M.Sc in Electronic Commerce 2012 Aurélie Vasseur

M.Sc in Electronic Commerce 2012
Aurélie Vasseur - Daragh O’Duffy -Jawaher Aldossary
DCU Business School Assignment Submission
Student
Name(s):
Student
Number(s):
Programme:
Project Title:
Module code:
Lecturer:
Project Due
Date:
Aurélie Vasseur, Daragh O Duffy, Jawaher Aldossary
11211791
11211908
11211530
MECB1 - MSc in Electronic Commerce (Business)
KodeeCat
CA550
Mr Cathal Gurrin
20-08-2012
Declaration
We, the undersigned declare that the project material, which we
now submit, is our own work. Any assistance received by way of
borrowing from the work of others has been cited and
acknowledged within the work. we make this declaration in the
knowledge that a breach of the rules pertaining to project
submission may carry serious consequences.
We are aware that the project will not be accepted unless this form
has been handed in along with the project.
Signed:_________________________
Signed:_________________________
Signed:_________________________
2
Table of Contents
Executive Summary .......................................................................................... 7
Product and Services ............................................................................................... 7
The Market .................................................................................................................. 8
Marketing Strategy ................................................................................................... 9
Technical Overview ............................................................................................... 10
Staffing and Com pany Background ................................................................... 11
Projected Financial Illustrations ......................................................................... 12
Chapter 1. Concept ........................................................................................ 13
Overview ................................................................................................................... 13
Product Specifications .......................................................................................... 14
How it w orks ............................................................................................................ 15
Unique Selling Point .............................................................................................. 16
Chapter 2. Business Strategy ....................................................................... 17
Business M odel ........................................................................................................ 17
Customer segments ........................................................................................................................................... 17
Value propositions .............................................................................................................................................. 18
Channels .................................................................................................................................................................... 20
Customer relationship ...................................................................................................................................... 20
Revenue Stream ................................................................................................................................................... 21
Key resources ......................................................................................................................................................... 22
Key activities ........................................................................................................................................................... 22
Summary ................................................................................................................................................................... 23
Risk Assessm ent ...................................................................................................... 23
Business Risks ......................................................................................................................................................... 23
Technical Risks ...................................................................................................................................................... 24
Operational Risks.................................................................................................................................................. 25
Legal Requirem ents ............................................................................................... 25
Registration of Business Name ................................................................................................................... 25
Form of the business ......................................................................................................................................... 26
KodeeCat registered Office. .......................................................................................................................... 26
KodeeCat Article of Association................................................................................................................. 27
KodeeCat Trade Mark ....................................................................................................................................... 27
Tax Requirements ............................................................................................................................................... 27
Chapter 3. Industry Analysis ........................................................................ 28
Prim ary Research .................................................................................................... 28
Literature Review ................................................................................................................................................. 28
Market Research ................................................................................................................................................... 30
Survey Analysis...................................................................................................................................................... 36
Retail Store Survey .............................................................................................................................................. 42
Com petitor Analysis .............................................................................................. 48
Market overview ................................................................................................................................................... 48
Potential competitors ....................................................................................................................................... 49
Competing with the Competitors ............................................................................................................ 53
Swot Analysis ........................................................................................................... 54
Chapter 4. Marketing Strategy Plan ........................................................... 55
5 Points Strategic Marketing plan ..................................................................... 55
Purpose and Mission .............................................................................................. 56
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Situational Analysis ................................................................................................ 56
Marketing Strategy and Objectives .................................................................... 57
Marketing Strategy - The "4 Ps" ....................................................................... 58
Price .............................................................................................................................................................................. 58
Product ....................................................................................................................................................................... 59
Place ............................................................................................................................................................................. 59
Promotion ................................................................................................................................................................ 60
Budgets, Performance Analysis and Implementation ................................................................. 63
Additional Consideration ................................................................................................................................ 63
Chapter 5. Technical Specifications .......................................................... 64
Overview ................................................................................................................... 64
1. Corporate Website .................................................................................................................................... 64
2. Application Download Website ........................................................................................................ 65
3. User Mobile Website and Application ........................................................................................... 66
Corporate W ebsite Usability Report .................................................................. 67
General and technical information .......................................................................................................... 67
Target Users ............................................................................................................................................................ 67
Conception .............................................................................................................................................................. 68
Before the launch ................................................................................................................................................ 68
Design ......................................................................................................................................................................... 69
Issues ........................................................................................................................................................................... 72
User W ebsite Specification .................................................................................. 73
Summary ................................................................................................................................................................... 73
General Architecture ......................................................................................................................................... 73
Joomla ........................................................................................................................................................................ 74
Facebook ................................................................................................................................................................... 74
Analytics .................................................................................................................................................................... 80
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................... 83
Mobile App Specifications .................................................................................... 84
Interface ..................................................................................................................................................................... 84
Technology and development ................................................................................................................... 86
Chapter 6. Finance ......................................................................................... 87
Sales Forecast .......................................................................................................... 87
Costs .......................................................................................................................... 88
Office Rent ............................................................................................................................................................... 88
Other costs............................................................................................................................................................... 88
Incom e Statem ent .................................................................................................. 91
Balance Sheet .......................................................................................................... 92
Expected Cash Flow Statem ent .......................................................................... 93
Annual Operating Expenses ................................................................................. 94
Accum ulated Depreciation .................................................................................. 94
Financial Sum m ary ................................................................................................. 94
References ........................................................................................................ 95
Appendices ..................................................................................................... 100
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
A.
B.
C.
D.
Adshel Prices ................................................................................. 100
User Survey Responses ............................................................... 101
Retail Store Survey Questions ................................................... 110
Meetings w ith advisors ............................................................... 114
4
Table Of Figures
Fig 1 Kodeecat Concept .............................................................................................................................................. 15
Fig 2 Value Propositions ............................................................................................................................................. 19
Fig 3 Channel Blocks ..................................................................................................................................................... 20
Fig 4 Pricing Plans ........................................................................................................................................................... 21
Fig 5 Mobile Os Market Penetration.................................................................................................................... 32
Fig 6 Mobile Developers ............................................................................................................................................. 33
Fig 7 Flat Screen Advertising .................................................................................................................................... 34
Fig 8 Qr Code In-Store ................................................................................................................................................ 35
Fig 9 Age Group Distribution ................................................................................................................................... 36
Fig 11 Facebook Usage ................................................................................................................................................ 37
Fig 12 Location Of Last Ad Remembered ....................................................................................................... 38
Fig 13 Behaviour And Advertising ......................................................................................................................... 38
Fig 14 Smartphone And Internet Plans ............................................................................................................. 39
Fig 15 Use Of Online Apps ........................................................................................................................................ 40
Fig 16 Use Of Qr Codes ................................................................................................................................................41
Fig 17 Qr Scanning Probabiliby - Receive A Voucher ..............................................................................41
Fig 18 Retail Stores Interviewed ............................................................................................................................. 43
Fig 19 Customers Per Day Of Retail Stores..................................................................................................... 44
Fig 20 In Store Advertising ........................................................................................................................................ 44
Fig 21 Other Advertising Options.......................................................................................................................... 45
Fig 22 Annual Advertising Expenses ................................................................................................................... 45
Fig 23 Budget Allocation ............................................................................................................................................ 46
Fig 24 Website Usage ................................................................................................................................................... 47
Fig 25 Social Media For Stores ................................................................................................................................ 47
Fig 26 Kodeecat Logo On App ............................................................................................................................... 57
Fig 27 Kodeecat On Facebook ............................................................................................................................... 60
Fig 28 Kodeecat Twitter Page ................................................................................................................................. 61
Fig 29 Kodeecat Website Homepage ................................................................................................................ 62
Fig 30 Marketing Budget Of Year 1 ...................................................................................................................... 63
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Fig 31 Kodeecat Homepage ..................................................................................................................................... 64
Fig 32 Kodeecat App Download Page ............................................................................................................... 65
Fig 33 Kodeecat App Mock-Up .............................................................................................................................. 66
Fig 34 Kodeecat Countdown .................................................................................................................................. 69
Fig 35 Kodeecat Visual ................................................................................................................................................. 70
Fig 36 Oauth Code (Source: Developers.Facebook.Com) .................................................................... 75
Fig 37 List Of Oauth Parameters (Source: Developers.Facebook.Com) .......................................77
Fig 38 Redirect Uri With Code (Source: Developers.Facebook.Com) ............................................77
Fig 39 Access Token Retrieval Code (Source: Developers.Facebook.Com) ..............................77
Fig 40 Kodeecat Facebook App Id ....................................................................................................................... 78
Fig 41 Analytics Services Comparison ............................................................................................................... 81
Fig 43 Kodeecat Scanning Screen ........................................................................................................................ 84
Fig 45 Kodeecat Favorites Screen ........................................................................................................................ 85
Fig 47 Kodeecat Geo Localisation Screen ....................................................................................................... 85
Fig 48 Kodeecat Configuration Screen ............................................................................................................. 86
Fig 49 Sales Forecast ..................................................................................................................................................... 87
Fig 50 Kodeecat Organisational Structure ...................................................................................................... 88
Fig 51 Kodeecat Staffing .............................................................................................................................................. 89
Fig 52 Invested Working Capital ............................................................................................................................ 90
Fig 53 Income Statement .......................................................................................................................................... 91
Fig 54 Balance Sheet ..................................................................................................................................................... 92
Fig 55 Expected Cash Flow ....................................................................................................................................... 93
Fig 56 Operating Expenses ....................................................................................................................................... 94
Fig 57 Accumulated Depreciation........................................................................................................................ 94
6
Executive Summary Product and Services KodeeCat will provide advertising services to retail stores. LCD Display screen
will be provided and a QR Code will be associated with each advertisement. Our main
offer is to provide metrics about the people that saw the ads of our customers so that they
can improve their marketing effectiveness. KodeeCat will give metrics based on our users
which will log in to our app with their Facebook account so that we can have access to
basic information about them (age, gender, marital status, city and interests). As an
incentive for the user, once they scan the code they will have access to special offers
from the shops.
KodeeCat will have a display network in shopping centre in which retail store can choose
to advertise and they can also decide to promote their own services in-store by renting a
LCD Screen of their own or by putting a QR code on their windows, leaflets or posters.
Once they use our service, we will send them analytics reports about their user, daily or
weekly according to their wished. Later development will allow them to access to a web
app providing real time information about the users.
7
The Market Our market for this business is retail outlets who wish to have a greater
understanding of their customers. They could be any business from a small toy shop, to a
busy men's clothes shop or large supermarket.
Our market is quite broad and in the current recession, many retailers are working on
tight deadlines. There are different types of retail shops that could use our service in this
market. An example of this is a car suppliers, and after reading metrics from ourselves
about their customers they may realise many of them are interested classic cars. The shop
owner could then take action to get in supplies for owners of these cars (books, special
equipment, oils, polish etc), to try and generate more business.
Supermarkets are an important area of the market and from conducting out qualitative
research, many of them said that were particularly interested in our business idea. This is
partly due to the fact that they have strong competition from the Germany discount
supermarkets Aldi and Lidi.
With the help of our technology, they would be able see if there is a large amount of
people at certain times of the day in their shop. Where there is several advertisements
(with our QR code) in different parts of the shop, they can see what area are most
popular, which could help decide the layout of their products. By understanding what
offers people look at first, they can see which are more ones are more popular and what
are the interests and profile of their customers. While our market is broad, we believe that
once retailers in shopping centre (for example) start using our technology, others will see
the technology and how it works. This will make it easier to sell this new customer
relationship building technology to our target market.
8
Marketing Strategy Our marketing strategy will be both online and off line and covers a wide area of
these sectors. Our technology is new to many shops, and it is something that retailers are
very interested in (from our research).
At KodeeCat we are offering the service of introducing new technology to retails outlets,
where new and potential customers scan a code. As a result of this, the shops can receive
data to have a greater understanding these consumers and hopefully grow their business
using with this information. We believe that any new technology that help build an
greater understanding of the customer would be welcome.
Our online strategy will start with the promotion of our website (www.kodeecat.com) and
we will do this in market this in a number of ways including using Google Adwords. We
have experience in this area and have seen how effective it is. Our plan will also allow
part of our marketing budget to pay for banner ads with Microsoft Advertising. his will
target users of Hotmail, and Microsoft Products like Bing.
There is a KodeeCat Facebook page and Twitter accounts which we will use effectively.
The benefit of these types of "Social Media Marketing", along with a email marketing
campaign is that this marketing will not cost us anything. We will advertise in trade
magazines and also take a stand at trade fairs. Our team will go to as many free (and a
few paid) conferences and seminar to network and help build our new business. We will
also use the powerful networking tool Linkedin to develop our company's sales even
further. Through this marketing strategy will believe we can make KodeeCat a success.
9
Technical Overview We decided to host three main websites which each have a specific target and
purpose, an app will also be developed on iOS based on the user website. Android
development can be made under the same specifications.
Corporate Website
This website (www.kodeecat.com) is the first contact we may have with our potential
customers. It showcases the services that the company provide.
Application Download Website
This webpage (www.kodeecat.com/app/) will exhibit the features of the application we
developed on iOS. This is where our users can find the app, its specification, minimum
requirements and find a link to download it directly in the Apple Store. This is a simple
page where user can also find a link to contact us.
