Overall Assignment

E-business in the EU

Artevelde University College

Robine Mayuba | Eva Van Ast | Lisa Raes | Sandrine Mavuata

2014 -2015

Inhoud
1. Who are we? ....................................................................................................................................... 2
2. Mission Statement .............................................................................................................................. 3
3. Business model .................................................................................................................................... 3
1. Value Proposition ........................................................................................................................ 3
2. Revenue model ............................................................................................................................ 4
4. Competitive environment ........................................................................................................... 4
5.Competitive advantage ................................................................................................................ 5
6. Market strategy ........................................................................................................................... 5
7.Organizational development ........................................................................................................ 5
8.Management team ....................................................................................................................... 6
4. Target Audience .................................................................................................................................. 6
1.Who is our target group? ................................................................................................................. 6
2.But why young adults? ..................................................................................................................... 6
3.Where are they on the web?........................................................................................................... 8
5. Ballpark/Marketplace .......................................................................................................................... 8
1.Marketplace ..................................................................................................................................... 8
2.Size.................................................................................................................................................... 8
3.Growth.............................................................................................................................................. 8
4. Where is the content coming from? ................................................................................................. 10
1.Static ............................................................................................................................................... 10
2.Dynamic .......................................................................................................................................... 11
5. SWOT ................................................................................................................................................. 13
6. E-commerce presence map ............................................................................................................... 13
Web sites: .......................................................................................................................................... 13
E-mail: ................................................................................................................................................ 14
Social media: ..................................................................................................................................... 14
Offline media: .................................................................................................................................... 14
7. Timeline ............................................................................................................................................. 15
Business process................................................................................................................................ 15
Production process ............................................................................................................................ 16
8. Costs .................................................................................................................................................. 16
9. Sources : ............................................................................................................................................ 20

1. Who are we?

Robine Mayuba

Student International Entrepreneurship

Eva Van Ast

Student International Entrepreneurship

Sandrine Mavuata

Lisa Raes

Student Finance and insurances

Student International Entrepreneurship

Website url:
www.tipsythirstdays.jimdo.com

2. Mission Statement
We want to deliver qualitative, tasty, refreshing, trendy cocktail packages to the party people in Ghent at
an affordable price. We present our 4 different flavored cocktails (sour, sweet, bitter, sweet) and our
every week changing special at our e-shop, always available!
Our product/company:
The heart of our company is the our website www.tipsythirtdays.jimdo.com where the people can place
their order. We present our 4 different flavored cocktails (sour, sweet, bitter, sweet) and our every week
changing special. Our product can especially be delivered on demand at your party place. We're
counting on mouth-to-mouth advertisement and our flyer actions. We aim to become a regionally
recognized brand name that we've chosen with eye on our consumers. Our goal is that our business will
be big enough so all four of us have some extra money as students. It's a new market based on the
delivery of fruit and vegetable packages and we don't have any competitors at this moment. We want to
be unique and renewing with our totally new concept. And all this because we think being young is the
best time of your life, so live it to the maximum and share it with your friends and a cocktail!

3. Business model
1. Value Proposition
Our Value proposition are the cocktail packages themselves, our product. We offer cocktail packages
with all the needed ingredients for a perfect cocktail for an amount of people. That way the customer
dont need to buy every ingredient separate and most of the time they are obliged to buy more than they
actually need. We have our standard cocktail packages but also a weekly change which will give
enough variation to keep the customers interested. We provide an easy solution for a smashing party or
an lounge evening. We dont see a market yet in Ghent and we as students see an big opportunity here.

2. Revenue model
A firms revenue model describes how the firm will earn revenue, generate profits, and produce a
superior return on invested capital. We will obviously will use the sales revenue model. In the sales
revenue model, companies derive revenue by selling goods, content,or services to customers. We sell
our cocktail packages.
=>BUSINESS MODEL = E-tailer, Virtual Merchant Amazon= Online version of retail store, where
customers can shop at any hour of the day or night without leaving their home or office. Revenue
model= sales of goods

3.Market Opportunity
The term market opportunity refers to the companys intended marketspace
=>We want to start delivering at Ghent, for students/young adults/adults.

4. Competitive environment
In Ghent there arent competitors for our idea which is very good. The only competition we can find with
a similar idea namely cocktail catering. They dont deliver products but they do the service of making the
cocktails for the customer at their party.

http://www.cocktailflavours.be/cocktail-catering/bar-catering-service/
Bar Cocktail Flavours Catering Service is a cocktail catering company from Ghent, run cocktail
bartenders. The bar catering service is available for cocktail parties and other events in and around
Flanders . Also large super markets also offer cocktail ingredients which means competition.

5.Competitive advantage
We want to deliver qualitative, tasty, refreshing, trendy cocktail packages with the right amount of
ingredients to the party people in Ghent at an affordable price. We have the first-mover advantage
being the first into a marketplace with a serviceable product or service.

6. Market strategy
The market well enter is a new market based upon on the delivery of fruit and vegetable packages. We
will present our 4 different flavored cocktails (sour, sweet, bitter, sweet) and our every week changing
special on our new website. Our product can especially be delivered on demand at the party place.
We're counting on mouth-to-mouth advertisement and our flyer actions.

7.Organizational development
We are currently with 4 students for this project. Robine, Lisa, Eva and Sandrine. We will work together
and will be responsible for the performance of the many functions. The functions are the financial
aspect, our sales through the website , the purchase of the raw materials , logistics (always everything
in stock, making the packages, delivering the packages,), advertising, customer service,
administration, We divide the tasks every week and we keep a good record of all the jobs. Our
company will need no more employees with the start of our project. As our business grows , we will hire
carefully new employees.

