Category Archives: Student Ideas

Business Case, Opinion, Student Ideas

A potential for consumer value creation: Citymapper

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Introduction
Founded in 2012 by Azmat Yusuf (Tanasoiu 2018), Citymapper is a UK-based company which aims to transform the transportation industry. Through its application, Citymapper helps its user navigate a given city’s transportation grid and provides users with the ability to search for the desired destination, after which the app displays a number of travel itinerary alternatives. Since its inception in 2012, Citymapper has grown internationally and currently operates in 39 cities around the globe (Citymapper 2018). The company creates value for its user by providing them with a travel companion that generates personalised travel options.

But can the consumers become of more value for Citymapper by creating value other than Citymapper capturing their value through the search engine?

Current business model
Citymapper’s currently offers value in the form of efficiency and usability to the users of its transit application. The company exploits its current IT infrastructure, collected data and easy to use user interface to deliver digital content to consumers. On the digital business model framework (Weill et. al 2013) Citymapper’s business design and knowledge of the end customer most closely correlate with the supplier business model.

One way information stream

Citymapper currently gathers partial knowledge of the end users such as search and location (start and end point) data (Citymapper 2018). Other data such as name, address, demographics or search history are not being collected. Therefore, the main information stream flows through the Citymapper application to the user.

Potential consumer value creation
Citymapper can capture a great deal of value by giving its users the ability to co-create value for the application. This can be done by allowing users to give inputs, that are in turn shared with the rest of the Citymapper users. In the current situation, Citymapper supplies users with information about public transport and allows users to plan their public transport trips. The urban transport information shared by Citymapper is limited to the information that is supplied by large public transport companies or private companies gathering transport data. Citymapper has the option to turn their business model from a supplier model into a two stream model.

Two stream business model

How can consumers co-create value for Citymapper?
By starting to use one of their greatest assets they have, a large user-base. Citymapper has the possibility to crowdsource the rating system and the supply of information to their customers making it possible to better understand and support their own customers. Not only are they able to deliver more precise and real-time data on transportation and planning, but also they get more insights in the demands and needs of their own customers. A few of many options that can be crowdsourced are listed below.

– The crowdedness of the vehicle
Users could indicate the crowdedness of a particular vehicle signaling that there are no seats available, encouraging users to opt for a different train. Other users could be notified while they are still at home about the crowdedness of the trip, and come prepared, saving them from the surprise of a crowded train, which is one of the greatest pain point related to public transport, according to Fellesson and Friman (2008).

– Unexpected delays during the trip
Users could indicate unexpected events that would delay the trips. This live information can be sent to other users, notifying them that the vehicle will be running late, and suggesting an alternative trip. This is all done much quicker than first having to signal the transit company, which in turn must notify users through the rail stations.

– Supplier reliability & comfortability
Users could rate transportation providers on their service, both looking at reliability and comfortability. By rating cleanliness, politeness of the driver and price/quality consumers get insights in the overal quality of the transportation modes. This would help other users to select their company of choice.

By gaining more knowledge on what the users, both as a whole and individually, like and demand recommendations can be given. For example, someone who never uses the bus does not want to have the bus in their itinerary. By receiving ratings of services, crowdedness and delays better recommendations can be made. Even more interesting, customers create recommendations and insights for other users, creating a C2C environment.

In order to improve the customer experience for Citymapper users, an in-app payment system could be introduced as well as a ticket management feature. These additions to Citymapper’s value proposition effectively introduce two additional steps in a typical user journey: Once a given user has gathered the desired information regarding his public transport itinerary, instead of leaving the Citymapper ecosystem, the user is given the option to directly purchase the tickets corresponding to the selected journey. Furthermore, once the ticket purchase is completed, tickets are stored within the ticket management feature of the new Citymapper app. This enables the user to remain within the company’s ecosystem throughout the physical public transport journey, using the app as a digital ticket. Overall, the addition of in-app ticket purchase coupled with the ability to use the app itself as a digital ticket greatly improves the overall customer experience while increasing the time a given user spends within the Citymapper platform.

Additional options
Multiple other options open up when turning Citymapper into an open platform environment. By adopting one of many other open platforms for ride sharing and including them into the transportation itinerary would really turn on consumer value creation. Imagine the option to join someone in the car, scooter or motorcycle for a part of your trip. Think of what would happen when Citymapper includes Blablacar, Snapcar, Felyx, Lime, Mobike, Car2go and many others in their system. The options to travel from A to B would become endless.

References:

Citymapper (2018) Making Cities Usable. Citymapper.com. Available at: https://citymapper.com/company?lang=en  

Crunchbase, 2018. Available at: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/citymapper-limited#section-investors

Weill, P. and Woerner, S. (2013). Optimizing your digital business model. MIT Sloan Management Review, 54(3), pp.71-78.

Fellesson, M. and Friman, M. (2008). Perceived Satisfaction with Public Transport Service in Nine European Cities. Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, 47(3), pp.93-103

Business Case, Student Ideas

Instacart: Bringing Community, Personalization, and the Sharing Economy to you

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Instacart is a U.S. based personal shopping platform that involves three major consumer groups: full-service shoppers, brick-and-mortar grocers, and end-customers.

 

Process Overview

Instacart holds contracts with several grocers and markets including the likes of Whole Foods, CostCo, PetCo, CVS Pharmacy, and Spec’s liquor store. Instacart offers jobs that involve shopping for groceries, bagging, and delivering goods to the homes of customers. Each shift, these shoppers are expected to safely acquire and transport hot and cold groceries to customers in their delivery zone. End customers peruse through the app or online catalog which features products available at the stores contracted by Instacart. Customers select their desired items and a time frame they are available to receive the goods at their workplace or residence. Using location-based technology, the Instacart application notifies customers when their personal shopper is in the store and sends live updates as items from the shopping list are added to the cart. Instacart shoppers – or Instashoppers –  are trained to accept orders, arrive at the store, collect the requested items, and purchase the groceries using a company card. Prior to checkout, shoppers communicate with customers about any adjustments that may have been made given the available selection at the store. Additionally, customers and shoppers are able to chat with each other during the shopping process to discuss products, availability, adjustments, and any other customer service issue each party may have.

Once bagged, Instashoppers return to their vehicles, load the goods, travel to the customer, and make the drop. Customers are able to rate and add an additional tip for shoppers based on their performance and service. Although customers are allowed to schedule deliveries for later, the process typically takes 75 minutes from the moment a shopper accepts an order to the confirmation of delivery, all recorded in the application.