User Mobile Website and Application
The mobile website will be used by people who do not
have our app but wish to scan the code with any QR code
scanner on the market but the specifications are the same
than for the mobile app. The user website will provide the
services of the company. It will allow our users to login
with their Facebook account. They will access to the list
of partners we have and will see the vouchers currently
available
The application will be made available on the Apple Store for iOS users. We focus on
this OS on the report but same development can be done under the Android system. The
application will offer a scanning feature to scan the QR Code, provide the list of vouchers
related to this code but also give a geo localisation feature to help users find shops around
them where vouchers and special offers are available.
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Staffing and Company Background Our company “KodeeCat” will be formed as limited liability company. The first
associates will be Jawaher Aldossary, Daragh O’Duffy and Aurélie Vasseur. Each
associate will receive 33,33% of the shares.
General
Manager
Sales
Manager
Accountant
Technical
Manager
Daragh O’Duffy will be the Sales Manager. He will have in charge the prospect research
and will handle the marketing activities like attending conferences, promoting KodeeCat
Offline, dealing with after sales support. His daily activities will be mainly contacting
prospect over the phone to present them our service and trying to convince them to use
our service.
Jawaher Aldossary will be the General Manager, taking care of daily operational
activities and making sure the company is driving towards its success. As we are a
starting company, the manager will also handle customer support and will do some
prospect research and take part in the marketing activities of the company.
Aurélie Vasseur will be the Technical Manager, dealing with the developers of the
website, making sure everything is working on the technical side. Creating the metrics
reports for customers, puting the data and visual from customers together to implement
them in our LCD Ad Screen and creating the QR codes and also the vouchers for each
customers. As an Adwords Certified Individual, she will also handle the Google
AdWords Marketing to ensure the best performance of the online marketing of
KodeeCat.
11
Projected Financial Illustrations Here is a financial summary of our KodeeCat. The table below is extracted from
our financial analysis which details a full set of accounts for the first five years of trading.
According to our figures, we can see that:
o KodeeCat will be profitable starting from the second year.
o The third, forth and fifth years can show a good growth and profit.
Details
First
Second
Third
Forth
Fifth
Revenues
132,395
158,860
165,120
165,720
159,960
Gross profit
90,863
115,251
119,331
117,642
109,478
Operating profit
2,559
22,329
22,573
20,884
8,692
Net Profit
2,559
22,329
22,573
20,884
8,692
End of the year remaining Profit
2,559
19,770
42,343
63,227
71,919
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Chapter 1. Concept Overview We explored the marketing services and its current problems. We identified that
traditional marketing was expensive and that no matter how important were non financial
metrics, this data is extremely hard to collect. Survey can be done about users perception
on marketing, and audit can be made to assess the effectiveness of a marketing campaign
but at a high cost and with many assumptions.
We wanted to overcome this issue and propose a service where companies can know who
see their marketing message. We decided to use QR code to allow this to be done.
Technically, almost all the QR Code marketing company provides information about
customers, like the device they used, the time the code has been scanned. But then? We
wanted to offer more. We wanted to tell the age of the person who scanned the code, and
we wanted to know if that person preferred romantic movies or drama. Yes that is made
possible with our service.
By using our mobile app and login with its Facebook account, our user will accept to
provide basic information about its interest and lifestyle. This information is often public
on Facebook, but is of high value for marketers. Not only they can redefine their message
to make them more attractive to their prospective users, but also they can understand their
failures and success. There are many ways a marketers can boost his sales by knowing
about his customers.
Below is one scenario.
A beauty shop has an advertising for its latest shampoo. They use our service and
we display its ad through our display network in the shopping centre where the store is
located. After a while, the shops discover that the ads drives more visitor to its shop, but
not many sales. While looking at their visitor, we see that most of them are
environmentally aware but that their shampoo is not at all. Instead of promoting this
product, they should advertise on their environment-friendly product.
13
Product Specifications We will have an extensive network of LCD Screens in Shopping Centre in which
retail store can advertise about their shops and products.
They can choose to have their ad displayed in one of more locations depending on the
plan they subscribe to (fig. 4).
These screen will display the Ads of the store with a QR code that will be made and
customised with the logo of the store and its visual, like the KodeeCat QR code that you
can see on each page of this report, the logo will be inserted in the middle, and colours
can be added. This does not delete any of the functionality of the code, it still can be
scanned.
To give a strong incentive to users to use our app and scan the code, the current special
offers of the retail store will be displayed on the mobile phone of the user once the code
is scanned. The user will then be able to save them in their favorites or even see the other
shops around him currently having special offers for him.
Retail Store can also have the option to promote their product in store with their own
display or with a simple QR code (on a poster, on the window…) for an additional fee.
Each days, or week according to our customers needs, we will provide them with the
metrics about their visitors. Lately, this will be automatized on a web app where retail
store will be able to visualise in real time their visitors and the people that see their ads.
14
How it works Below we describe how we will work with our customers. This visual can also be
found on our corporate website (www.kodeecat.com).
Fig 1 KodeeCat Concept
Once the ad are up and running we just send them the report about their users. As we will
provide on demand service, one possible way to expand our business could be as a
consulting firm by providing marketing strategies recommendation to our customers. But
the basic services will provide simple tables and data about the user and store should
analyse this data on their own. Our customer service will be there to assist them in the
first weeks to help them with the process.
15
Unique Selling Point KodeeCat is an interactive advertising agency. It offers its services to retail store
through posters and LCD display with the addition of a QR Code. Its Unique Selling
Point revolves around its innovation in advertising. We go beyond traditional advertising
by collating information about the people that see the marketing message of our
customer.
Here is our three point summary to describe our offer and attract our customers:
Bring People to You
Advertising is going beyond anything that ever existed before. Become active in your
marketing strategies and give high incentive for people to come to your shop and
remember you. The QR Code associated with each of your campaigns will let people
discover your special offers and will increase your customer satisfaction.
Be Seen and Found
With our strategically positionned screens, never miss a customer again. Whether you are
a small shop or a supermarket, let people know where you are, and what you have to
offer. Advertise about your shop, products and special offers with our interactive LCD
display and make sure to be seen where you need it the most.
Know your Customers
Let us transform data into information. Spending inconsiderable amount of money in
advertising has not helped you gain more customers yet? It is time that you discover why.
With the metrics provided by our service, understand who see your ads, discover their
interests and leverage this knowledge to be more efficient in your marketing strategies.
16
Chapter 2. Business Strategy Business Model The business model outlined below is based on the canvas proposed by
Osterwalder in his book « Business Model Generation ». Therefore, our business model
contains 9 segments which will be described and detailed in this section.
Customer segments “The Customer Segments Building Block defines the different groups of people
or organizations an enterprise aims to reach and serve” (Osterwalder).
KodeeCat offers advertising solutions to any physical shops. But it serves two segments
within this category.
(A) Retail store advertising in-store
(B) Retail store using our display network to advertise out of his own physical
location.
Even if these two segments can be seen as only one category, retail store, we will not
serve the same service and have the same relationship to each of the customer depending
on their segment.
Category A will have to rent a screen from us, and will advertise to people already in its
shop whereas Category B will benefit from an increased visibility from people outside
the perimeters of their physical location.
17
Value propositions “The Value Propositions Building Block describes the bundle of products and
services that create value for a specific Customer Segment” (Osterwalder).
The problem we wanted to solve by creating KodeeCat was the difficulty to measure
marketing effectiveness in traditional marketing due to the absence of metrics. One
common point between our two customer segments lies within the measurement of their
marketing effectiveness. Whether they advertise in-store or in various other places, retail
shops rarely have the opportunity to know who saws their message.
Value Proposition for Both Segments •
Newness and Performance
By providing detailed metrics to companies about their marketing campaign. The market
research and literature review highlight how important metrics are and how valuable it is
to our future customers. This will help our customer to define their strategies according to
the people that see their message. This is something can currently can only be done by
auditing and the cost of these measurement can easily rise.
•
Price
By not only being the only one in the market to offer this instant metrics service, but also
by having a price that compete with the other ways that marketers may use to get
information on their customers, we can clearly say that price is one of our best value
proposition.
•
Customization
Each company will have its own QR code using its visual identity and with its own logo
in the middle. This is made possible with our design and technological choices. By using
identifiable QR Code, we provide customized visuals for each of our user.
18
Value Proposition for Customer Segment B •
Accessibility.
One important thing to remember is that we are offering advertising service, in shopping
centre and strategic places, for as small as 65€ per month, with even a free week. This
low price will allow shops who did not advertise previously, to be able to do it, with a
small fee. We are now offering the possibility to small store to finally advertise. This is a
completely new market for us, and for them.
Summary of our Value Propositions (VP) A and B represent the customer segments served.
VP
Service
A
B
Newness
Metrics from traditional marketing
✓
✓
Performance
Help store improve their marketing
✓
✓
Price
Cheaper than advertising agencies and auditing services
✓
✓
Customization
Visual identity of the store used for the QR code
✓
✓
Accessibility
Advertising in shopping centre services for small budget
✓
Fig 2 Value Propositions
19
Channels “The Channels Building Block describes how a company communicates with and
reaches its Customer Segments to deliver a Value Proposition” (Osterwalder). From the
Business Model Generation, there are 5 essential phases in the Channel Block.
Awareness
Evaluation
Purchase
Delivery
After Sales
Fig 3 Channel Blocks
KodeeCat will take care of the whole process from raising awareness to the after sales
service. We will have our own and direct channel using both our website and our sales
force. No other company is in charge of any part of the process.
Customer relationship Our customer relationship will provide personal assistance based on human
interaction. Customers can contact us directly through email, phone and by coming to our
office.
Our customer who spend more than 200€/month will receive dedicated personal
assistance: the businesses and organisations will deal with their own account manager.
We will also provide self-service through FAQ and forums. In addition to that, our
customer will receive automated service with the weekly or daily metrics that we will
send them about their campaign.
20
Revenue Stream We will have a subscription model with fixed menu pricing for web sales. The
details can be shown below.
Fig 4 Pricing Plans
The QR Code correspond to the number of QR Codes the customer will receive each
month. He doesn’t have to use them simultaneously but can use them for limited sales for
example, or to put different QR Codes in different places. The vouchers are the numbers
of special offers displayed in our web app while the locations correspond to the number
of screen we will display the code on.
Within to those plans, each client will receive a free week offer (with 2 QR Code, 1
location, and 10 vouchers) and an option to rent a LCD screen for in store advertising is
offered at the 40€ monthly fee.
In addition to the static pricing offers, we also provide a dynamic option for companies to
which our plans don’t suit.
21
Key resources Our key resources are mainly intellectual. We will use QR creative generator
from other companies, analytics services to provide data and Facebook login to have
information on the visitors.
But not only, we also require human resource: website designer and coder, sales force
and customer relations manager.
And last financial resource: to cover the cost to host the website and additional content of
our customers, cost for the human resources and miscellaneous.
Key activities Our key activities will involve sales and marketing service. Our sales team will
have to help customer into creating their advertising and explain them our service to
convince them to subscribe to one of our plans.
At the start of the company we will also have to dedicate time and financial resource to
web development to complete the delivery of the mobile app. The technical specification
explain the development that has to be done until the service can be online. Most of the
specification are provided and it will only require a developer to complete the work that
we could not do on our own.
Then, once our service is fully operational, our technical team will have to provide
technical support to the company, make sure our website stay fully operational and that
any bug, if there are, are corrected as quickly as possible.
Customer relationship will be at the core of our start-up. Gaining and retaining client is
very important to our success. We will also have to provide support and consulting
activities to help our customer improve their marketing campaign with our reports.
22
Summary Our customers are divided in two groups. Those with in store LCD display and
those without. We have 5 value proposition which are the following: newness,
accessibility, price, performance and customisation. We will deliver the product through
our own and direct channels (web site and sales force) and our customer relationship will
be build around dedicated support. We offer a subscription model with a static pricing
which cover most of the market needs and also provide a dynamic pricing on demand for
company with specific demands. We will need intellectual, human and financial resource
to cover all aspect of our business and provides our clients with the best service with a
focus on customer relationship.
Risk Assessment Business Risks KodeeCat is a Business who uses the technology in a way that can benefit the
business owners, clients, and users. KodeeCat is similar to any other businesses that are
looking to achieve their goals and targets, in order to be a well-known company, and
success as a new business in Ireland.
KodeeCat is having a studied plans which can avoid the fact that there are many small
business who are failing every year. Its ambitions about reaching the presented targets
can be shown in our business model and financial plan.
Failure to achieve the business targets can be avoided by building a solid foundation that
can guarantee at least a 90% of our expected yearly profits already shown in the Income
Statement of our Financial plan.
KodeeCat is doing its best in order to avoid problems that might rise with client
attracting. Any failure in our marketing plan can harm our business revenue which will
23
affect our position in the business market and put an extra strain on us as business
owners. In addition, there is no doubt that the ease of market entry can hide un-expected
competitors.
Technical Risks The technical side in our business is working toward providing user information
to our customer. We must unsure that our data is backed up with the best option in order
to avoid loss of information which may ruin our business.
The traditional data backups solutions are costly and will probably make a reduction in
our profits as a results of any potential risk that might happened to it.
An online backup service will be a safe place too, which will contain all our business,
financial and operation. Such a service can return the company to its normal situation in a
couple of minutes. We choose “Mozy” (www.mozy.ie) because many large companies
have trusted them and recommending their services.
KodeeCat’s Clients data will be saved and backed to guarantee the best services in the
un-expected times, data will be secured and available 24 hours a day.
Mozy have a high degree of data security which can keep and protect our critical business
data and business secrets. It will also easily sync files between the company computers
and our devices if needed, and we can easily share the files with any new computer that
will be added to our business later.
