02.COM: The Case of the Online Business—Part II

Continued from 02.com Part I

Popularity

At there next lunch meeting, the three met and discussed their ideas on how to choose an online business.  They had decided that the popularity of the product is important and should be weighted highly in the search criteria.  They also decided that a popular product would be more desirable if the competition was less for that product than for another product of similar popularity.  Joe liked what the three had come up with, but he knew they need more specifics.  What is popularity?  Is that the right word?  How should they measure it?  How much weight should popularity be given?

Trevor echo the concerns and posed this hypothetical question: If one product is more popular and another has less competition which one should we choose?  The other two had comments but no definitive answer to the question.  Joe came back to the question of how much more popular is product A and how do we measure the popularity.  Trevor said this made his head hurt.  Amy started to agree, but then she had an idea.  She pulled out here laptop and was please to find out that the restaurant had wireless Internet.  She pulled up Google said lets search for some products and see if we can determine which is more popular by using Google somehow.  There must be away--Google seems to be the place to go when you have a question.

She typed in the "chess" to see if selling chess sets would be a good idea.  There were 67.6 million listings.  WOW she thought.  Then she thought is that good?  She typed in "snowboards" and there were over 7 million listings.  Is chess better than snowboards?  The three agreed that they didn't have a clue.  Trevor suggested that they count the number of sponsored links because those people were probably selling something.  The sponsored links idea seem to be on the right track, but it was hard to tell how many sponsored links each had. 

The three agreed that they needed more clarity on the issue of popularity before they could proceed.  They assigned each other to do some research and  to come to the next meeting with their ideas (you should do the same and come to class with ideas).

Competition

Item two on the agenda was competition.  Amy started, by saying that it would be wonderful to find a product that wasn't sold in Walmart or even on Amazon.  How could they compete?  Joe said it would be great to find a product in an industry where the competition wasn't quite a tough as the Walmarts and the Amazons, but once again how do you measure competitive levels.  Trevor posed this question: Is Walmart a stiff competitor when it comes to fine crystal goblets?  Obviously not.  How do you measure competitiveness and how much weight should it be given.  Joe added even more by saying what are the components of competitiveness.  The agreed that needed to bring ideas back on how to measure competitive levels for products so they could make comparisons.

Others

They were about out of time again, but Joe had one more thought for the group--"What other factors are we missing?"  For example: What if it is popular and the competition isn't very stiff, but there isn't much money in it?   Or what if it is popular, the competition is minimal, but it seems to be becoming less and less popular?