The Instacart model incorporates three major Customer-centric ideologies: the sharing economy, community, and online personalization and product recommendations.


Community

Instacart encourages community support among shoppers in delivery zones which reap numerous benefits. After he or she passes a background check, an invite is sent to new Instashoppers to visit a local grocery store where a Shopper Supervisor holds orientation seminars. Here, new shoppers gain firsthand exposure to the shopping procedure and undergo a demonstrative experience of the job. Additionally, these recruits meet several other new and experienced Instashoppers from which they will receive tricks of the trade, a branded lanyard, a company credit card, and a branded T-shirt that serves the purpose of unifying shoppers and intriguing regular grocery store shoppers about the Instacart service. Plus, Instashoppers are invited to a third-party mobile-based community on GroupMe where hundreds of shoppers and supervisors are able to have a chat offering advice or asking questions about the shopping experience in their zone. Given that the communication platform is outsourced, the shoppers can express joys or frustrations about customers they come across, grocers, and even the corporate policies like ones that incentivize new shoppers.


Personalization

Instacart uses product recommendations to influence shoppers and customers alike. In the likely event an item is unavailable in the store, shoppers are asked to use common sense in order to fill the likely request of the customer. For example, the customer wants Moo-Moo Farms 2% milk, but the grocer has run out of this item. Once the shopper informs the app and customer of the stocking issue, the app may turn around and suggest adding 2% Milk from Oak Farms to the shopping list, as this is an item the customer has ordered in the past. Furthermore, the app may offer nonsensical items based on algorithms that an intelligent shopper might have to identify like the suggestions of Moo-Moo Farms Chocolate Milk or Creamer. Other cases may include how a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in the store may be replaced by packaged and canned versions of the products. On the customer end, Instacart employs big data analytics to predict items that may be desired based on past purchases, demographics, and information based on location and shopping patterns of neighbors. If one’s shopping behavior mirrors that of other new moms, young singles, or larger families, he or she can expect to see coupons for products people like them typically buy.


Sharing Economy

The biggest benefit this ideology helps Instacart with is the ability to rent human capital and delivery vehicles. Instashoppers use bags, coolers, cars, wagons, temperature-controlled bags, and any other personal product that helps them to shop and deliver groceries. For long distance deliveries of over 15 miles between store and customer, shoppers are offered a five dollar bump for the additional time and gas required for the delivery. This method allows for Instacart to circumvent the issue of car maintenance in their operations as their hired employees use personally owned vehicles to fulfill orders. Given the low-skill requirement, minimal overhead, and manageable physical effort requirements, the barrier to entry is low and new shoppers join every day. Instacart thrives by offering jobs to people young and old who can deliver groceries to their less-abled or more affluent neighbors willing to pay a premium on groceries for the added convenience of delivery and avoidance of long lines and hellish parking lots on busy Sunday afternoons.

 

Articles, Business Case, Mini Cases, Student Ideas

Would you mind filling out this survey?

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Many of us have struggled to find participants to fill out our bachelor’s thesis/dissertation survey. I remember logging in into Facebook and finding 5 to 6 “PM’s” (private messages) A DAY from classmates that have been abusing of the CTRL+C and CTRL+V command:

Hey “name”, how are you doing?
Could you please fill out my thesis survey? It’s about 5 minutes long and it’s completely anonymous. I can fill out yours if you want 😉

Good old days…

As bizarre as it sounds, I did not ask them to fill out my thesis survey back, but this is just because the sample of my thesis was ‘manufacturing companies‘, not students, not regular people.

However, if the respondents of my thesis were regular individuals, then I would consider spamming all the contacts of my Facebook friends list. However, this comes with some cons, first and mostly, annoying your friends… But I have good news for you!

Let me introduce you to the award winning start-up project “Survey Exchange”. Even though there have been identical platforms in the past, such as http://www.survey-x-change.com, these are either shut down or do not have very good Google SEO positioning because these type of pages are usually labeled as spam. As a mater of fact, when you try to log in via Facebook, even our beloved start-up has been denied from using Zuckerberg’s APIs or the developers have messed up somewhere in the Login code.

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Our start-up has been operating since 2016 and has won multiple student entrepreneurship awards in the UK (Linkedin.com, 2018). As of February 16th 2018, Survey Exchange is the first result to show up when googling the search words “survey exchange” and according to its founders it has a potential market share of half million users in the UK alone (Survey Exchange, 2018), which I honestly think is a long shot, because it’s delusional to think that 100% of British students will adopt their platform before it gets shut down or labeled as spam website and get lost in Google rankings.

The dynamics of this business model are very simple yet very effective. This start-up relies on crowd-sourcing the filling of the surveys to the users of the platform in a #like4like fashion.

Like4Like is a popular hashtag on Instagram whereby users indicate their willingness to receive likes on their posts in exchange of liking other users posts back (hasthagdictionary.com, 2015). It has the same dynamics as Follow for Follow in Twitter and Sub for Sub (subscribe) in Youtube.

In this case, users of the platform have to create a free account in surveyexchange.co.uk and as the users fill out the questionnaires they will earn “Q points” based on the length of the surveys. The more surveys a user answers, the more Q points it will earn, which can be used later to request more responses for their own surveys.

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The revenue model of the start-up is quite simple, it generates traffic by facilitating a crowd-sourcing platform for students that need to get their surveys filled in and shows them targeted GoogleAds advertisements in its website. In addition, as it can be be inferred from their privacy agreement, the crowd-sourcing platform is also planning to sell premium services and products that will require personal information (Survey Exchange, 2018). Such products and services are likely to be purchased “Q points” so that the users will get their crowd-sourced responses without having to fill out additional surveys.

The beauty of this business model is in its simplicity. Just setting up a platform where its users generate value by crowd-sourcing their own surveys in exchange of an equal amount of commitment. This is therefore a one-way platform where the value of the network grows in a Metcalfe’s law fashion as the number of the users increases.

Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the users connected to the system (Wikipedia, 2018). This is related to the fact that the number of total possible survey responses ‘n’ (assuming that each user has only 1 bachelor survey) can be calculated by n(n-1), which is asymptotically proportional to n^2.

total amount of responses

If there are 2 users, that means that each user will get 1 response for their survey (you can’t answer your own survey),  totaling 2 responses [2(2-1)=2]. If there are 4 users there will be 12 responses, if there are 8 users there will be 56 responses…

However, there are some limitations with the valuation of this platform. Not all users will be willing to respond to all surveys, and some users may even have more than one survey.