24
Operational Risks Any business can face an-unexpected threats, such as natural disasters. In Ireland,
especially Dublin, we notice that they is a vulnerability to flooding. What happened to
Dundrum shopping centre in 24 Oct. 2011 can harm our business operation continuity.
Our LCD Ad player build in the shopping centres, may be harmed in case like that. To
avoid any long term problem we take a guarantee from our supplier that our LCD Ad
players can be replaced with the shortest delay possible. We also always keep a number
of LCD not in use in order to replace the damaged ones.
KodeeCat can survive after all the expected and non-expected disasters as a successful
business equipped with all the alternative plans and guarantee our Business Continuity.
KodeeCat system and other services are totally safe and can be completed and running
from a home office. No operations will be stopped if the technical risks are covered.
Legal Requirements Registration of Business Name The first step that we should take in order to identify our company “KodeeCat” as
a physical legal entity is to register it is name in Company Registration Office CRO
which operates under the aegis of the Department of Jobs , Enterprise and Innovation.
The CRO is the statutory authority for registering new companies and business names in
the Republic of Ireland.
The registration of our company will entitle us to utilise the below functions performed
by the CRO:
• The incorporation of our company and the registration of our business name.
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• The receipt and registration of post incorporation documents.
• The enforcement of the Companies Acts in relation to the filing obligations of
companies.
• Making information available to the public.
Form of the business Our company “KodeeCat” will be formed as limited liability company. We are
choosing this form of business to give more chance for partners to contribute to the
business in alignment to their investment plan and securing their personal assets from
investment risks.
KodeeCat founders will assign shares within the company capital that represent their
share of the business, based on Ireland formation policies the minimum shares
requirements will be 100€. All shares will be equally divided by the associated when the
company is created.
The first associates will be Jawaher Aldossary, Daragh O’Duffy and Aurélie Vasseur.
Each associate will receive 33,33% of the shares.
KodeeCat registered Office. According to Ireland rules the use of a P.O. Box is not permitted. Our company
will have to get a physical office which will be treated as an official company address.
The office price are included in the Financial Plan. Our office should be situated in
Dublin 8.
26
KodeeCat Article of Association We should outline the principle activities of KodeeCat in an official memorandum
and an article of association with the right NACE code that is representing KodeeCat
Activity. As a starting point we think that the best way to describe KodeeCat is under the
category “Advertising Agency” with the 7311 NACE Code.
KodeeCat Trade Mark Our company “KodeeCat” will have a unique logo that reflect the name of the
company and give indication of the type of business conducted by us. This logo shall be
attractive and unique and well known to everybody and act as trademark. Below is the
chosen logo. To avoid any replicate for the company identity , we will register our
logo/trademark with the Irish Patent Office: “This trademark registration will grants a
statutory right, subject to certain conditions, to prevent others from using the trade mark
without the registered proprietor's permission - i.e. to prevent infringement.” (Irish Patent
Office)
Tax Requirements Since KodeeCat will be established as limited liability company, it will be
subjected to 12.5% of the company profit corporate tax rate stated by the tax authority
department in Ireland. As a new company setup in Ireland, we will benefit a 0%
corporation tax for the first 2 years of operation. Also, KodeeCat will have an advantage
regarding pension schemes and benefit in kind items such as health insurance for the
director and the co-operators.
To ensure best compliance with tax obligation and terms stated in the republic of Ireland,
KodeeCat will hire an accountant to prepare monthly accounting books and consolidate
the annual filing report. Also, it will hire an auditor to review the financial records and
ensure the accurate calculation of the taxes before submitted it officially to the concerned
government entities such as CRO, Tax authority department, etc.
27
Chapter 3. Industry Analysis Primary Research Literature Review The primary research based on a literature review around marketing effectiveness
gave us the following findings:
a) Evaluating the marketing effectiveness is one of the biggest challenges for
marketers.
b) Measurement is critical to improvement of marketing strategies
c) Surveys do not express the real behaviour of users
d) Non financial metrics are as important as financial metrics.
e) Collecting and collating data is proven to be challenging for businesses
f) Improving marketing effectiveness is improving the business in its whole.
Details of the findings are expressed below and contrasted with what KodeeCat can offer.
a) One of the biggest challenges for the marketers of our times remains in evaluating
the effectiveness of their campaigns. Numbers of academic and professional
papers emphasize the difficulty of choosing the right metrics to use to assess such
effectiveness while they all agree on the importance of measurement.
b) Sheth and Sisodia highlight that without measurement, improvement can not be
made (1995). Halachmi (2005, p.503) is also going towards this idea by
expressing the following points about measurement:
• “if you cannot measure it you do not understand it;
• if you cannot understand it you cannot control it;
• if you cannot control it you cannot improve it.”
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The idea behind KodeeCat is to offer marketers and companies an easy way to
evaluate their marketing effectiveness by providing metrics. The real value
proposition behind these metrics is how businesses will use them to improve their
current strategies. We believe that by knowing their potential and actual
customers, marketers can improve their marketing strategies by assessing the
effectiveness of their current strategies and by redirecting their messages towards
their real targets.
c) The actual problem behind traditional marketing versus online marketing is the
fact that little is known about who sees the messages, and how they are received
by the customers. Using KodeeCat, businesses will be able to assess these data
more closely without the need of a marketing survey, which are known not to
reflect the real behaviours of users, what customers say prove to be very different
to what they actually do (Sheth et al., 2009). KodeeCat will not assess what
customers say but rather, it will record what they do.
d) We also found that non financial measures are extremely important in regards to
marketing effectiveness. Lehn and Makhija recognized that performance should
not rely on financial measures exclusively (1996). KodeeCat provide non
financial data by showing the interests, age and other data about the customers.
e) Seggie et al. recognized first the difficulty of selecting the correct metrics but also
the issue of collecting the data. They suggest that companies get either confused
by having too much data or not enough (2007). With KodeeCat we can overcome
this issue by providing relevant metrics, with boards that company can organize
and use to first understand their market and then target it accordingly.
f) Last, marketing can be seen as an entity working on its own, but it is important to
notice than when marketing effectiveness can be easily assessed and improved,
the whole company is benefiting from the improvement (Solcansky and
Simberova 2010).
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Market Research Advertising Agencies Supermarkets are facing a number of challenges in these recessionary times.
There is less money in the economy and as a result, the spending power of consumer is
reduced. There is also increasing competition from the German discount stores Aldi and
LIDL who have successfully expanded in the last few years. The majority of advertising
for newspapers is spend on newspaper ads, with 73% of advertising budgets spend in the
areas.
However the total amount being spent by the “grocer multiples” has fallen 13.5% to €8.6
million, compared to the same quarter last year “Despite the multitude of media channels
available, print media remains the vehicle of choice for supermarket advertising,” says
Checkout editor Stephen Wynne-Jones. (Irish Times 2012). This shows that with reduced
finances to spend on advertising, supermarkets will have to be more creative with their
advertising. This is why we believe that having in-store display would be a good idea. It
offers customers a more interactive way of promoting offers within the store.
Adshel Adshel is a popular option for companies interested in outdoor advertising.
Adshel is a company that offers a range of outdoor advertising options including bus
stops and posters across Ireland. They have over 5,000 bus shelter panels across Ireland.
These bus shelter ads have been very popular in Ireland as they can allow companies to
reach particular target audiences. Companies who wish to use this type of advertising
purchase a series of 20 panels per cycle. There is a list of 2012 rates in Appendix A.
In recent years, advertising goes “digital” and there has been a push towards creating
more innovating advertising. Some of the bus stop posters have 3D images or lights to
capture the attention of the audience.
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Growth of mobile phones The growth of smartphones across the world has been phenomenal. In the last
quarter of 2011 nearly 150m smartphones were sold and this contribute to world sales of
472m phones for 2011. This figure was up a massive 58% on the 2010 figures. As the
technology in smartphones develops, so does the wide range of users for the owner.
These phones are becoming “mini computers” and many people use them for email,
internet and even Skype calls. They are replacing music players with up to 64Gb hard
drives and with a 8MP camera, they are replacing cheaper digital cameras too. Garder
expects the smartphone market growth of around 39% in 2012, which shows there is still
huge potential for manufacture of these phones (Silicon Republic 2012).
According to Google, 74% of smartphone users make a purchase as a result of using their
phones to help them with their shopping. Smartphone are becoming a powerful tool to
help consumer with their shopping (H&A Marketing & PR 2011).
Android V Apple OS Since Apple launched it’s first smartphone in 2007, the iPhone had been very
successful. Many manufactures and industry analysts look to this phone as a leader in
innovation and new technology. The last few years has seen rising competition from
Google’s Android system. This operating system is used by a number of key mobile
manufacturers including Samsung, HTC, Motorola and LG. Despite the success of the
Galaxy 2 and now 3, the mobile technology world is still waiting for the launch of the
iPhone 5 this fall to see how the market react to it.
In the western world we are very much focused on the growth of smartphones. The
average consumer mobile phone replacement cycle lasts approximately 18 months.
Currently the Android operating system holds the dominate position with 47% market
share. However, the Apple OS is rising in popularity from 26 to 43% (see chart below).
31
Fig 5 Mobile OS Market Penetration
App Market Analysis Despite the fact that Android has 50% of total smartphone app market share,
developers have been reluctant to move to the Android platform with their apps. There
are in fact, more than four times as many iOS developers as there are Android
developers.
This is because Apple was the first company to develop the app market and build
customer loyalty. Developers have long known that Apple device owners are closely
locked into the Apple ecosystem. There have been a number of studies done and the
results are unanimous – Apple device owners are more willing to pay for apps.
There is also the growth in average selling prices of apps — $1.48 in 2011, up from
$1.29 last year — which suggests that after cutting prices in order to compete with one
another, app makers are starting to see that consumers are willing to pay more for apps,
which bodes well for apps that are built off paid download models (Gigamon 2012) .
32
However, there is now a growing number of apps in the Google Play Store that are also
on Apple’s App Store – but are free, or ad supported (Android Authority 2012).
Fig 6 Mobile Developers
M-­‐‑Commerce There are more that 6 billion people in the world that have a mobile subscription.
This figure includes 5 billion people in the developing countries, according to The World
Bank. As a result of that three quarters of the people in the world carry a mobile device!
This figure is even more startling due the fact the mobile devices has only become very
popular in the last 15 years. The number of subscriptions to mobile phones (both prepaid
and post-paid – account phones) had gone from around 1 billion in 2000 to 6 billion in
2012, according to The World Bank report. Some users have multiply phones – for
private use and for work. With multiple subscriptions it is expected that the number of
subscriptions will soon exceed that of the human population (Silicon Republic 2012).
In Ireland there are approximately 43% of all the mobile subscriptions are with
smartphones in Q4 of 2011. This has risen from 38% in the last quarter. As more
smartphones come on the market and the prices become more competitive the number of
them is consistently increasing. The figure for mobile subscriptions stood at 5.5 million,
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up from 5.3 million in the previous quarter. With 67% of the population (3.1 million
people) using internet there has been strong growth in the area as more regional sectors in
Ireland have broadband available to them. (New Media Watch 2012).
Flat Screen Advertising Advertising on flat screen displays is increasingly becoming an important part of
marketing today. This is primarily due to the fact that the technology is becoming more
affordable. A few years ago a 40” plasma flat screen TV could cost around €3,000, but
today you can buy a flat screen LCD TV for under €500 (Richersounds 2012). Smaller
LCD that can be used for displays are even cheaper than this price.
With the production of LED flat screens they are also becoming light and thus easier to
use in displays. There are companies like InfoTV which will install flat screen TVs in
places like Credit unions and banks.
Customers can have a variety of things to look at including ads for the Credit Union, new
offers interest rates, or it can also switch to displaying the news. According to InfoTV
these screens can have an audience of over 1,800,000 per month, (figures given to us
directly to them from the Credit Unions). The company has worked over the past 12 years
with the network of Credit Unions in Ireland and their systems are now in place in 80 of
their main offices around the country (InfoTV 2012).
Fig 7 Flat Screen Advertising
34
QR Codes The use of QR codes has grown dramatically over the last few years. They
originally started off being used for quality control of manufacturing at a Toyota
subsidiary in Japan. They have since become very popular in industry today with 56% of
QR codes can be found on product packaging (DigitalBuzzblog 2012).
The fact that now smartphones are able to scan these codes has let to the rise of their
popularity. People like to connect with social networks and explore new business
markets. The ability to scan a product with a your phone with little difficulty makes the
idea of using QR codes more attractive as an option.
Year by year users are getting more sophisticated phones and the are getting more and
more use of the technology available. The option to use your technology with an app
means that the user gets a more personalised approach to scanning codes. Their
“Favourite” code can be saved and recalled with ease.
According to MGH, a Maryland based marketing company, 70% of people surveyed said
that they would more likely to recall an advertisement with the use of a QR Code. These
codes also have an increase presence in the market place with 68% of those questioned
have seen a QR code. Almost a half of the Fortune 500 companies now use QR codes
(squarecode.biz 2012)
Fig 8 QR Code in-store 35
Survey Analysis A web survey was conducted to gain qualitative research on people’s use of
mobile phones, apps and their knowledge of QR codes. The complete results can be
found in appendix B. We gathered information on items such as: where they lived, their
age profile, occupation. There were also questions on their mode of transport. All this
data gave us an indication of how people are affected by advertising and what feature
people user on their mobile phones.
The survey gave us information on people's
understanding of QR codes, if they have used them before and the reasons why people
would scan a QR code.
In total we had 88 replies to the survey, which we were quite pleased. Most users had a
good understand of advertising, mobile phones and what QR codes are.
