touch-screen kiosks in all stores, with links to the e-commerce Web site for online shopping. This offering might attract new customers and build customer loyalty because of the ease of shopping and buying merchandise provided by such information systems. Thus, strategic information systems can help provide products and services that give a business a comparative advantage over its competitors. Welch’s: Balancing Truckloads with Business Intelligence Given dramatic fluctuations in gas prices, it’s no...
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...* CHAPTER 1: COST MANAGEMENT AND STRATEGY * QUESTIONS 1-1 Firms Using Cost Management. Here are some examples; there are many possible answers. 1. Wal-Mart: to keep costs low by streamlining restocking and sales 2. Dell: to keep costs low by improving manufacturing performance and by using target costing and other management techniques 3. Citicorp: to keep costs low by using activity analysis (see exercise1-31) to identify key operations and to find those that add little or no value 4. A local school district or public agency: to keep costs low in order to provide the best possible service given available funds 5. Procter & Gamble: to assess the profitability of its different products 6. Any other large, diversified manufacturer, like Procter & Gamble: which needs to be able to analyze the relative profitability of its different products, using cost management 7. A small machine shop: which needs cost management to determine whether it should repair or replace a machine 8. A dance studio: to analyze and choose between different compensation plans for its teachers; and to determine whether it should open a new studio 1-2 Firms not expected to be significant users of cost management information: 1. Microsoft: here the focus is on forming strategic alliances, innovation and competition; cost management is more important for other firms in the information technology business, such as Hewlett-Packard, and IBM that compete in part on innovation...
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