Users are not expected to stay in the platform for any time longer than their thesis/dissertation data collection process and therefore the traffic of the website is not expected to grow in such exponential fashion.

There are also obvious limitations when it comes to the quality of the answers of the survey, both in terms of reliability of the answers and in terms of validity of the sample.

Users that need large amount of responses are likely to give low quality answers without actually reading the questions in order to get as many Q points as possible within the shortest amount of time.

Another concern is that the owner of the survey has 0 control about the type of person that is filling the survey as at this point the platform does not offer the possibility to filter the responses by demographics nor by other type of variable. This could lead to a very heterogeneous convenience sample that may have nothing to do with the actual focal unit of the thesis/dissertation.

Additionally, due to the nature of this platform, users may abuse of the Social Media function, which allows a user to collect Q points via responses from friends, and get the site black-listed from important websites such as Facebook or Reddit because of the amount of unsolicited requests to visit a link.

Despite all those limitations, the crowd-sourced platform seems to be doing fine as the interface of the website has improved overtime and students do not generally care about the quality of their data as long as they can get it quickly and cheap.

At the end of the day, it is better to ask the crowd to fill out your survey in a negligent way rather than faking the responses yourself and risk to get caught of committing fraud.

Let me know in the comment sections what do you think about this business model. Is it sustainable? Do you think they will shut down their website like it happened to survey-x-change.com? Do you think it will get lost in Google’s search rankings due to being labeled as a spam website? Would you use it for your own thesis?

If the answer to the last question is yes, I encourage you to not make a comment 😉

Thank you for reading!

List of References:

Linkedin.com, (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakub-zimola-706b01104 [Accessed 16 Feb. 2018].

Survey exchange. (2018). Survey exchange | Exchange your survey and get the right respondents. [online] Available at: http://www.surveyexchange.co.uk/ [Accessed 16 Feb. 2018].

Hashtagdictionary.com. (2018). #like4like | HashTag Dictionary. [online] Available at: http://hashtagdictionary.com/like4like/ [Accessed 16 Feb. 2018].

Surveyexchange.co.uk. (2018). Privacy Policy. [online] Available at: http://www.surveyexchange.co.uk/pdf/Privacy_policy.pdf [Accessed 16 Feb. 2018].

Articles, Student Ideas

Consumer driven pricing and personalization in the airline industry

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There are several ways for companies to distinguish themselves in the way they price their products and services. They can choose for group pricing, which segments customers in groups that tend to behave similarly towards prices. For example, customers can be grouped based on age (such as student discount), gender or living area. Another option is to use versioning: to offer a product line and let customers decide on the trade-off between quality and price. The last form of differential pricing is perceived as difficult to achieve, namely personalized pricing. This means each individual customer receives a personal price for a specific product or service (Schofield, 2018). You may think that, in an offline world, no customer would accept personalized pricing. Can you imagine buying bread and cheese at a grocery store, and the person in front of you pays less for the exact same groceries? However, in an online world, this method has become a lot more feasible. Actually, there is a large chance you have already experienced personalized pricing online. One of the most obvious examples is eBay: one of the first companies to implement personalized pricing with their worldwide market place platform. However, it is important not to interpret personalized pricing as dynamic pricing. The main difference between these two forms of pricing is the variables that determine the final price. In dynamic pricing, the variables that are taken into account are, for example, time of the day, available supply or competitors’ prices (Baird, 2017). Personalized pricing has a customer focus and is interested in a specific customers’ behavior. Companies use data analytics to identify characteristics of the purchase environment or the customer’s profile and behavior that impact their willingness to pay. Bertini and Kounigsberg (2014) argue that the success of personalized pricing depends on at least the following three factors. First, abundant, high-quality data is needed. Also, the companies need to overcome various organizational challenges that come hand in hand with dedication to advanced analytics. Last, companies should be prepared to deal with customers who claim that the pricing approach is not fair.

Airline industry

One of the largest industries that divides consumer groups and price accordingly, is the airline industry. Different fares are charged for the exact same product, based on a market segment’s perceived ability to pay. For example, business travelers tend to pay more for their ticket as compared to leisure travelers, even when they fly the exact same route (Sumers, 2017). The key success is working to learn what the customer needs. Lufthansa, the largest European airline in teams of fleet size and passengers carried in 2017, is testing various approaches to better understand their customers. For example, they have deployed Bluetooth beacons and sensors, to be able to send out real time messages to their customers. When a targeted customer goes through security and has Bluetooth enabled on their phone, the personalization process is started. Or as Lufthansa calls it, the “Big Data Engine”. This program checks a traveler’s mobile boarding pass and looks at how much time the traveler has left before departure. If it is more than a set amount of time, the system examines the traveler’s profile in order to determine whether the customer would be interested in the “Miles and More” program, a discount for access to the airport lounge. This information is combined with the data from the sensors in the lounge, that register whether and how much space is left in the lounge, in real time. This lounge promotion program is part of SMILE., a companywide program that is dedicated to personalizing travel (Lufthansa, 2018). Companies can also use traveler data to offer two or more products or services as a package, increasing profits as it allows companies to appropriate a larger share of customer surplus, known as bundling (Hinterhuber and Liozu, 2014).

Future chances

Although airlines have quite an advanced personalized pricing and recommendation system, there is more potential to be revealed in the future. Lufthansa is working on larger projects that try to develop a Netflix-style algorithm that seeks to guess where its most frequent flyers would like to go to next (Sumers, 2017). The airline then offers a personalized price and ticket to this customer, and further develops its algorithm using customer data. For airlines to stay competitive, they need to keep a close eye on the current and future changes in the market. First of all, airline companies should fully embrace innovation. Data should be used not only to cut costs and to be able to deliver the cheapest flight tickets, but also to facilitate new customer experiences and deliver more personalized services. This leads to an increase in importance of brand loyalty, as consumers are more closely connected to the airline that is best at personalizing their prices and services. Last, the mobile wallet should be seen as the central hub for the digital consumers. Mobile transactions are a lot richer in terms of data collection and analysis, and it provides access to end-consumers, which can drive more sales (Popova, 2016)

 

Sources:

Baird, N. (2017) “Dynamic vs. Personalized Pricing”, https://www.rsrresearch.com/research/dynamic-vs-personalized-pricing, accessed at 13th of February 2018.