Demographics We had a an even amount of males to females (44). And the following
distribution represents the age groups of the respondents.
18 -­‐‑ 24y
25 -­‐‑ 29y
30 -­‐‑ 34y
40 -­‐‑ 49y
Fig 9 Age Group Distribution
There were many people who not only lived
outside Dublin, but were from other countries
In Dublin Not in Dublin including England, Scotland, France, Brazil,
United States, Argentina, Poland and
Fig 10 Location
36
Switzerland. This enabled us to get broad results for some parts of the survey, but then in
regard to some questions we focused on people living in Dublin. Just under than half the
people (44%) lived in Dublin. This gave a sizeable amount of people (39) to analyse data
from.
Facebook When the we examined results of the survey in regard to the use of Facebook on
the desktop or laptop, we found that many people (27) used it every day. If we combine
the results with those who use it more than twice a day the figure rises to 35. Facebook
has massive 2.1 million users in Ireland alone and it is very popular across many
demographics – especially people between 18-24 years (Social Bakers 2012).
The
majority of candidates (52) access Facebook a few times a week, this result mean that
within a week almost all (99%) of those surveyed access the site, which show the huge
popularity for the Social Network site.
More than twice a day
Every day
A few times a week
A few times a month
Never
Fig 11 Facebook Usage
In addition to that, we discovered that 48% used Facebook apps. This is critical to us
because of our login system that requires the user to login with its Facebook account on
our app.
37
Advertising In the chart below we see that the traditional off-line advertising is still very
popular.
Bus Stop
Magazine
Paid Newspaper
Free Newspaper
TV or Radio
Internet
Other Fig 12 Location of Last Ad Remembered
Bus stop advertising accounts for 33% of ads last remembered. The print areas of
newspapers (free and paid) and magazines represent 9% of ads, while the power of TV
and Radio is just 18%. Internet is growing to over a quarter of remembered ad and this
figure has showed signs of increasing over the last few years.
Search on Internet once at home
Search on Internet on your mobile
Ask friends for information on the company/product
Call a number displayed on the ad
Bought the product
Nothing
Fig 13 Behaviour and Advertising
38
In the chart above we looked at people’s behaviour after they had seen an advertisement
and if they felt the need to search for additional information. The most popular area was
searching for information on the internet at home (18) and combined with seeking data
from mobile internet (13), this represented over 64% of all the total choices. This gives
and example of how important the internet has become as place to source information on
products and services.
There were 6 people who selected ask a friend for information and this is becoming an
important part of the factors that influence people’s decisions. In a report from last year
from Microsoft, the company revealed research showing that friends influence our buying
decisions more than experts (Forbes 2011).
More importantly, we see that 80% of our respondents have searched for information
about a company after seeing an advertisement. This shows the huge potential of
KodeeCat.
Mobile Phone Do you have an
Do you have a
internet plan for
Smartphone?
%
your mobile?
%
Yes
33
85
28
72
No
6
15
11
28
Fig 14 Smartphone and Internet Plans
The above details show the huge growth in the popularity of mobile smart phones
in our survey. Many of the people in our survey – who are living in Dublin, in the 18-34
age groups would be part of our target market. The figure of 85% of them having a
smartphone and 72% of them also having a data plan is very encouraging for our market
research.
39
The majority of candidates used their mobile phones to browse the internet (56%) and an
even higher number use it for accessing email (62%). This shows the move away from
PC and towards mobiles a mean of electronic communication. These mobile smartphones
are becoming “mini-computers”, and the growth of m-commerce (mobile commerce) is
seen here to be developing as rapidly as e-commerce.
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
Fig 15 Use of Online Apps
In the chart above we see that the majority of people have an interest in using online
apps. Between those who selected that they use apps either ‘Often’ or ‘Sometimes’, this
represents 51% of the candidates for this section. While there are 41% who said that they
never used an app, this will change as smartphone become more popular and mobile data
plans become more affordable. From our research it was good to know of the high level
of those who had internet on their phones.
QR Codes Almost one quarter (23%) have scanned a QR code in the last week or month,
which is encouraging.
40
Last week
Last month
A few months ago
Last year
I don'ʹt remember
Fig 16 Use of QR Codes
If we include those who have scanned something a few months ago, this brings the
cumulated total to over 51% of candidates. The use of scanning QR codes is still
developing and we would expect this figure to increase as the popularity of people using
their smartphone technology increase over the next few years.
When we look at the data in relation to QR codes, people are ‘completely likely’ or ‘very
likely’ to scan a QR code to seek a voucher or coupon (compared with the other options
listed).
Completely likely
Very likely
Moderately likely
Slightly likely
Not at all likely
Fig 17 QR Scanning Probabiliby - Receive a voucher
41
In total 85% of people are likely (from completely to moderately) to scan a QR Code to
receive special offer. This is highly encouraging from us, since all the others options
received way less attention (56% to access a website, 47% to access additional
information, 36% to sign in to a newsletter).
These results were very encouraging for us, as it gave us an indication that there is great
opportunities in QR code technology. There are also many options within this area to sell
products and services.
Retail Store Survey A survey was conducted to gain insight on retail stores and how they marketed
their business. We wanted to know to how retail shops promoted themselves in relation to
having a sale on specific items.
There are a number of ways a shop can market themselves. It can be done through
leaflets and posters in the shop that are organised by store management or it can be done
centrally through head office. Some businesses have a mixture of making decision
themselves and then receiving promotional material perhaps monthly or quarterly every
year. A number of businesses had loyalty cards and often member has access to a range
of special offers online, separate to those available in the shop.
We surveyed a wide range of shops from small convenience stores to large supermarkets
to get a broad range of primary research. The types of shops ranged from health food
stores like Holland and Barrett, to bookshops Hughes and Hughes and pharmacies like
Boots and Doc Morris. We looked a range of shops that sold food, from Dealz, to Spar,
Centra, Supervalu, Superquinn and Tesco. While carrying out the surveys we explained
that the information was for a DCU Thesis and that we would not reveal any details
regarding the particular branch or staff names. We survey a total of 24 shops.
42
In the research we looked at the “Digital Marketing Strategy” that the firms were (or
were not using). While all the businesses had a website, some just had their basic details,
as they were part of a UK chain of shops. Some of the other websites like the one for Doc
Morris Pharmacy allowed their members to login, to buy specific offers. The larger
stores like Supervalu, Superquinn and Tesco allowed shoppers to purchase products
online. They can then collect them in the store or arrange for a home delivery. When we
mentioned the concept of using QR technology on a poster or flat screens, they were
usually interested. They all had heard of QR code technology and were very keen to
finding out more information about their customers.
Analysis of results In the survey we had a mixture of shops selling food and drink and those that did
not. There were 15 shops (62%) that did sell food and drink like the supermarkets and
the majority of these were very interested in receiving metrics on their customers. Of the
group of shops that did not sell or drinks there was still a strong interested in building a
database of customers, particularly in Health and Beauty and Clothing.
Convenience store
Health food store
Off Licence
Small to medium sized supermarket
Medium to large sized supermarket
Fig 18 Retail Stores Interviewed
43
We asked for the number of customer the shops would receive per day.
The most popular segment was 250-1000 customers arriving each day in the store. This
was taken from an average figure for the week. Days like Friday, Saturday and Sunday
were the busiest, with Monday the quietest.
up to 250
250 -­‐‑ 1000
1000 -­‐‑ 2,500
2,500 +
Fig 19 Customers per Day of Retail Stores
Advertising
The use of leaflets was very popular with shops. Some of the larger supermarkets
like Superquinn, Supervalu and Tesco produced their used small magazines which could
appear every three weeks (Tesco) or month.
Have leaflets in store
Have posters in Store
Use posters outside your store
Loyalty Cards
Fig 20 In Store Advertising
The newspapers are still a very popular way of adverting for shops. While some of the
ads can be quite expensive, for example a Sunday newspaper, this advertising can be
quite effective. When a shop includes their leaflet or booklet within the newspaper, this
would also fall under this category. There are also a numbers of newspapers to choose
44
from, including expensive Sunday papers to cheaper local papers. Radio is also popular –
especially with supermarkets. More shops are looking to advertise online and this
includes using Google AdWords.
Print -­‐‑Newspaper ads
Print -­‐‑Leaflets to people'ʹs homes Radio -­‐‑ ad campaign
TV -­‐‑ ad campaign
Online campaign
Fig 21 Other Advertising Options
There were many businesses who had a small spend on advertising (see table below),
despite the fact that sales were falling. Many shops who were part of a chain, would still
spend money on advertising despite getting promotion material from their head office.
Annual Advertising Spend
under €1,000
8
33%
€1,000 - €3,000
8
33%
€3,000 - €7,000
3
13%
€7,000 +
5
21%
Fig 22 Annual Advertising Expenses
All the people questioned where familiar with flat screen displays, yet very little shops
had them inside specifically to display sale items and special offers. We asked the
following question:
•
With a strategically positioned flat screen display, many customers would see this
new form of advertising. It this something you would be interested in?
There was strong interest (92%) in the area of advertising on a screen which we found
encouraging.
45
QR Codes
We then ask if they would be interested in having a QR Code integrated into their
display and receive information on their customers which is our primary service.
We found again a large proportion of people interested in this (92%). Many did not know
that it was possible to get access about the profile of their customer. It took some
explaining sometimes, but after they understood it they were quite interested in the
concept. We explained that this data could be collated from a QR code on a Poster or on a
flat screen.
We wanted to assess the possibilities of selling our service to our established prices.
This was a very interesting statistic as it showed a strong interest in implementing this
new technology into a companies marketing campaign. One of the strongest selling
points was the fact that the technology was very new to the market.
Basic Package €20 per month
Standard Package €65 per month
Professional Package €120 per month
Fig 23 Budget Allocation
Website
The vast majority of shops have websites and many of them are used to display
just basic information. However for small shops this is all that they require. Some
websites have a large amount of information and also have the opportunity to purchase
46
products. On the Centra website it just has the special offers for viewers to look at, and it
design appear very basic compared to it other competitors.
Basic company information List of products and services for sale
Allows users to purchase products and services
Fig 24 Website Usage
Social Media
Facebook continues to be a major player in Social Media with 83% of shops using
them. It offers a strong platform to market shops, and in particular smaller shops. These
are still trying to market themselves in a competitive market with supermarkets. Twitter
is a growing player in this market with 67% of shopping using this platform.
Facebook
Twi]er
Customer email list
Linkedin
Other
Fig 25 Social Media for Stores
47
Metrics
There was a very positive response for the question about metrics as the majority
of people (96%) were interested in the type of data that they could get from us. Many of
the shop management were particularly interested in the time people saw the code to get
an idea of the most popular times. There were also keen to know more about the profile
of the user - their other interests. An important factor is the type and amount of detail the
user provides through the Facebook account. The shops were very interesting in building
a stronger relationship with the customer through Social Media in this challenging
recessionary times.
Competitor Analysis Market overview Many Advertising companies nowadays do their best to use new ways of
advertising that leads the market, and as we know, the newest marketing method is the
“Mobile Advertising/Marketing using the Quick Response Codes”. The QR codes is one
of the fastest ways that can give a business the chance to engage with its future potentials
customers.
There are numerous exciting companies all over the world, the majority of those
competitors are from the United States and Canada, some of them are already providing
the mobile advertising using the QR codes, and some are starting to advertising the
service to their customers. Each one having their own features and characteristics that can
differentiate them. We are considering them as competitors because they are offering
services to everybody through their website, in that case they can reach the international
clients easily. As an online company, with an advertising, statistics and analysing service,
KodeeCat will have to compete with many competitors all over the world not only in
Ireland.
48
In addition to the normal QR codes, some companies are attending that market with some
additional features that can push them to the spot, they are playing with the QR codes by
generating some creative ones to keep them attractive.
Potential competitors We are creating an online service company, our potential competitors can be any
company in that world that is currently providing the same services or similar, especially
that they can expand their business internationally if they plan to compete in that market
all over the world wide.
Mobile Internet Marketing (Dublin, IE.) Mobile Internet Marketing is an Irish company, they are having a wide variety of
marketing tools that can allow them to be in a position of a “competitor”. They
are working in Mobile Marketing, Mobile Websites, SMS Marketing and many
other marketing and advertising services.
Lately (2012), the MIM is providing the QR code marketing tool to compete with
the other marketing companies.
Features:
They are managing all the customers campaigns, at the same time they are always
working to keep them-selves updated with most of the latest marketing signs and
growths. They noticed the Significant increase in the smartphones and how it
affect our daily life and build and develop their services according to that.
49
Snaptech Marketing (BC, Canada) It’s a marketing company in Burnaby, a City in British Columbia. They are in
business (Marketing) since 1997, working in many different fields such as web
design, technology solutions and the Internet Marketing.
By looking at their Internet marketing services section, we can see that they are
offering the QR Codes marketing since 2011. They are advertising the customers’
brand or services by reaching the target persons through their mobiles when they
scan the barcodes.
Features:
They are providing the scanners with some games, video and rewards in order to
get the persons loyalty.
Pitney Bowes (United State): Pitney Bowes is a huge company in United States, they classified themselves as a
customer communication technologies company, and the company have seen a
significant growth starting from 2008 till the moment.
The use of the QR codes here is through having a marketing campaign that a
business owner can use in order to have a live monitoring and controlling of any
activities in regard of his product marketing and advertising account.
Feature:
The company allows the people to share the promotions from their mobiles with
their social network and activities, and that definitely can help the customers’
businesses to be easily known fast and better than the traditional marketing tools.
