Week 5 Business Models

eBusiness Models

Brokerage- A "brokerage" or a "brokerage firm" is a business that acts as a broker. A brokerage firm is a business that specializes in trading stocks. A sales person working for a securities or commodity brokerage firm is popularly (but incorrectly) called a "broker." A broker in that context is, strictly speaking, an exchange member who is actually executing the purchase or sales order in the 'pit', on the exchange, as a service to the client of the firm for which that salesman works. An example of an auction broker would be Ebay.

Advertising- is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. An example of advertising is media advertising such as television advertisements.

Infomediary- a company works as a personal agent on behalf of consumers to help them take control over information gathered about them for use by marketers and advertisers. An example of an infomediary would be Double Click.

Merchant- they function as professionals who deal with trade, dealing in commodities that they do not produce themselves, in order to produce profit. An example would be New Generation clothing, or any store for that matter.

Manufacturer (Direct)- a company that manufactures and distributes products to other companies to sell. This is usually done in mass production and reaps the benefits such as high output volume and low unit costs. An example of a type of manufacturer is a console manufacturer such as Nintendo who have the longest running company in the market for game consoles.

Affiliate- Used to affiliate the website with something else, usually a major brand or something with mainstream recognition. For example a network affiliate (or affiliated station) is a local broadcaster which carries some or all of the program line-up of a television or radio network, but is owned by a company other than the owner of the network.

Community- These business models involve a lot of investment by the consumer in terms of time and emotions. These are models which are based on social networking such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Subscription- The subscription business model is a business model where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product or service. The model was pioneered by magazines and newspapers, but is now used by many businesses and websites. An example of this is a magazine subscription, e.g. Cleo.

Utility- In economics, utility is a measure of the relative satisfaction from, or desirability of, consumption of various goods and services. It can also measure meter usage, like a car meter using a pay as you go type of method. An example of a utility is Internet Service Providers as they charge customers per minute of usage.

1) What is the Mobile phone use /100 population - compare Australia, USA, China, India, Your Country

2) Internet use / 100 population - compare Australia, USA, China, India, Your Country

3) Compare main strengths and weaknesses of Australia or your home country in the survey

4) What does the survey suggest to you about the Information Technology readiness of Australian business compared to Australian consumers?