Bertini, M. and Koenigsberg, O. (2014) “When Customers Help Set Prices”, MITSloan Management Review, accessed at 14th of February 2018.

Hinterhuber, A. and Liozu, S. (2014) “Is innovation in pricing your next source of competitive advantage?” Elsevier Inc, accessed at 14th of February 2018.

Lufthansa (2018) “Official website”, http://www.lufthansa.com, accessed at 14th of February 2018.

Popova, N. (2016) “Has Personalization of Passenger Experience Entered a Critical Stage?”, https://skift.com/2016/12/29/has-personalization-of-passenger-experience-entered-a-critical-stage/, accessed at 14th of Febuary 2018.

Schofield, T. (2018) “Price discriminations: definition, types, and examples”, https://study.com/academy/lesson/price-discrimination-definition-types-examples.html, accessed at 13th of Febuary 2018.

Sumers, B. (2017) “Airlines Become More Sophisticated With Personalized Offers for Passengers”, https://skift.com/2017/02/03/airlines-become-more-sophisticated-with-personalized-offers-for-passengers/, accessed at 14th of February 2018.

Business Case, Opinion, Student Ideas

DayMate: for structure in our daily lives

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Do you recognize these situations where you have a lot to do, or just simple have some tasks you keep on procrastinating? Your App Store probably offers a lot of these ‘to do’ applications. DayMate is a new arrival in this ‘to do’ industry but offers more than the mainstream ‘to do’ applications. DayMate aims to provide structure in your daily life, which especially comes in handy for people whom have difficulties with remembering chores or are chaotic-minded. The Dutch application DayMate is the follow-up of the already known application Assist Help. Assist Help was developed by Annemiek Modderman, whom son is suffering from ADHD. People suffering from ADHD face difficulties with applying structure in their daily lifes which leads to malfunctioning of their wellbeing. AssistHelp was already a great success for these people, however, DayMate is optimized for special use by using a clear standard setting and look&feel.

How does it work?

You simply add a task, by naming it and choosing an icon that comes with it. The icon appears in the center of the screen when the task is ‘active’ at the moment. There is a standard setting of 18 icons such as a washing machine (for doing the laundry), a trash bin, a Euro-sign and so on. The user specifies the begin and end time of the task and specifies on which days this certain task occurs. DayMate is especially designed for recurring tasks, in order to make your daily life more structured. That is also the reason why the user cannot set a specific date, because it should reoccur on specific days, which makes DayMate not an application for reminding certain activities.

Any weaknesses or strengths?

In the weekplanning, the user can see the coming tasks for that specific week, however DayMate only allows you to see the planned tasks per day, and does not provide a whole overview. Which is in my concern a pitfall of the application. A strength however, is the special support extension of the application. Users can assign a supervisor, whom keeps up to date with your planned tasks and can see your progress by using a certain ‘sensitivity measure’ which is basically a chosen smiley by the user of his/her mood.

So all together..

DayMate’s charm is especially its charisma and simplicity. DayMate can be a useful application for anyone who wants to bring some structure in his/her life, because you will be reminded with simple icons and notifications to perform a set of operations. For people with autism spectrum syndrome DayMate ensures greater clarity, especially with the tasks feature and setting apart of a supervisor. The clear design without too many bells and whistles, makes sure you do not get distracted.

References:

http://www.daymate.nl

http://www.iculture.nl/apps/review-daymate-structuur-activiteiten/

 http://www.autisme.nl/autisme-nieuws/oktober-2016/nieuwe-nederlandse-app-daymate-geeft-rust-in-je-dag.aspx

Articles, Opinion, Student Ideas

Why Recommendation Agents Should Let Us Participate

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“I see you are looking at our infinite range of stuffed animals, may I help you find what you need?” They are the salespeople of the online retailers; recommendation agents (RA’s). By capturing our perceived preferences based on browsing patterns or interests, RA’s aim to understand our needs. Not an unnecessary luxury of any sort, as the complexity and amount of information we are confronted with often exceeds our limited information-processing capacities and thus the benefits of RA’s can turn into costs. (Dabholkar, 2006; West et al., 1999). If there would be a Maslow pyramid for online shopping needs, it would be the bottom layer; a basic need, indeed.

However, one recommendation agent does not fit all. Different websites use different types of RA’s and the extent to which we can interact with these systems is heavily influenced by the interface design and its dialogue initiation process. Ranging from extensive questionnaires to not even a “hello, I’m here”, the possibility to participate in a two-way dialogue depends on the online salesperson you have encountered. But does the quality and quantity of customers’ input really matter?

In their lab based experiment, using existing RA’s in a controlled setting, Dabholkar and Sheng (2011) show that greater consumer participation in using RA’s leads to more satisfaction, greater trust and higher purchase intentions with respect to the recommended products and the system itself. Existing research already elaborates on the effects of participation in decision making on satisfaction, trust and purchase intentions in the offline and online context (Driscoll, 1978; Chang et al., 2009; Yoon 2002). In addition, much research has been conducted in the RA field, but upon this point failed to combine these two topics.

A great strength in Dabholkar and Shengs’ research, is the fact that there is a significant importance in understanding these relationships in the RA field as they are of huge strategic importance to online marketers. Therefore this topic is highly relevant. Moreover, by adding the dimension of financial risk, the authors are able to also identify that higher product prices moderate the need of participation in the RA context. This gives marketers insight for which products their recommendation agents should have high/low levels of possible interaction and therefore are able to personalize their RA’s per product and possibly increase purchases.

But, there are also a few limitations that need to be taken into account. One could argue that the used sample is non-representative for the online shopping population, as it completely consisted of college students with an average age of 21.91. Although the authors highlight the fact that the largest share of the Internet population is aged 18-32, it is not unthinkable that a student’s perception of financial risk differs from a middle aged person with substantially more spending power. Besides, students perceptions of trust in the online shopping context may be not completely representative, as they grew up with the Internet.

Summarizing, Dabholkar and Sheng give great insights in the effects of consumer participation in RA’s on satisfaction, trust and even purchase intentions. However, generalizability at this point is questionable, so further research across different age groups needs to be conducted to validate these results. But for now; Does your customer base primarily consist of students? Then it is time to revaluate your online salespeople. Get them to communicate with us, we would love to talk!