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Advanced Tele (US, Canada & UK): The company is located in US, Canada, UK and Czech Republic. They started
their business in 1989. By looking to the company profile, we can see that the
company employees and the head team is focusing in developing their products
and their marketing services strategies.
The Advanced Tele services provides people with mobile website, text marketing
and many other services that can cover all the current business marketing needs.
Feature:
Adding a value to their mobile marketing using a creative QR code that can also
help in attracting people.
Trumpia The company is located in Canada. Trumpia is a huge company that has a large
variety of different marketing methods such as SMS Mobile Marketing, Email
Marketing, Voice Broadcast, Social Media Marketing, 2-Way Text Messaging
Mobile e-Cards and much more.
We can see that Trumpia is considered as an all in one multi-channel marketing
platform, helping any size of businesses to increase their customer by collecting
the QR scanners’ details and information.
Feature:
In the QR code marketing, Trumpia is working with the “Scan and Go” tools, they
are trying to join the fun with the profit together in one method, attracting
customers, increasing the profit and measuring the changes that will happen to the
businesses marketing.
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KAYWA QR Code : The company is the first QR Company in Switzerland, USA and Serbia. Kaywa is
providing many technical and business services such as mobile services, location
based services and many other services. There is no doubt that Kaywa is trusted
by a large number of users, individuals and organizations. Kaywa is always ahead
of thing, for example: Kaywa started working with the QR Codes since 2005.
Features:
Kaywa is providing their customer with a choice of getting the “QR MGMT”
services, it’s an important compulsory services such as providing the
organisations and businesses with some analytics and metrics in regards to their
QR Codes that they owned, and allowing them to collect some important
information about who scan their codes, and the devices that they are using to
scan them.
QReateBUZZ (USA) : The QReateBUZZ is a company that provide their customers with an app which
allow the users to create their codes, manage their codes, and getting some
metrics about them, the company is serving all kind of users specially the
advertisers because they can build their campaigns and track the related codes.
Features:
The QReateBUZZ is a 100% free for any individual, group, organization,
advertisers and any other kind of users.
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Competing with the Competitors Services Costs and flexibility KodeeCat is planning to provide the prospective clients with different type of
packages that can allow them to choose the suitable one that can serve them better.
Differences on those packages will not relay on the clients business size but on how
many services are chosen by them. Those type of packages can attract more customers to
our company, especially the ones who are always searching about flexibility. In addition
we offer a free basic package that will allow people to have some limited services.
Customer Relations & Clients Our customer services & relations with the prospective clients will not be
superficial, but deep as much as we can, the planned relations will be build gradually
starting from the first meeting with the clients to the service and after service relation.
We can notice nowadays that an online business success is also measured on the quality
of the customer services through email, online chat or any other communication tool.
KodeeCat will have high quality lines of communication with the clients all over the
time, and that can definitely enhance the company position in the market.
KodeeCat in the market By looking to market there are many advertising companies who offer a similar
service to KodeeCat. However, most of them are from USA, Canada, we believe that
Mobile internet Marketing company in (Dublin-Ireland) will be the only internal
expected company that will compete with KodeeCat, but there is no doubt that there are
some different features that we add to our services, such as:
•
discount vouchers
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KodeeCat will provide the users with a discount vouchers as a reward for
scanning the QR Code, which can definitely attract users to our customers
advertising QRs, and can create the differences in profit, success and the users’
choices.
•
new way of advertising
KodeeCat is having her own advantage in Dublin, because it will be the first
advertising company that is using both the LCD screen and the QR Code to
advertise on the waiting areas, such as shopping centres, train stations, banks, and
many other waiting areas, and that can differentiate KodeeCat from other
competitors.
Value Propositions More detail about our value proposition has been detailed in the business model. Those
value propositions are the reason why KodeeCat believe they have an advantage in the
market (newness, price, performance, accessibility, and customisation).
Swot Analysis Internal
Strengths
•
•
•
Stylish & unique way of advertising
(customisation)
The QR Codes
Price
•
•
Weaknesses
No-Reputation
Lack of Technical expertise
External
Opportunities
•
•
Growing of smartphone usage
No direct competitors with the same
service
•
•
Threats
Threat of new competitors
The trust level of customers
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Chapter 4. Marketing Strategy Plan 5 Points Strategic Marketing plan The marketing strategy plan for a new company is something that is essential to
the success of a company. Many great companies today like Amazon and Dell greatly
increased their marketing share by having a strong, focused marketing campaign when
they were trying to build market share in an increasing competitive market.
Many people think that marketing is mainly focused on adverting, promotion and PR of a
business. However it needs to incorporate an understanding of the market you wish to
sell, and also requires choosing the correct tactics in order for your company to
successful reach the market. Once a they have reached this target a business needs a
strategy to be able to stay in an often competitive market. A business could include this
five point plan as a strategy for success: (Startup Nation 2012)
 Purpose and Mission
 Situational Analysis
 Marketing Strategy and Objectives
The "4 Ps"
 Price
 Product
 Place
 Promotion
 Budgets, Performance Analysis and Implementation
 Additional Consideration
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Purpose and Mission The purpose of the company is to introduce technology that helps shops promote
they goods and services. With our concept when a business wishes to promote a sale,
there will be a QR code on their leaflet, poster or flat screen display. The customer can
then scan the code with their smartphone to see details about that product or service. The
user is required to login to the website and this can be done through their Facebook
account. This would be preferable from our point of view as we can gather more details
about the customer this way (from their Facebook profile details). The user also has the
option to download the app which gives them greater options including the ability to add
the sale items they like to their “favourites”.
Our mission is to gather the information on customers who scan these codes and supply
the shops with these metrics so that they have a much greater understanding of their
customers.
Situational Analysis In Situational Analysis for this project we needed to understand our potential
market and its potential customers. In order to do this we conducted two different surveys
and spoke to many people about our concept. We firstly ran a user survey to recognise if
people are familiar with QR codes and if they would scan the codes with their phones.
The whole are area of people scanning codes with their smartphones and receiving data
and products and services is still a relatively new concept for many people.
While QR codes have been used in manufacturing since the mid 1990’s, only with
development of smart phone in the last few years and the app market have technology is
becoming available “in the hand” of the consumer. What was interesting in the feedback
was that many people were interested in finding out more about promotions through
scanning a QR code. However many did not know that they had the technology already
on their smart phone to do this. So in our strategy we recognised that the greater
awareness the consumer had of the technology, the great chance of its success.
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Marketing Strategy and Objectives The Marketing Strategy for our company would be to create a web presence
through the use of social media tools. We used the name KodeeCat for out company
name as firstly it incorporated the word code, spelt with a ‘K’. We also used the word cat
as we believed that using a familiar animal would help us with our branding. This is
already in use by many world brands like Ferrari (a horse), HMV (a dog), also on the web
with Twitter (a bird) MSN (a butterfly). Our human perceptions of animals and their
characteristics can be used to lead us to a perception about the company (Creative
Overflow 2012).
Fig 26 KodeeCat Logo on App
We incorporated an image of a cat in to our logo to help with the identification and
familiarity of our brand. The cat is an animal that can be perceived as clever, friendly,
popular and easily identifiable. Some of our customers will be the age younger sector of
the overall population and also many (but not all) will be female and we believe that our
logo appeals to those two important sectors. However it is important that we do not
alienate certain customers and have a wide appear. We also wished to appeal to male
customers and this was a factor in choosing the blue in our corporate colours.
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Marketing Strategy -­‐‑ The "ʺ4 Ps"ʺ Price The pricing structure is such that if offers potential customers a opportunity to
available of the latest in QR code technology at affordable prices. We had three price
plans for customers to choose from. These give the range of options for the customers:
o
Standard Package €55 per month
o
Professional Package €125 per month
o
Campaign Package €240 per month
The Standard Package is for smaller shops and this contract would give them an
opportunity to use our service on a affordable basis. This would allow them to display a
QR code with a poster promoting their goods or services. The idea being that shops could
start using this package which would allow them 2 QR code and they could advertise ten
products. Once the shop’s customers got used to the idea of scanning the codes and the
shop was receiving metrics, the shop might be interested in the Professional Package.
This would allow the shop much more flexibility as they could have 7 QR codes and 30
vouchers for promoting products and services.
One option for shops is to have their promotions and offers displayed on the flat screen
that are positioned in strategic locations. These screen could be (for example) in shopping
centres near the entrances or near escalators and lifts. With the different packages the
shop could choose to advertise at one location (standard package) or multiple locations
(Professional package).
A shop may also choose to have it’s own screen and they can hire them from our
company for €40 per month. There is also a set up charge initially of €60 to set up the
screen in the shop itself. We believe this offers good value to purchase the screen could
cost over €300, so there is low initial outlay for the customer. For the company this
arrangement is beneficial, as for example if a shop rented a screen for a year and then the
contract ended, we would be able to take back the screen and rent it to someone else
instead.
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Product Our product offers retail shops something very special. It is an opportunity to use
relativity new technology - QR codes, and supply these retail shops with detailed
information of existing and potential customers. While QR codes have been available
since the mid 1990s, it is only recently that a large volume of customers have the ability
to scan these QR codes on their smartphones. Advertisements for a sale or promotion
with a QR code can be placed in strategic locations. They can either be on poster or on a
flat screen display. From the data we will collect, it is possible that the shops could get
information on where is the most popular place to position these advertisements.
An example of this is the positioning an advertisement with its QR code at the entrance to
a shopping mall, near the escalators outside the shop itself. It is possible to determine
the time the customer scanned the code which is important as it could tell the retailer
when are the busiest times of the day. Our goal is to be able to help businesses have a
better understanding of who their customers are and when they are in their shop (or near
the shop). This can hopefully lead to not only a better relationship with the customer but
also an opportunity to grow the business with this new knowledge. There could a
situation where a number of customers who shop at children's toy & craft shops may have
a keen interest in painting. This information would be from metrics obtained by looking
at customers Facebook profile "interests". All this data would be collated from their
Facebook accounts. After gaining this information the shop owner could be encourage to
order more art material in to suit his clients interests.
Place Our QR code technology will hopefully be available in firstly a range of shops
across Dublin. For ease of distribution we are targeting the retail outlets in shopping
centres.
Here there a great range of shops across different sectors all under one room.
Dundrum Town Centre has over 100 shops including supermarkets (Dundrum 2012). If
we had a number of shops who wished to rent out flat screens in the centre, it would be
more cost efficient to have a number of our customers located under the one roof.
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In this way if we had to send someone out so set up the flat screens or do any
maintenance on them, they could do a number jobs in the same location on the same day.
From a user point of use, it would be preferable if a number of shops where running
promotions with our QR code. User who wished to use our technology would then have a
number of retails shop to choose from.
Promotion We created a Facebook page to promote the company and to give customers an
idea what exactly our company does. It is an opportunity for viewers to see the company
logo, the corporate colours. The website url is:
www.facebook.com/kodeecat
Fig 27 KodeeCat on Facebook
Facebook marketing is becoming an important tool in ecommerce today. The benefit of
using Facebook is that the people listed in your "friends" list already have an interest in
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your company. Some will be customers and others will have heard of your company
through a friends recommendation. This is an excellent way to a network of customers.
In our marketing strategy we will put out regular Facebook notices about the latest news
from the company and details of our newest shops to use our service. In this way we can
use our Facebook page in two ways. Firstly we can inform our customers - retail shops of
new technology and how the business is developing. Secondly the uses can read about
shops that are now offering the service. They can also read about new special offers that
are available using QR code technology.
We also set up a Twitter account was important part of our marketing campaign. Twitter
offers companies (and people) a free opportunity to create an important web presence.
The benefit of Twitter is the fact that we can send out Tweets every day in relation to a
number of items like codes, barcodes,
Fig 28 KodeeCat Twitter Page
Our marketing objective is to promote the company by a number of ways, and to do this
would also user powerful social media websites like Linkedin. As managers of the
company we would have details about KodeeCat and the QR code technology. Linkedin
has become a powerful network tool and it does not cost anything to network and spread
the word about our company and what we are offering. We will be targeting conferences
and seminars where we can meet retailers. In this way we can talk to owners and
managers when they are away from running their shops. During the day in a busy shop it
can be hard for them to give time to hear about a new service.
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We would look at sponsoring a trade show for the retail industry to help create brand
awareness. We would also look at paying to take a stand an retail trade show to owners
and management of shops can see the technology working in a live environment. They
would be able to ask questions about it and we could generate a large amount of leads
over just once conference.
A key element of our Marketing Strategy would be our online campaign with the
promotion of our website.
Fig 29 KodeeCat Website HomePage
Our KodeeCat website gives us a great platform to promote our business. Here visitors
can find out who we are the service we provide. They can download the KodeeCat app
and they can also look at special offers. From a marketing point of view we need to drive
traffic to our website. Therefore we have allocated a budget of €400 per month to be
spend carefully on a Google Adwords Campaign. We have gained much knowledge from
entering the GOMCHA (Google Online Marketing Challenge), and some of us already
have much experience with Google Adwords campaigns already (one member of the
team is a certified adwords specialist). With careful management we believe it is a very
effective way of driving traffic to our website. This in turn, we believe will lead to
generating new sales for our business.
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Budgets, Performance Analysis and Implementation A summary of our Marketing Budget for the first year is below. We have
allocated a similar amount for year 2 and 3, but the exact division of those funds would
be decided after we reviewed the success of our marketing campaign at the end of year
one.
Google Adwords : €400 per month * 12
€4,800
Microsoft Advertising (banner ads)
€2,000
Stand at Retail shops trade fairs
€3,000
Advertisements in Trade Magazines
€2,000
Promo Leaflets (to explain technology)
€1,200
Promotional Material - Displays
€1,000
TOTAL:
€14,000
Fig 30 Marketing Budget of Year 1
Additional Consideration We believe that we have created a strong marketing campaign with a large focus
on our online strategy as we are offering technology with metrics that are generated and
available online. Our customers can find us though our website, Facebook, app and
Twitter online accounts. However there is much work to be done "off line" from
advertising in trade show magazines to phoning and calling out to customers.
The leads for potential customers may be found online, but they still enjoy the personal
approach of someone calling out to them an explaining the service. This is particular true
if a customer had a problem and some is required to call out to them. Being a small
company this is not always possible, but we will do our best to meet and exceed our
customers' needs. Our additional consideration is the fact that although we have effective
marketing strategy, we must be constantly reviewing it and adjusting it for the most
effective results to make KodeeCat a success.
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Chapter 5. Technical Specifications Overview For our company we decided to host three main websites which each have a
specific target and purpose, an app will also be developed on iOS based on the user
website. Android development can be made under the same specifications.
1. Corporate Website This website (www.kodeecat.com) is the first contact we may have with our potential
customers. It showcases the services that the company provide. A description of the
concept of the service is presented with some examples of the use of the metrics that we
will provide, the pricing and a contact form. Like in all our websites, there are links to
our social media pages (Facebook, Twitter). This website is static and does not offer any
identification or personal pages to our user. The purpose of this website is to describe the
products with its features, to attract potential customers and provide them a way to
contact us.
Fig 31 KodeeCat Homepage
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2. Application Download Website This webpage (www.kodeecat.com/app/) will exhibit the features of the
application we developed on iOS. This is where our users can find the app, its
specification, minimum requirements and find a link to download it directly in the Apple
Store. This is a simple page where user can also find a link to contact us. This is of course
a mobile friendly page, we want the user to be able to download the app directly through
this page. A similar webpage can be created later for android users.
Fig 32 KodeeCat App Download Page
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3. User Mobile Website and Application This mobile website will be used by people who do not have our app but wish to
scan the code with any QR code scanner on the market but the specifications are the same
than for the mobile app. The user website will provide the services of the company. It
will allow our users to login with their Facebook account. They will access to the list of
partners we have and will see the vouchers currently available. They will be able to add
the vouchers of their choice for further utilisation in the shop. An option to geo localise
and search shops around them will be provided. They will have a profile page that they
can edit to add information about them.
The application will be made available on the Apple Store for iOS users. We focus on
this OS on the report but same development can be done under the Android system. The
application will offer a scanning feature to scan the QR Code, provide the list of vouchers
related to this code but also give a geo localisation feature to help users find shops around
them where vouchers and special offers are available. Once the app is downloaded the
user will have to login with its Facebook account so that we can access to its personal
information and link its mobile use with his account.
Fig 33 KodeeCat App Mock-up
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Corporate Website Usability Report General and technical information It is important for us to use the latest technology developed in web
communication to get the full potential out of our website and stay up to date. In this
idea, we decided to use only CSS3 and HTML5 to design and implement the corporate
website.
This website is static and does require PHP only for the use of the contact form.
JavaScript is used to provide the user with some interaction throughout its navigation and
to implement the Google Analytics code to track our visitors. We made sure that our
technology are supported by all recent browsers on all operating systems. This website is
not developed for mobile specifically but is supported by mobile browsers.
Target Users Our target users are companies of any size, who owns a physical store in Ireland.
Our user should not have any prior IT competency to be able to fully navigate in our
website and understand our services. There should be no learning required and the user
should find any information required easily. Therefore the website will be straightforward
with a top menu to access all pages available, and a footer to summarize the information
and to provide a second access to the pages on the website with direct access.
-
Minimum skills are required to browse the website
-
The purpose of the website should be understood directly on the homepage with
no further research
-
If the user still has question, it should be easy for him to contact us by email, form
or phone.
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Conception For the conceptual phase of the project we needed to find a good navigation
scheme which allow the website to be accessible and where all information is grouped
towards some themes.
We decided to divide the menu accordingly to our services. The main menu is described
below.
-
Home
-
Concept
o About
o How it works
-
Pricing
-
Contact
We grouped the “concept” part of the project so that the user can get the full picture of
our services. By accessing to a short description on the about page, he should be able to
assess if the service is something he will need or if he wants to leave the website. But if
more information is required, he directly access to the how it works page to have a
detailed description of the services. There will be examples on how our service can help
our customer to improve their marketing strategies in the “how it works” page.
By prototyping the website prior to its implementation we were able to direct ourselves to
a better understanding of the technical requirements and to choose the best way to
integrate all the part needed all together with a nice template.
Before the launch We wanted to create a surprise effect and decided to have a waiting page with a count
down until the launch of the final website. The page below was used to our visitors
searching for us know when we would launch in order to avoid having just a “in
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construction” message when the user would reach us. This page provide basic way to
contact us by clicking on the Facebook or Twitter button or just by sending us an email.
Our visual identity was already displayed with our logo and some JavaScript was used for
the count down.
Fig 34 KodeeCat Countdown
Design As said previously, our website targets all kind of people with no prior computing
background. Everything is easily accessible and the purpose of the website is understood
from the homepage or just by having a quick look at the footer no matter on which page
the visitor is. Any action is easily reversible by clicking on the “previous page” on the
browser or just by clicking on the top or bottom menu of the website.
The colours The website template has been created according to our logo colours. After many trials
we have chosen to use a variety of blue. This colour is associated with many social tools
(Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and was the best to associate with our image of a young
start-up. Even though, the services are not purely social, they aim at a better
understanding of the customers.
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-
Consistency : The logo use a linear gradient with 3 different blue. We used those
same colours throughout the website for our visual identity and to have cohesion
between the logo and the website.
-
Text readability : we chose to have a light background with darker text. This has
been proven to improve the readability of pages and we don’t want our user to
leave simply because the page is not attractive.
-
Images : on the homepage we use a slider to display a catch phrase with some
images related to our services using our logo and an additional element (like a
shopping bag, see image below). This helps having a certain cohesion and
improve the attractiveness of the website without charging to much our visitor
with unnecessary description on the homepage.
Fig 35 KodeeCat Visual
The menu The menus are displayed at the top and the bottom of each page. This way our
user can browse the website without getting lost.
-
Grouping : We decided to group all the pages related to the services and their
explanations or demonstration under the “Concept” page. Each part is
independent to one another but they also complete each other. This enhance the
usability of the website. This way, our visitor is helped in its browsing by
knowing which pages are related together.
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-
Hyperlinks : Our hyperlinks are clearly understandable with title as “Pricing”,
“contact” or “concept”. With a mouse over the link, the visitor can see a short
description in order to enhance the guessability and help our user feel
comfortable.
-
Logical chunking of information : the menu has been designed in order to
improve the usability and help our visitor in its navigation. He should feel
comfortable using the website. Errors are allowed, if the visitor clicks another
page as the one he wanted, he can easily go back or use the menu again.
The fonts The logo has been built using the Museo font but then modified with Illustrator to
create a more graphical logo.
-
Consistency, simplicity and emphasis : In order to keep the cohesion of our visual
identity, we used Museo for the font created in the images of the website (as in
the slider) but to avoid compatibility issues due to the fact that Museo is not found
on all computer, we decided to use Helvetica as the standard font. In the case
where the user would not have the Helvetica font installed on its machine, the
following fonts would be used instead: Arial, Tahoma and sans-serif. These are
the most commonly used font and are easily readable. We used only one font (in
addition to the logo) for the whole website in order to keep the website straight,
focus, and simple. We preferred to used colours and size bold to put an emphasis
to important part of the website, like the menu, instead of having a different font.
The contents Our content is serving the purpose of our corporate website. We have to explain
our concept and illustrate our service so that the user can have the full idea of our offer.
-
Professionalism : We kept the website free of grammatical or formatting errors.
-
Written for the web : We avoided long section of text and implemented the best
practices for writing content for the web.
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-
Optimisation : Loading time is an important factor that we decided to reduce by
making the choice of having our images all resized and in the PNG format to have
the best compression and quality possible.
-
Commercially driven : No widgets or non-informational images were used to
avoid the distraction of our visitors.
-
No visual or sensitive distraction : No video are required since this is the first
contact our potential customers may have with us, this site should be
straightforward and informational. We did not want to overload the user with
superficial data, images or animations that would not provide critical information
to our user.
-
Focused : As all the previous section explained, our website its focused on the
description of our service and does not try to do anything else. All possible
distraction from this goal has been studied and the final implementation takes into
account the fact that this is only a descriptive and commercial website. Additional
information may be found on the Facebook page.
-
Compatibility : To avoid compatibility issue, to reduce loading time and to offer a
smooth browsing to our visitor, we avoided the use of Flash technology and
decided to only use HTML5 and CSS3 as our main technology.
Issues The contact form should redirect to a thank you page while now it just show a
blank page with a thank you message. This has been discovered while testing the website
and should be corrected shortly. Our team having no prior knowledge of PHP, this will be
corrected in a week’s time. Thus said, the contact form is still fully functional.
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User Website Specification Summary The final website will be like a portal where users can sign in to see all the special
offers available. The users will login with their Facebook account so that we can extract
their data easily and have more detailed metrics about them (location, age, gender…) but
they will also be able to register with their email address in case they do not want to use
Facebook. In that case, they will be asked to complete a short profile page to know more
about them. They will access the list of shops, and vouchers they each provide. They
should be able to save shops or vouchers in their favorites. This website will also be the
basis of our mobile app which will be created in HTML 5.
In order to offer this service we need a website who supports PHP, Facebook
identification, registration, and where metrics can be extracted. We will detail the
technical choices for each requirement.
General Architecture For the user to have their profile pages and to generate dynamic webpage, PHP
will be used with a MySQL database. For the best results and an easy development, the
website will be created under a Content Management System (CMS). There are many
option available on the market. In order to optimize our cost structure, we shall use an
open source CMS that supports MySQL, that is easy to configure and implement, and
that offers a great online support with possibilities of Facebook integration in addition to
access to numerous extensions. Our final choice was oriented towards Joomla.
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Joomla According to their website “Joomla is one of the world’s most popular open
source CMS (content management systems). With millions of websites running on
Joomla, the software is used by individuals, small & medium-sized businesses, and large
organizations worldwide to easily create & build a variety of websites & web-enabled
applications.” (www.joomla.org). Indeed, Joomla is used by eBay, Barnes & Nobles,
Ikea or even the U.K Ministry of defence. We believed that Joomla, despite being free,
was the best CMS on the market for our project.
For the latest version of Joomla to be implemented, we need to use the following
configuration on our server:
-
PHP 5.3
-
MySQL 5.0.4
This was a constraint for the choice of our hosting provider. Since PHP 5.3 was not used
by default by our hosting provider, we had to create a .htaccess file. This file had to be
uploaded at the root of our website, and has to contain the following text: SetEnv
PHP_VER 5_3 to indicate to the server that PHP 5.3 must be used and to allow the
compatibility with Joomla.
Facebook The integration of Facebook within our service is important as it will allow us to
provide more detailed metrics about the users. Using a simple analytics tool we can only
visualize anonymous data like OS, Browser type, Country… With the Facebook
integration, our service will be able to identify much more detailed information about the
user like their age, gender, sex, and also what they usually like. This is at the core of our
product and will provide valuable information to companies who wants to know more
about their customers to targets their products, services, and advertising in a more
effective way.
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Access to User Information Once the user is logged through its Facebook account on our website, we can
extract his profile data to create his public profile on KodeeCat and also export the data
into a file for analytics purpose.
Authentication is required to access such information. His permission will then be asked
to have access to special information that are not made public by default by the user (age,
gender, pages liked…). Facebook uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication and once the user is
authenticated we will receive the Facebook Access Token which allow data that is not
public to be available.
To authenticate people on our website, we have two options, we can use a client-side
flow using JavaScript or a server-side flow. Since we are not limited, we will use a
server-side flow. Our website configuration allows this type of interaction. Below are the
steps required to perform such authentication (developers.facebook.com).
1. Redirect the User to the OAuth Dialog
For this part, the code below should be used
https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?
client_id=YOUR_APP_ID
&redirect_uri=YOUR_REDIRECT_URI
&scope=COMMA_SEPARATED_LIST_OF_PERMISSION_NAMES
&state=SOME_ARBITRARY_BUT_UNIQUE_STRING
Fig 36 OAuth Code (source: developers.facebook.com)
The list of parameters available is summarized table below
Parameter
Required? Description
client_id
Yes
Your App ID. This is called client_id instead
of app_id for this particular method in order to be
compliant with the OAuth 2.0 specification.
redirect_ur
i
Yes
The URL to redirect to after the user clicks a button
in the dialog. The URL you specify must be a URL
of with the same Base Domain as specified in
75
Parameter
Required? Description
your app's settings, a Canvas URL of the
form https://apps.facebook.com/YOUR_APP_NAM
ESPACE or
a
Page
Tab
URL
of
the
formhttps://www.facebook.com/PAGE_USERNAME
/app_YOUR_APP_ID
scope
No
A comma separated list of permission names which
you would like the user to grant your application.
Only the permissions which the user has not already
granted your application will be shown
state
No
A unique string used to maintain application state
between the request and callback. When Facebook
redirects the user back to your redirect_uri, this
parameter's value will be included in the response.
You should use this to protect against Cross-Site
Request Forgery.
response_ty
pe
No
The requested response type, one of code or token.