 

Chang, C. C., Chen, H. Y., & Huang, I. C. (2009). The interplay between customer participation and difficulty of design examples in the online designing process and its effect on customer satisfaction: Mediational analyses. Cyber Psychology & Behaviour, 12(2), 147-154.
Dabholkar, P. A. (2006). Factors influencing consumer choice of a ‘rating web site’: An experimental investigation of an online interactive decision aid. Journal of Marketing Theory & Practice, 14(4), 259-273.
Dabholkar, P. A., & Sheng, X. (2011). Consumer participation in using online recommendation agents: effects on satisfaction, trust and purchase intentions. The Service Industries Journal, 32(9), 1433-1449.
Driscoll, J. W. (1978). Trust and participation in organizational decision making as predictors of satisfaction. Academy of Management Journal, 21(1), 44-56.
West, P. M., Ariely, D., Bellman, S., Bradlow, E., Huber, J., Johnson, E., . . . Schkade, D. (1999). Agents to the Rescue? Marketing Letters, 10(3), 285-300.
Yoon, S. J. (2002). The antecedents and consequences of trust in online-purchase decisions. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 16(2), 47-63.
Articles, Opinion, Student Ideas

Recommendation networks and the long tail of e-commerce

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Nowadays, we almost can’t imagine online shopping without recommendations systems. Popular electronic commerce websites like Amazon, Bol.com, Asos.com and so on all have a section with products they personally recommend to their customers. This is often displayed as: ‘You may also like…’ showing multiple products related to the ones you have recently viewed.

Integrating social networks like Facebook and Instagram into the world of electronic commerce is on the up and can contribute to the personalized recommendation systems of online retailers. In this way, customers get personalized recommendations based on what friends in their networks bought. This makes the less popular products, which customer normally not have looked for, more visible and stimulates consumers to buy products that they normally wouldn’t have found. These products are known as ‘the Long Tail’ products and are often presented as ‘Customers like you also bought…’.

To put it differently, if consumers get e-commerce recommendations based on their networks, the level of awareness for less popular products will increase. This means that the distribution of revenue and demand is influenced and shifts more towards a long tail distribution and away from selling primarily the most popular products. Simply by peer-based recommendations, customers will buy more and different products than they would normally have.

 

Research done by Oestreicher-Singer & Sundararjan (2012), investigates the impact of peer-based recommendations on the demand and revenue distribution. They research the influence of network-based recommendations on the online sales of 250.000 books from online retailer Amazon.com. The research shows that by recommending books based on what friends in customers’ networks bought, the distribution of demand and revenue is highly influenced. The researchers focused on the top 20% most popular and top 20% most unpopular products.

Categories of unpopular books that were displayed based on peer-recommendations experienced a 50% increase in revenue whilst the commonly unpopular books experienced a 15% decrease in revenue. This meant that the unpopular books suddenly became more visible to customers which led to an 50% increase in sales.

That all sounds quite impressive, but one could not say that this 50% increase was only caused by the visibility of products through recommendations. Different other contemporary factors also contribute to the redistribution of demand and revenue of consumers. Lower search costs and higher product variety for instance, have a great influence on the long tail of e-commerce.

 

All things considered, e-commerce is highly influenced by the power of social networks. The influence of recommendation networks positively affects to phenomenon of the long tail demand. Selling less of more rather than more of less is going to characterize the e-commerce demand curve in the future. The implementation of ‘what other customers like you bought’ will continue to impact our online shopping behavior. If companies implement the right recommendation systems to influence consumer demand, the opportunities are endless!

 

Sources:

Anderson, C. 2006. The Long Tail: Why the future of Business Is Selling Less of More. Hyperion Press.

 

Brynjolfsson, E., Hu, Y., and Smith, M.D. 2006. From Nichees to Riches: Anotomy of the Long Tail. Management Review 47(4) 67-71.

 

Oestreicher-Singer, G., & Sundararajan, A. (2012). Recommendation networks and the long tail of electronic commerce. MIS Quarterly

Articles, Mini Cases, News, Opinion, Student Ideas

Google Photos: enhancing Google’s product portfolio

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The application

Google introduced Google Photos (referred to as Photos for the remainder of this blog) in May 2015 (Sabharwal, 2015). Photos is an application that manages your photos and can run in your browser, on your desktop and on your mobile devices (i.e. smartphone and tablet). Photos allows you to upload an unlimited amount of photos* and videos* for free. Besides, the application provides great search functionalities (i.e. search for persons, places and things), share possibilities and smart creations (such as stories and after movies). Therefore, Photos has become the central place for all my 14.000 photos and videos. For an impression of Google Photos, please see the screenshot from Google below.

Continue reading Google Photos: enhancing Google’s product portfolio →

Articles, Business Case, News, Opinion, Student Ideas

Friendsurance: Social risk sharing

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“Don’t underestimate what people are willing to do to save money.” (Kunde, 2012)

These are the words by Tim Kunde, the co-founder of Friendsurance, the first insurance company to break the traditional mindset and pave the way into a social, peer-to-peer insurance sector. The past few sessions of the course have highlighted the growing importance of the customer for the creation of value and pointed towards the innovative business model called the “sharing economy”. From Zipcar to Find-A-Desk, various examples have been outlined to illustrate that this approach has spread into countless customer-centric business areas. Yet, most insurance companies have been hesitant in adopting this business model.

Continue reading Friendsurance: Social risk sharing →

Business Case, Mini Cases, Opinion, Student Ideas

Fan Funding – Let’s retake charge!