Defaults to code. If left unset, or set to code the
Dialog's response will include an OAuth code which
can be exchanged for an access token as per
the server-side authentication flow. If set to token,
the Dialog's response will include an oauth user
access token in the fragment of the URL the user is
redirected to - as per the client-side authentication
flow.
display
No
The display mode with which to render the Dialog.
One
of page, popup or touch.
Defaults
to page when the user is using a desktop browser or
the
dialog
is
invoked
on
the www.facebook.com domain.
Defaults
to touch when the user is using a mobile browser or
the
dialog
is
invoked
on
the m.facebook.com domain. In page mode, the
OAuth dialog is displayed in the full Facebook
chrome. In 'popup' mode, the OAuth dialog is
displayed in a form suitable for embedding in a
popup window. This parameter is automatically
specified by most Facebook SDK, so may not need
76
Parameter
Required? Description
to be set explicitly.
Fig 37 List of OAuth Parameters (source: developers.facebook.com)
2. The user is prompted to authorize the application
This part is straightforward and the user just need to accept the authentication on the popup that will appear asking him to login on their Facebook account.
3. The user is redirected back to our app
The pop-up is closed and redirected to the URI specified in the “redirect_uri” (step 1). A
code is generated by Facebook to allow the following step to be possible. This code will
appear in the redirection URI as followed:
YOUR_REDIRECT_URI?
state=YOUR_STATE_VALUE
&code=CODE_GENERATED_BY_FACEBOOK
Fig 38 Redirect URI with code (source: developers.facebook.com)
4. Exchange the code for the user access token
Once the code appear we can use it to retrieve the token which will authorise KodeeCat
to visualise the Facebook profile of our authentified user, using the following code
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
client_id=YOUR_APP_ID
&redirect_uri=YOUR_REDIRECT_URI
&code=CODE_GENERATED_BY_FACEBOOK
&client_secret=YOUR_APP_SECRET
Fig 39 Access Token Retrieval Code (source: developers.facebook.com)
5. Make request to the Graph API
Now we have all we need to access the Graph API of Facebook and to extract metrics
from our users. The Graph API will have its own section detailed in the next section.
77
To allow the user signing-up and login through their Facebook account, we could develop
our own plug-in using the development described below or use one of the many
extensions already existing in the Joomla Extension Directory. This is one of the
advantage of using Joomla, as this is an active community of developers, many tools are
already available and free to use.
We reviewed many of the Facebook login extensions available and selected only the free
ones, again to lower our cost and launch the start-up as fast as possible.
The extension that gathered our attention was “Facebook Graph Connect”. The features
of the extensions are as followed (extensions.joomla.org):
-
Implements new Facebook OAuth 2.0 protocol for authentication and
authorization
-
Auto/Manual Registration with valid email and Facebook name
-
Content Plugin to show Facebook Login Buttons in Articles without Module.
-
Option to show only login button or Full login form
-
Option to hide/show profile picture
-
Statistics page that tells recently registered users.
-
Facebook wall post on registration.
-
New Facebook Div tags supported
-
Disable / Enable "Publish on wall" feature on registration.
-
Supports all new Facebook DIV tags and FBMLs.
The only requirements for this extension is to create a Facebook App. This can be done in
a few minutes using the Facebook developers tool
(https://developers.facebook.com/). No technical knowledge is required. We already
created the Facebook App so that the development of the website only require the
integration of the following App ID into the system.
Fig 40 KodeeCat Facebook App ID
78
Graph API To extract the data we will use the Facebook Graph API. Once we have the access
token we can see data that the user has not made public. In our requirements we will ask
the access to see its friends, basic information, likes. We do not need to see its status, at
least not at the beginning. All we need is information to understand who the user is, and
what he likes.
Being able to see his friend will allow us to see if he recommended our application to his
friend and if they also have been scanning code and went to the same shops. With this,
we will be able to assess the attractiveness of our service.
The graph API allows us to find all the information required just by accessing an URL
built this way: https://graph.facebook.com/ID/CONNECTION_TYPE?access_token=
The connection types that we needs are :
•
Friends
•
Likes
To retrieve the basic information all we need is to access the following URL:
https://graph.facebook.com/ID?access_token=
The developer will have to automatize the process of information retrieval. Each time a
user will authenticate on our website, his information will be extracted directly into an
XML file that will be used to feed his profile. He will of course be able to edit the
information he wants to publish or not.
This XML file will also be saved and be used in the metrics part of this projects. Our
customers will be able to see general metrics of their visitor but then also see the
information of each visitor.
Further development can be made possible, if we decided to access to more information
about the user for specific purpose, a simple edition of the code will allow this retrieval
easily.
79
Analytics Now that we have all the tools required to manage user accounts and retrieve
information from Facebook, we need to cover the metrics part.
Google Analytics Issue To recover the analytics that we would need and help our customer define their
marketing strategies, we could use Google analytics. The problem with this tool is that it
provides only anonymous information like the browser or the OS of our visitors. We
could program an advanced segment in Analytics to track each user according to their ID,
but this goes against the Google Analytics terms of services:
« 7. PRIVACY . You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to track or
collect personally identifiable information of Internet users, nor will You (or will You allow any
third party to) associate any data gathered from Your website(s) (or such third parties'
website(s)) with any personally identifying information from any source as part of Your use (or
such third parties' use) of the Service. You will have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy
and will comply with all applicable laws relating to the collection of information from visitors to
Your websites. You must post a privacy policy and that policy must provide notice of your use of a
cookie that collects anonymous traffic data. »
Analytics Services Comparison We need another solution for tracking personally identifiable information. After
researching about the tools available we found two option which both overcome the
limitation of Google Analytics. The two options with their characteristics are described in
the table below.
80
Piwik
Clicky
Licence
Open Source
Commercial
Price
Free
Both free and paid plans
Hosting
Server based
Cloud based
API
Yes
Yes
Custom Tracking
Yes
Yes
Real time
Yes
Yes
Support
Forums (100 000 users)
Email, small forum
Fig 41 Analytics Services Comparison
We analysed both services. Clicky seem to have an active email support. We wrote them
about their services to make sure that they would provide what we need for KodeeCat, we
received a detailed answer in less than 15 minutes.
Piwik on the other side, is made of thousands of dedicated user who develop, improve the
open source software, and help the users on forums. We also found an answer to our
question in a short time by researching on the forums.
The major difference between the two services are regarding their licence, to make a full
use of Clicky we would have to pay 160$ per year where Piwik is completely free.
Since Clicky is cloud based we believe that the 160$ are worth the price. Using Clicky
will allow us to have a quick start and host the data on their own server with no hassle for
configuration. Using our own server for Piwik would require installation, development
and maintenance and we estimate the price of doing it by ourselves or by hiring a
developer at 500€ for installation and an additional 50€ per year for maintenance and
support.
Custom Variable By default, the tracking is done using the IP address of the visitor. We want to
track them according to their Facebook Account so that we can link the visitor with its
characteristics. To do that, Clicky offer what they call a custom variable. The code needs
81
to be inserted within the tracking code, for each pages that we want to track. This is
simply the following code: utm_custom[key]=value
Since we want to track the username, our key will be Username. The value will retrieve
the username of visitor dynamically by calling the username in PHP. This way, the
analytics data will be directly assign to the users.
Similarly, we will track each of our customer using a custom variable. This will help us
identified easily each campaign and we will be able to visualize the data from each of our
customer individually. This will also help us for the next step which consist in exporting
the statistics in XML or PHP, see section below.
Clicky API One important thing for our service is to be able to extract the analytics from
Clicky and import them into a specific page for our customer to visualise their data. This
is something made possible by the Clicky API.
A simple HTTP GET request needs to be made to extract the data wanted. This needs to
be configured with the information we need. For each request we need to specify the
following parameters:
•
Site_id : Our site identification.
•
Sitekey : A key we received while registering with Clicky.
•
Type : The pages views, visitors and all metrics available from Clicky. We will
extract all the data available so that our customer can access to all the information
we have about their visitors.
•
Output: Depending on the developer who create the tool, we can extract in xml or
php. Both option offers the same details but the php format may allow us to build
more quickly our own metrics viewing service for our users.
There are many optional parameters we could use and they are all listed on the Clicky
website (http://getclicky.com/help/api). This will have to be defined in the development
process of the metrics web app. See following section.
82
Metrics Web App Our main service is to offer metrics on marketing campaign for our customers. In
the long term, each subscribers of our services will have access to a private page where
they can see their data and analyse them. This service will appear on our corporate
website as a page where customer will be able to login and then be redirected to the web
app to see their metrics. The data would be extracted from the Clicky service as described
above and inserted into a dynamic page where user can receive the same services as
Clicky offers.
As this stage of the project, we do not have the technical competencies to build such a
website and we would need a developer to create it. We believe that, as a start-up, instead
of providing this service directly to our customers, we can use another, cheaper solution.
While we try to launch the company and gain customer, the easy solution would be to use
the API as described above with an automated process, daily, weekly or after each
campaign according to the wishes of each customers, and send them their report in CSV,
XML, or PDF so that they can have an easy access to the data. This would provide the
same services than the web app. Once we sign contracts and develop our services, we can
hire a developer to create the service.
Conclusion Above are described all the technical requirements for our website to provide the
services we need. A CMS will be used to offer Facebook login and authentication and to
retrieve user information from the visitor and an analytics service will analyse the visitor
flow. The next part of the report will highlight the interface and prototype of the app
which is created with the website. With these technical requirements, and the
prototyping, a company can develop the website for us with no further explanations.
83
Mobile App Specifications Interface The app should serve the single purpose of presenting easily the special offers
scanned or found with our geo-localisation service. This is a no-frills app. Our prototype
contains 5 screens, more may be added after a complete technical review with the team
who will develop the app.
Below is described the interface of the mobile application. The prototype has been made
on an iPhone but same development can be made under any mobile OS.
1. Scanning Screen.
This screen will trigger the camera of the device once the
user click on “Scan the Cat” or on the QR Code displayed.
When clicked, the camera tool will be used and once the QR
is detected the voucher screen corresponding to the code
scanned will appear.
Fig 43 KodeeCat Scanning Screen
2. Voucher Screen
Once the user scanned the code the voucher
screen is displayed. This is a simple listing of the
products and their offers. A detail of the offer can
be written in small to detail. For example under
free we could write “free headphone when MP3 is
bought”. This will depend on the wishes of our
customers. The “+” button allows the user to add
the voucher in its favorites.
Fig 42 KodeeCat Vouchers Screen
84
3. Favorites Screen
This screen is displayed when the user clicked on the item
to add it to its favorites. There is an easy access to the
screen for each parts of the
app
in the bottom tabs. When the
user
access this screen later, the
screen on the right will be
displayed.
Fig 44 KodeeCat Favorites (2)
Fig 45 KodeeCat Favorites Screen
4. Geo Localisation Screen
This screen allows the user to see the shops
around him once you select one by clicking one of
the
white tag, the name of the
shop is displayed and by
clicking on the name you are
directed
to
the
voucher
screen (2).
Fig 46 KodeeCat Geo Localisation (2)
Fig 47 KodeeCat Geo Localisation Screen
85
5. Configuration screen
The configuration screen is straightforward and allows
the user to specify his choice regarding geo localisation
and to login with its Facebook account. The login
should be done only once, at the first configuration of
the app. If the user is already logged in, them this screen
will offer him the option to log out. The “I’m done”
button will bring the user back to the screen he was
before.
Fig 48 KodeeCat Configuration Screen
General
All screens of the app have an easy access to the following screens:
•
Favorites
•
Around me
•
Scan the Cat
•
Configuration
The first three screen are accessible by the bottom tab while the configuration screen can
be accessed by the information button in the header.
Technology and development The app will be developed in HTML 5 as a website and hosted on our domain.
This will allow us to use all the tools described in the technical specifications of this
report and to develop easily and rapidly the apps for all devices on the market based on
the website. The design of the app should be improved from the prototype.
86
Chapter 6. Finance Sales Forecast The sales in our projects are combination of different packages that can meet
client’s needs and generate a revenue of 132,395€. Based on our market analysis we
assume that the clients will prefer the professional package to maximize their gain.
Description
1st Year
2nd Year
Sales Plan
3rd Year
4th Year
5th Year
Basic Package
240
288
288
288
288
Standard
220
264
264
264
264
Standard-Rent Screen
110
168
168
168
168
Professional
825
972
1,020
1,020
972
8
10
10
12
12
Manage Marketing Campaign
Sales Prices (€)
Basic Package
20
20
20
20
20
Standard
55
65
65
65
65
Standard-Rent Screen
95
100
100
100
100
Professional
125
120
120
120
120
Manage Marketing Campaign
240
250
300
300
300
Revenue (€)
Basic Package
4,800
5,760
5,760
5,760
5,760
Standard
12,100
17,160
17,160
17,160
17,160
Standard-Rent Screen
10,450
16,800
16,800
16,800
16,800
Professional
103,125
116,640
122,400
122,400
116,640
1,920
2,500
3,000
3,600
3,600
132,395
158,860
165,120
165,720
159,960
Manage Marketing Campaign
Total Yearly Revenue
Fig 49 Sales Forecast
87
Costs Office Rent KodeCat intend to use furnished office that offers services and give desired
prestige that suites the advertising company. For KodeeCat, the rent will be 500€/Month
for an office in Baggot Street Lower, Dublin 2.
Other costs During operating the company several cost will be incurred such as :
Telecommunication Expenses Telephone and communication expenses are calculated as 25€/Month .
Stationary The company estimates the stationary costs includes ink and paper 732€ annually .
Public Benefit Expenses The electricity and Gas cost estimated as 150€/Month .
Human Resource Cost Human resource cost is mainly the monthly payroll salary. KodeeCat organizational
structure is :
General
Manager
Sales
Specialist
Accountant
Technical
Manager
Fig 50 KodeeCat Organisational Structure
KodeeCat above organizational chart will cost 60,360€ per year as salary payments. The
accountant was planned to be hired as part time. The involvement of the accountant will
be 8 hours per month .
88
KodeeCat Staff
Classification
Monthly
Total
Yearly
Yearly
Salary
Montly
Salary
Salary
(Euro)
Cost
(Euro) (EUR)
1
1,150
1,150
13,800 13,800
1
1,800
1,800
21,600 21,600
1
280
280
1
1,800
1,800
Employee
Job Title
#
General
Manager
Sales Specialist
Administration &
Operation Staff
-full time
Accountantpart time
3,360
3,360
Technical
Manager
Salaries
21,600 21,600
60,360
Fig 51 KodeeCat Staffing
Marketing The company will need to focus on Marketing in order to spread the services among the
targeted users. KodeeCat will utilize two ways of Marketing:
•
E-Marketing (Through Google/ Linked In and other internet tools)
•
Publication (By printing Vouchers / Brochures and Fliers)
Marketing allocated budget will be 14000€ annually.
Professional Fees Annual professional fees relate to company formation, legal, accounting & audit, and
payroll.
Fixed Assets KodeeCat operation is heavily depend on LCD screens which is 69.7% from the total
Fixed assets cost. KodeeCat plan is to buy 21 screens (20 screen in operations and one
screen as back up Or will be used for Marketing Campaign).
89
KodeeCat will invest a total of EUR 10,061 in fixed assets such as: Computers, Printer,
Projector, Desk chairs, security Cams , File Cabinet, etc.
Invested Working Capital Fixed Assets
Description
Buildings and facilities
Office Furniture
Total
Amount
600
9,461
10,061
Description
Pre-operating expenses
Operation Expenses
Utilities Expenses
Human Resources Costs:
Marketing Cost:
Other Admin. Expenses:
Total
Amount
500
14,844
600
20,120
4,667
3,633
44,362
Description
Fixed Assets
Working Capital
Invested Working Capital
Amount
10,061
44,364
54,425
Working Capital
Invested Working Capital
Fig 52 Invested Working Capital
90
Income Statement Details
1st Year
2nd Year
3rd Year
4th Year
5th Year
Revenues
132,395
158,860
165,120
165,720
159,960
Cost
41,532
43,609
45,789
48,078
50,482
Gross profit
90,863
115,251
119,331
117,642
109,960
79,422
78,922
82,758
82,758
86,785
Marketing expenses
14,000
14,000
14,000
14,000
14,000
Operating profit
(2,559)
22,329
22,573
20,884
8,692
0
0
0
0
0
(2,559)
22,329
22,573
20,884
8,692
0
0
0
0
0
(2,559)
22,329
22,573
20,884
8,692
(2,559)
19,770
42,343
63,227
71,919
General
and
administrative
expenses
Loan interest
Net Profit
Distributed Profit
Profit after profit distribution
End of the year remaining
Profit
Fig 53 Income Statement
91
Balance Sheet 1st Year
2nd Year
3rd Year
4th Year
5th Year
Cost of Fixed Assets
10,061
10,061
10,061
10,061
10,061
Accumulated Depreciation
2,009
3,518
5,027
6,537
8,046
Net Book Value
8,052
6,543
5,034
3,524
2,015
Cash at Bank
43,814
67,652
91,735
114,128
124,329
Total of Current Assets
43,814
67,652
91,735
114,128
124,329
Total Assets
51,866
74,195
96,768
117,652
126,344
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Paid Up Capital
54,425
54,425
54,425
54,425
54,425
End of the year Profit
(2,559)
19,770
42,343
63,227
71,919
Total Owners Equity
51,866
74,195
96,768
117,652
126,344
Equity
51,866
74,195
67,710
117,652
126,344
Working Capital
44,364
44,364
44,364
44,364
44,364
Assets
Fixed Assets
Current Assets
Liabilities
Current Liabilities
Long-Term Liabilities
Total Liabilities
Owner’s Equity
Total Liabilities + Owner’s
Fig 54 Balance Sheet
92
Expected Cash Flow Statement Details
Pre-
1st
Operating
Year
2nd Year 3rd Year
4th Year 5th Year
Inflow
Paid in Capital
53,427
Loans
0
Net Profits after Interest
2,559
22,329
22,573
20,884
8,692
Depreciation
2,009
1,509
1,509
1,509
1,509
550
23,838
24,082
22,393
10,202
Distributed Profit
0
0
0
0
0
Loan Installments
0
0
0
0
0
Interest
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
550
23,288
47,371
69,764
Total Inflows
53,427
Outflow
Fixed Capital
10,061
Total Outflows
10,061
Cumulative inflow( Outflow)
79,965
Fig 55 Expected Cash Flow
93
Annual Operating Expenses 1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
Year
Year
Year
Year
Year
Salaries
60,360
60,360
63,378
63,378
66,547
Public Benefits
1,800
1,800
1,890
1,890
1,985
Other Admin. Expenses
10,900
10,900
11,445
11,445
12,017
Marketing Expenses
14,000
14,000
14,000
14,000
14,000
Reserve
4,353
4,353
4,536
4,536
4,727
Fixed Expense before Depreciation
91,413
91,413
95,249
95,249
99,276
Depreciation
2,009
1,509
1,509
1,509
1,509
Total
93,422
92,922
96,758
96,758
100,785
Details
Fig 56 Operating Expenses
Accumulated Depreciation 1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
Details
Year
Year
Year
Year
Year
Yearly Depreciation
2,009
1,509
1,509
1,509
1,509
Accumulated Annual Depreciation
1,509
3,018
4,527
6,037
7,546
Fig 57 Accumulated Depreciation
Financial Summary According to our figures:
- KodeeCat will be profitable starting from the second year with a strong growth.
- The second, third & forth years can show a good growth and profit with a normal profit
in the fifth year.
94
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Support [Online]. Available from:
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from: http://gigaom.com/apple/ios-users-buy-more-apps-and-pay-more-forthem/ [Accessed 12 July 2012]
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Management, Vol. 54 Iss: 7, pp. 502 – 516.
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A Unique Way to Bridge Offline and Online Media [Online].Available from:
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[Online]. Available from:
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65m-in-the-first-half-of-2011-2932562.html?service=Print [Accessed 12 July
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97
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98
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marketing: Insights from marketers. Journal of Database Marketing &
Customer Strategy Management, 16(3), pp.197-2
99
Appendices Appendix A. Adshel Prices Rates shown apply to all bookings of 20 panels and more. Campaigns with
selected="true" quantities of up to 20 panels will incur a cost €450 per panel per cycle
(Adshel 2012).
2012 rates are based on a minimum booking of 20 panels per cycle.
Republic of Ireland
14-Day Cycle
Rate per panel (Euro)
Cycle
1 - 17
18 - 26
€
€375
€410
2012 rates are based on a minimum booking of 20 panels per cycle.
Rates & Rates 2012
Week No. & Cycles 2012
1
26 Dec - 08 Jan
14 25 Jun - 08 Jul
2
09 Jan - 22 Jan
15 09 Jul - 22 Jul
3
23 Jan - 05 Feb
16 23 Jul - 05 Aug
4
06 Feb - 19 Feb
17 06 Aug - 19 Aug
5
20 Feb - 04 Mar
18 20 Aug - 02 Sept
6
05 Mar - 18 Mar
19 03 Sept - 16 Sept
7
19 r - 01 Ap
20 17 Sept - 30 Sep
8
02 Apr - 15 Apr
21 01 Oct - 14 Oct
9
16 Apr - 29 Apr
22 15 Oct - 28 Oct
10 30 Apr - 13 May
23 29 Oct - 11 Nov
11 14 May - 27 May
24 12 Nov - 25 Nov
12 28 May - 10 Jun
25 26 Nov - 09 Dec
13 11 Jun - 24 Jun
26 10 Dec - 23 Dec
100
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Appendix C. Retail Store Survey Questions This survey explores how retail shops and supermarkets promote their store. It looks at
existing and new methods to promote "in-store" sales. Participation in the survey is
voluntary. You are not required to reveal your identity. All data provided will be kept
confidential and will not be shared with any third-party organisation. We are running
competition for all those who particate in this survey- with a prize of €100 voucher for
your Google Adwords campaign. Please leave your email at the end of the survey winner announce on Aug 20th. Thank you for your participation.
1. What is the name & location of your shop?
2. Does your shop sell food or drinks? If so, it is a:
o
Convenience store
o
Health food store
o
Off Licence
o
Small to medium sized supermarket
o
Medium to large sized supermarket
3. If your shop does not sell food or drink, is your shop selling:
o
Clothing or shoes
o
Electrical Goods
o
Health & Beauty
o
Hardware
o
Music
o
Toys & Crafts
o
Other:
4. On average, how many people would come in to your shop every day?
o up to 250
o 250 - 1000
o 1000 - 2,500
110
o 2,500 +
5. How do you promote "in store sales?"
o Have leaflets in store
o Have posters in Store
o Use posters outside your store
o Other:
6. What type of paid adverting do you use, if any?
o Print -Newspaper ads
o Print - Leaflets to be delivered to people's homes
o Radio - ad campaign
o TV - ad campaign
o Online campaign
o None
o Other:
7. Approximately how much would you spend on adverting annually?
o under €1,000
o €1,000 - €3,000
o €3,000 - €7,000
o €7,000 +
Flat Screens Displays
With a new flat screen display in your shop you can sell your products in a new and
interactive way. Customers can scan a code with their smartphone and see the range of
special offers, through their phone's internet. This can allow the shop to get metrics
(information) on the type of customer who visit the store (age range, gender, interests and
time of visit). The data can be useful for generating further sales.
8. Have you seen flat screen displays before in shops (or shopping centres)?
111
o Yes
o No
9. With a strategically positioned flat screen display, many customers would see this
new form of advertising. It this something you would be interested in?
o Yes, in my own store to promote specific products
o Yes, in a shopping centre to promote my store
o Yes to both
o Not interested
10. With our technology, customers could scan a code to see special offers on their
phone. This can allow the shop to get information on the type of customers who
are interested in your store. Would you be interested in this data?
o Yes
o No
o I don't know
11. How much would you be willing to pay for the following service?
o Basic Package €20 per month. Scanning code on poster (no screen) & 10 sale
items (vouchers).
o Standard Package €65 per month. Scanning code on 1 LCD screen, 100 sale items
(vouchers), with customer support (email).
o Professional Package €120 per month. Scanning code on multiple screen, with
unlimited scanning codes & unlimited sale items (vouchers). Full and
personalised customer support
o In store screen: For an additional €30 per month, you can hire a screen for your
own shop.
12. If you have a company website, what is it used for?
o Displaying company basic company information (address, map)
112
o Showing a list of products and services for sale.
o Allows users to purchase products and services.
o Allows users to log in and user their account.
o Do not a company website.
o Other:
13. Does you company use any of the following 'Social Media' to interact with
customers.
o Twitter
o Facebook
o LinkedIn
o Customer email list
o Other:
14. With our system, we could provide you with metrics about your customers (their
age group, gender, interests and perhaps time they arrived at your shop). Would
you be interested in receiving this information as part of the service?
o Yes
o No
113
Appendix D. Meeting with Advisors Meeting with Dr. P.J Byrne, July 13th. Business Advisor
We met our business advisor after our plan was ready and complete and that we had done
some research. Unfortunately, this may have been seen as too late since we were then
only able to see P.J. only once before the summer holidays.
Nevertheless, his advice was taken into consideration and helpful in reconsidering the
business side of KodeeCat. Our first idea was to put QR code on bus stop advertisement
around Dublin to collate data about the users and then offer additionnal content about the
product to our user. P.J. made us realise that this idea was not of high commercial value.
He highlighted the issue into collecting data from only bus stops and suggested that we
have code all over the town.
He also suggested that our users should not have to spend time to see additional content,
but should scan the code, as much as possible, until we can get information about their
behavior. If we took some of his advices and implemented them (leaving the idea of the
bus stop and searching for a better idea), we did not share the idea of having QR code,
with no content to offer and no incentive to scan. Our KodeeCat proposition was then
born trying to consider his advices and remarks but also keeping in mind the other
meetings we may have had previously with Cathal Gurrin and Brian Stone.
114
Meeting with Prof. Joe Morris, July 6th. Technical Supervisor
It took some time for us to prepare for the meeting as our Practicum model was still
evolving. When we met Prof. Morris we explained our idea of putting the QR Codes on
bus stop posters. There were two reasons that he did not fully like our business
idea. That is to say that he did not think our project would be a success.
Firstly he said that the people who use buses included many students and also retired
people (which is correct). He said that these locations for positioning offers with our
codes would not attract business people with iPhones (for example). However we
explained that students and people who use busses were they type of people we were
looking to attract.
The second point Prof. Morris made was that we would have sell our idea to Adshel (who
run outdoor advertising on bus stops). He said that if they said no to us, we would have a
lack of potential customers. This was a good point, so we had to change the direction of
our project and target shops individually. We were very busy in July with these changes
and Dr Morris was also on holidays for part of this period. So we only met him just the
once.
He also said that he had no technical expertise in what we were looking for and that he
could not provide help on this side, so he focused on the business side.
115