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Through crowdsourcing of many kinds, people can support causes they are passionate about and, in the case of equity crowdfunding, even buy shares with voting shares, such that they gain a say in the operations of the organization or project they support. However, can people really fund and take charge of the things they are most passionate about?
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“Amongst all unimportant subjects, football is by far the most important.”  – Pope John Paul II
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The amount to which a large share of habitants of European countries, and many more worldwide, care about their favorite football club can hardly be overestimated. Though how often do we read about mismanaged clubs in severe financial problems? Opportunistic behavior of the top management of clubs unfortunately is rather rule than exception in the industry of football, often resulting in a short term focus, immense amount of debts and, in turn, the decay or even the liquidation of a club. Whereas the often very rich board members and owners are simply replaced after such disasters and move on with their comfortable lives, the fans are left in grief over the loss of their great pride and passion.
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There is hope. In the last years, some highly interesting and promising initiatives have taken place to redistribute a part of the control of a club to its fans. Due to financial mismanagement, from the 2009/2010 season onwards, the former British Premier League side Portsmouth Football Club was relegated three times in a row and the club found itself on the brink of extinction. But, in 2013, the fans injected 2.5 million pounds in their club, through a community share issue with partial ownership rights for each shareholder. The fans, essentially a club’s customers as they buy tickets and merchandise, saved Portsmouth and made ‘Pompey’ the largest fan-owned football club in the UK. The investing fans are united in the Portsmouth Supporter Trust (PST), which has to approve any major decision of the club’s board, such as the issuing of loan capital or venturing in acquisitions. While this yet is a beautiful example of what consumer involvement can do, last year a crowdfunding campaign backed by Portsmouth fans went a step further even. On Tifosy.com, a newly established platform with the aim to stimulate active supporter backings and decision rights, raised 270,000 pounds for Portsmouth to construct its first-ever club-owned academy, right in the heart of the city of Portsmouth.
tifosy
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The video below tells the great story of the Portsmouth fans’ actions.
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Two fans of 3rd Bundesliga side FC Fortuna Köln had an even greater ambition. The plan they launched last year proposed that any Fortuna supporter could fund its beloved club and, in turn, gained a vote on a wide array of possible decisions, including whether or not to buy a particular player, realize an investment to the clubs premises or even to sack the first squad’s manager. Every pound invested represents one vote, and the fan opinions alltogether would decide which actions the club had to take. Unfortunately, this highly democratic, wisdom-of-the-crowd enabling, crowdfunding campaign did not reach its funding goal, but the idea might very well turn out an industry changing one in the long run.
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The organization Supporters Direct promotes and researches the cause of the so-called Supporters Share Ownership. In their extensive 2013 report on this topic, the authors identify a rapidly increasing interest of both fans and politicians, whereas club owners and board members, the incumbent agents in this industry, display a fierce reluctance to venture in this kind of acquiring funds. To overcome this deadlock, the authors recommend policy makers to establish a Community Football Fund which would be created as a social investment intermediary capable of securing various forms of social investment to assist supporter ownership. Supporters Direct is paving the way for widespread supported ownership of football clubs, giving hopes to all those fans opposing the modern reality of football, where clubs are subject to the dangers of the few elite owners spending billions, those of the short term oriented, opportunistic board members and the investors who view players and clubs as mere investment vehicles.
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Sooner than expected, we might witness crowdfunding radically transform yet another industry; the highly conservative, but yet so deeply cherished industry of football. Let’s make it happen!
– Niek A. van der Horst
Crawley Town v Portsmouth - npower Football League One

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Resources

Buy this team, April 2012, The Economist, accessible at: http://www.economist.com/node/21553493

Crowdfunding: Football’s 12th Man!, April 3rd 2014, FC Business, accessible at: http://fcbusiness.co.uk/news/article/newsitem=3057/title=crowdfunding%3A+football%26%23039%3Bs+12th+man!

Is fan ownership the answer to struggling football clubs?, November 27th 2013, The Guardian, accessible at: http://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2013/nov/27/fan-ownership-football-premier-league

Portsmouth FC Academy campaign successfully raised £270,000, August 16th, Tifosy, accessible at: https://www.tifosy.com/en/campaigns/pompey-academy

Start-up-Netzwerk für Fortuna Köln, April 8th 2014, Kölner Stadt Anseiger, accessible at: www.ksta.de/koeln/crowdfunding-start-up-netzwerk-fuer-fortuna-koeln,15187530,28071496.html

Supporter Share Ownership, 2013, Supporters Direct, accessible at: http://www.supporters-direct.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Supporter_Share_Ownership.pdf

Articles, Business Case, Mini Cases, Student Ideas

A Real-Life Case From The Netherlands: Tutoring Platform BijlesMatch.com

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From the early days of my high school period, I wanted to start my own venture. In what industry did not matter. To me, it was all about innovation, changing the way things work. With great innovators; such as Bill Gates, Tony Hsieh and Elon Musk in my mind, I started to come up with ideas. Hundreds of too ambitious, but unrealistic ideas passed. Finally in my last year of high school, after multiple failed ideas, BijlesMatch was born: an online platform on which tutors and students could find each other (hence the name bijlesMATCH, bijles is dutch of tutoring). We wanted to add value by checking all tutors  on quality (teaching and social skills) before allowing them on our platform. After hours of fruitful discussions with a classmate, I knew how to execute this idea. I was determined to make something out of it, instead of making it another failed idea. My classmate wanted to join, I needed help, so we started this adventure together. An adventure that would still last 6 years later…

 Platform blueprint and development 

scetches
Initial blueprints of BijlesMatch platform

Knowing what to build, we still did not knew how to.  We started off with making a list of users-types and functions needed. In the end we constructed a flowchart in Microsoft Visio. The core of the platform became a database with introduction movies per tutor and a filter-function for customers to find the perfect match. We determined to do the designing ourselves and out-source the complex coding. Weeks of developing, a couple of thousand euros (for the complex coding) and five weeks of testing further, we finally had the result:

1546079_519972234783930_776507789_n
Database with tutors + filtersystem on website.

BMKP
Back-end for tutors, customers and administrators.

 

Pilot and kick-off time
We determined to start in Groningen, The Netherlands (our home city). Our personal network was large in that city and knew where to go if we needed any help. The perfect place for us to realize our first venture. The first step was to recruit tutors via social media and word-to-mouth campaigns. It was our strategy to delay our kick-off until we could cover all high school courses with our tutors. Within one week, we received tens of applications; a positive sign of the abundance of students willing to  tutor. After many interviews, we added the best 18 to our database. Now, it was kick-off time!

Kick-off time!
For the first months, we received nothing but visitors. Our conversion rate was a disappointing 0.00%. We promoted our platform via Facebook, Google Adwords and flyers/posters on high schools. After thorough analysis of our user-data, we recognized that our sign-up page was too complex (exit-rate of 85% after 2 min. of visiting). In conjunction with our developer, we redesigned the sign-up page. It helped a bit, we managed to get a conversion rate of 0.7%, which we still considered to be extremely low. Hence, we lifted the improvement process a level higher: user-interviews. After multiple interactive reviews with customers, test-users and tutorsl we found three major issues:

  • Visitors dislike paying prior to received the contact-details of the tutor.
  • We hided contact information somewhere in the great depths of our website. Customers hate this.
  • People did not want to choose their own tutor, they wanted someone with experience to do this for them.

It became evident that if we wanted to turn BijlesMatch into a success, we really had to shift our focus: so we did.

Major Strategic Turnaround: customer-centric approach
The idea of a controlled platform on which students and tutors could find each other sounded great, but did not convert (at least not ours). Hence, we re-engineered our entire platform based on the three major issues mentioned above. We determined to put the customer central and do everything he/she wishes for:

  1. We deleted our core: the entire database and filter-system
    The idea of people selecting their own tutor sounded nice, but people did not utilized it. Instead, we solely placed a simple form to place a tutoring request. We promised it was entire free to place this request and that we would contact the potential customer within 24 hours.
  2. The prior register and payment steps were deleted.
    On the front-page our contact details were added. People could contact us at any time for a tutoring request. Moreover, we added a free trial tutoring session of an hour for new customers.

BijlesMatch FrontPage 2.0.
BijlesMatch FrontPage 2.0.

The result and what’s next?

Number of views on BijlesMatch till Jan. 2015
Number of views on BijlesMatch till Jan. 2015

In 28th of December 2014, the strategic turnaround was applied on our platform. Above our imaginations, we managed to increase our conversion rate with 357% to 5.1% in January 2015. The latter, in combination with a 200% increase of visitors, resulted in a profitable business model. Currently, we are in May 2015 and we already expanded to Rotterdam. Our conversions rates are going stable around 5% and have more than 70 tutors and 3 regional manager employed. BijlesMatch is currently recruiting tutors in Utrecht and Amsterdam for further expansion.

Lessons learned
The journey through idea-creation, execution, failing, redeveloping and succeeding taught us a lot. For us, the largest factors for a successful platform is: simplicity, customer-convenience, adaptability and constant (peer-) reviewing. Idea in theory and in practice differ a lot. We thought we put our customer central from the beginning, but actually we did the opposite. The main lessons we learned is:

“Stay open for failure and constant change!”

One of our introduction movies used on our initial platform:

 

Sources:
1) Original webpage of BijlesMatch: http://www.bijlesmatch.com
2) Google Analytics: https://www.google.com/analytics/
3) Click! Verleiding op het Internet, Aartjan van Erkel, 2015
4) Don’t make me think, Steve Krug, Second Edition.

Business Case, Student Ideas

Marketingfacts, watch out, the students are coming

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We’ve got the content, we can create visibility, let’s go make this blog big!

If you are reading this blog post, great chances are that you are a student at the Erasmus University. If you are not, welcome to the CCDC website, where content is created by students and mostly written by students as well. The idea behind this website is to make long and extensive articles accessible and to highlight the USP’s of consumer driven companies and online networks, like Created on Friday and Skillshare. It is meant to be a learning tool, but if you scroll down the homepage, the generated content could also be compared to that of an online marketing platform, like the Dutch website Marketingfacts.

If you compare the CCDC website to Marketingfacts, two big differences appear. First, the content is created differently. In the case of Marketingfacts, the content generated by a team of professional bloggers (Marketingfacts, 2015), and in the case of the CCDC website, this content is generated by students. Second, the incentive of the content creators differ. Were the professional blogger may want to share his or her knowledge online, the student blogger will be obliged to create content, since they will be graded for the blog posts. That said, traditionally articles created by students will not have a purpose after the articles were graded. Now, their created content will live on as blog posts, what can cause for online visibility, next to serving the student’s graduation.

So why is this proposition, the student driven online marketing and C2C platform, currently so interesting? Why am I dedicating my blog post to a online platform which nowadays only can attract 1000 up to 2000 views a month? Because there are two things which make this platform unique compared to a more traditional online (blog) platform: secured content delivery and worldwide university connections. Since students currently are obliged to create articles, the amount and subject area of content can be determined by the professor, an advantage which is hard for a normal platform to copy. Besides, in-between universities and professor’s alliances are easily made. Professors from multiple disciplines and universities could join, and hereby add students to the creation group, which makes increasing the amount and diversity of the content easily done. These unique advantages make a quite interesting case for becoming a large online platform.

So, if the professor of this CCDC course decides to make this blog to go big, what should he do to control content quality and to create online visibility? Again, let your students do the work. Visibility can be created by individual sharing of the content on social media. Of course a platform account can start sharing the posts, but a large group of students together can cause for even a greater amount of views (LinkedIn, 2015). High quality can be maintained by letting the students rate the newest articles (Hu et al., 2009; Tsekouras, 2015). The ones with high rates stay on the home page for a certain time, making sure they are written, and the silly ones die in silence, so that they will not harm the platforms reputation. All-in-all, the ingredients are there, now we have to execute it right. Marketingfacts, watch out, the students are coming..

Click here to read the former post of this author: “Can we all start drinking beers all day long?”

  • Hu, N., J. Zhang and P. A. Pavlou (2009). “Overcoming the J-shaped distribution of product reviews.” Communications of the ACM 52(10), 144-147.
  • Tsekouras, D. (2015). VARIATIONS ON A RATING SCALE: THE EFFECT ON EX-TREME RESPONSE TENDENCY IN PRODUCT RATINGS.
  • Marketingfacts, (2015). Colofon | Marketingfacts. [online] Available at: http://www.marketingfacts.nl/colofon [Accessed 26 Apr. 2015].
  • Business.linkedin.com, (2015). Employee Activation | LinkedIn Elevate. [online] Available at: https://business.linkedin.com/elevate [Accessed 26 Apr. 2015].
Business Case, Student Ideas

CarSticker

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In 2013 there were 8 milion cars in the Netherlands, on only 41526 km². That means a lot of cars in this little country. When living here, and going outside you will probably come a cross some cars. Especially in big cities there are cars all around, you have to watch out not to get hit by one! We from CarSticker saw this as an opportunity. Use these cars as outlets for advertisement, easy and quick, with car stickers. We see this happening in commercial sectors already. Like this cab in London.

For small companies and enterprises this way of advertising is easy, quick and not very costly. The company designs its sticker, fills in a form with its requirements for the Sticker ‘wearers’. The number of individual drivers in the database who actually meet their specific requirements will constantly be uploaded and displayed. Continue reading CarSticker →

Student Ideas

Students4Students – The future of tutoring

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Every students knows the feeling a few days before an exam: wondering if you paid sufficient attention in class, stressing because you might not understand an example mentioned in the lecture slides, etc.

You realize the teacher will not be in her office during the weekend and it usually takes her a few days to reply to e-mails. Asking the question via e-mail will require a long answer and therefore isn’t the ideal option anyway. You can call a classmate but you doubt that he or she has time for your question and you wonder whom to call in the first place. There is always the option of hiring an expensive private tutor but the government does not transfer your student loan until next week. Now there is an extra option for the stressing student: Students4Students!

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Students4Students is a tutoring-platform where the tutors are students providing sessions to their struggling peers. The platform will take away the inconvenience and psychological barriers (Collins, 1997) that come with scheduling a face-to-face meeting with the professor. It is also more interactive than the supply of online videos, writing a complicated e-mail and receiving an even longer and more complicated answer. But above all, it is a cheap option to get a better grasp of the topic on which the exam will be.

Continue reading Students4Students – The future of tutoring →

Student Ideas

Zebra the advisor

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Have you ever been in a supermarket in a foreign country and had no idea what to buy?

Chinese product

You are not the only one!

Travellers and exchange students are often faced with puzzling situations when they go grocery shopping. They don’t understand the product descriptions written in a foreign language, they don’t have knowledge of the local brands and they don’t know where to find the supermarket offering the products they want, at the best price.

The results are: more stress when choosing a product, more time spent in the supermarket, less value for money and the risk of buying the wrong product. In other words, the customer has a much worse shopping experience than when shopping in his home country.

As always when facing a difficult and stressful situation, you can rely on your smartphone!

Zebra is a mobile application designed to make shopping in a foreign country easier. Zebra enables you to read a product’s barcode using the camera of your smartphone. Once the product is identified, you access a broad range of information: Continue reading Zebra the advisor →

Student Ideas

Tag-a-deal

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Choose your deals

I’m sure you must know the feeling: you’re in your shopping mall and you’ve just spotted the perfect vase/dress/vacuum cleaner/shaver/gaming mouse. However, the price is just above your budget. To top it off, sales have just ended, so guess you’ll just have to settle for less.
That feeling now belongs to the past: we happily introduce Tag-a-deal! Just scan the price tag of the item that you want, but that is just outside of your financial reach, and offer what you would be willing to pay for that vase/dress/gaming mouse. Before you know it you own that shaver for a very nice price. Or if the company refuses, well, at least you tried. Maybe you’ll have more luck with the dress. Tag-a-deal is the new app everybody should download. It allows its users to negotiate with companies to receive deals on items consumers want deals on. Continue reading Tag-a-deal →

Student Ideas

Eye on Elderly

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Look out for the elderly with the Eye on Elderly Platform

Close your eyes, and imagine for a minute to be 70 years old. You are retired, your kids have grown up and even have kids themselves. You have recently moved to an elderly home, because you need help and your children do not have enough time, caught between taking care of your grandchildren and working from 9 to 17. So there you are, sitting behind the geraniums, hoping for some human contact (it has been 7 days since your family last called or visited). What do you do? …

Well, you can open your new laptop, go to EoE online platform and sign up for bingo night!

Eye on elderly website from POV elder v.2

That is exactly what EoE is intended for, to help lonely elders, elderly homes and volunteers to get in contact with each other.  EoE is an interactive platform, where these three groups can organize and sign up to activities. In these modern times the internet has become one of the main resources and facilitators for social interaction, and despite what many say, even elderly are catching up with the new trend (see Van Berkum 2013, Akkermans 2013, ANBO 2014).

Continue reading Eye on Elderly →

Student Ideas

RyoCo

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Connecting Urban Nomads Worldwide

Once upon a time there was a depressed man named Louis, who recently lost his favorite sweatshirt from New York. There’s no website to buy it and he won’t go back for at least a few years….

louis

Across the pond sat a man named Nick, a New Yorker traveling to London for the first time. With only one weekend in London he wants to find the best possible pub for fish n chips. But alas, every pub claims to be “THE BEST” and Trip Advisor gives everyone 5 stars…

NICK

Fortunately for both Louis and Nick, the stars aligned and created a website to solve all of the problems and limitations faced by today’s Urban Nomads.

An online platform co-created and crowd-sourced by today’s traveling young urban professionals (yuppie’s) to connect and exchange information about all of the most up-to-date international trends and products. (Majchrzak et al., 2013)

Continue reading RyoCo →

Student Ideas

I like to MoveIT

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Picture yourself at a kick-ass festival. You’re queuing to get as close as possible to the stage because your favorite band is about to make history. But which queue is the fastest? And where are the closest and quickest bathrooms if the beers you’ve been enjoying need a way out? And how can you get a healthy snack whilst on your way to the next gig? Now imagine taking your smartphone out and getting answers to all these questions (and more). The future of personal navigation is here and it’s called MoveIT. In a nutshell, MoveIT will offer you the same navigation and browsing experience you know so well from Google maps, but will take that experience indoors to train stations and shopping malls and to large scale events such as festivals and fairs. It will answer all questions on the spot which begin with ‘where is…’, ‘how do I get to…’ and ‘what is around here’? Moreover, it will know where it’s busy, what to avoid and where the coolest places are. The best thing is that all of this functionality comes for free to anyone with a smartphone. All you need to do is download the MoveIT app, have it running in the background and it will go to work for you once you get close to a MoveIT enabled location you’ve selected. How does the magic happen? The app works on two levels, a quantitative and a qualitative level. The quantitative level simply aggregates tracking data from the sensors in your smartphone and sends that to the servers of MoveIT. The servers will then work out where you are, sparing the CPU of your phone the hard work and saving precious battery life. When you subsequently open the app and ask for directions, those will be sent back to you straightaway as the layout of the venue is known to MoveIT. Moreover, as the server performs this task for many users, the app will know where it’s busy and where it’s not. This way, you’ll know for instance in what part of the train you’ll have the best chance of finding a seat and which entrance will get you to the stage the quickest. And don’t worry, all tracking data will be anonymous. Continue reading I like to MoveIT →

Student Ideas

Computer Elves

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The Computer Elves will save your computer!

Have you ever encountered problems in your computer that no amount of Google search could help with? We’re pretty sure most of you have. On top of that, when you do find what you think is your saviour; they’ll make you pay out of your pockets. If only life were simpler, right? Our group thought about ‘The Computer Elves’, a customer to customer platform that matches demand and supply of software and hardware services through an online tool that isn’t just user friendly but affordable as well.

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The platform has double access: you can either register as freelancer or as a customer.Freelancers would mostly be students of Computer Science programs or other related disciplines. They can register and create a profile on the website on which they specify their skills, their certificates, their academic and working experience. When registering, they have to mention all the types of services they are able to offer.

Continue reading Computer Elves →