8.Management team
Robine Mayuba
Eva Van Ast
Sandrine Mavuata

Owners of the company, all

responsible for the proper
performance of the functions.
Team-work!

Lisa Raes

4. Target Audience
1.Who is our target group?
Our target audience is like we mentioned before, young adults, more
specifically College Students and University college students in Ghent.
Our target audience is for now only students in Ghent because were a
relatively new and small business located in Ghent. But over time we
would like to expand to other popular student cities.

2.But why young adults?

First of all because they are overage so they are allowed to drink alcohol.

Secondly, because we believe that students are an growing population.

And finally, because we believe that the students in Ghent like to party, and for many of them a party
isnt a party without some alcohol.

Weve done some research to support our assumptions.

In the paper Nieuwsblad we found an article from September 2013 about the growing student
population in Ghent, in the article they say that the enrollment rate in Ghent keeps rising. When we
have a look at the website of Education in Flanders we can see the evolution of the enrollments in
higher education, and we see that there are every year more students that enroll themselves.

We also found the most resent numbers for the academic year 2013-2014, where its stated that
there were 63.966 students enrolled in Ghent specifically.

On the website of VAD, the non-profit association for alcohol and other drug problems weve found
some more information about the alcohol use of students in Flanders. In an article they discuss an
survey that the University Ghent and Antwerp did in association with the VAD, about the drug;
alcohol and medication use of students. Some of the findings of the survey were that four out of ten
students drink more than once a week, that 96,8% of the students drank alcohol at one point in their
lives, that 92,4% drank alcohol last year and that the students drink the most alcohol during the
vacations and during the academic year. This are numbers that date back to 2009. But when we had
a look on the site of the University Ghent, we found a more recent publication from 2014 about
another survey they held in 2013. The results run in the same line as the results from the survey in

2009, but an interesting statement for our research is that they say that almost all students drink
alcohol, some more than others.
So based on these findings we believe that our cocktail boxes can become a success among the
students because we sell them the boxes for an affordable price , so they can make their own tasty
cocktails at home whether its to stay in or to go out and hit the town and have a nice night with
friends.

3.Where are they on the web?

I think its fair to say that young adults are internet savvy and spend a lot of time on social platforms
such as Facebook, Instagram and twitter. So that are the places were going to look for them. Web
shops are also not a new concept to them, so thats why were convinced that theyll have no
problems with ordering our boxes online.

5. Ballpark/Marketplace
1.Marketplace
E-commerce
Trading in products or services using computer networks such as the Internet.

2.Size

E-commerce is a growing marketplace in Belgium. The numbers shown in the picture above are from
2012, in that year Belgians monthly spend 170 euros online already. 95% of the online customers
were satisfied with e-commerce.

3.Growth

(Flipit)

Since 2005 the e-commerce market within Belgium has been growing fast. From 2005 to 2012 there
has been a growth of turnover with 875%. It is safe to say that the future prospect in 2012 was very
positive.
In 2013 the e-commerce market continued growing and today people use online shopping more than
ever. The breakthrough of creditcards and debitcards among the yought has certainly
contributed.(Comeos, 2013)

1. Structure :

Wholesaler
Tipsythirtdays
Consumer
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

We order our goods from the wholesaler

The wholesaler delivers us the goods
The client orders
We send the goods
We place a new order with our wholesaler

2. Competitors and suppliers

Competitors
Large suppermarkets that offer a large
variety of alcoholic beverages :
Carrefour
Delhaize
...
Wholesalers :
Geers
...
Flavours Ghent (cocktail service at partys)

3. Subsitute products

Pre mixed bottled beverages

Ready made sets offered by a supermarket

Suppliers
Wholesalers
www.drankgigant.nl/
Packaging company
http://goo.gl/kXeNpo
Shipping company
BPost http://goo.gl/NB5vcF

Sets offered by specialty liqour store

4. Where is the content coming from?

1.Static
=> Static content is text and images that do not frequently change, such as product descriptions,
photos, or text that you create to share with your visitors.

2.Dynamic
=>Dynamic content is content that changes regularly, say, daily or hourly. Dynamic content can be
created by us, or increasingly, by bloggers and fans of our Web site and products.
User-generated content has a number of advantages: its free, it engages your customer fan base, and
search engines are more likely to catalog your site if the content is changing. Other sources of content,
especially photos, are external Web sites that aggregate content such as Pinterest)

5. SWOT
STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSES

-Unique product
-Original idea
-First-mover
-Easy target group
-Cocktails hype
-Clean web shop design
-Fast delivery
-Quality products

-Limited financial resources

-No media attention
-No web design expertise
-No customers yet
-No wide offer yet

OPPORTUNITIES

THREATS

-Ability to expand the sale on a larger scale

in the future
-Ability to expand the product range
-Ability to open a shop in Ghent

-Approach could be copied by competitors or

new competitors can enter the market
-Advertisers may not want to try a new site or
investors may not want to put money in the
business
-Rapid pace of technological development
-Limited interested customers

6. E-commerce presence map

Our potential customers can be found on various devices during the day and these are places where
we can meet our customers, so we want to develop our e-commerce presence here. We developed
an e-commerce presence map for the 4 different kinds of e-commerce presence namely: Web sites,
social media, e-mail and offline media. We will not make use of every type of platform and its related
activities yet, seen we have a restricted budget.

Web sites:
The first type of e-commerce presence we will discuss is Web sites. Our website is a very import tool
that we have at our disposition to establish our brand identity, to inform our customers, to shape the
customer experience and to anchor the various marketing messages coming from different sources.
Our site will be accessible on a traditional desktops but also on tablets and smartphones with a
mobile version of our site. These last two platforms are very important because young people spend
more and more time on their portable devices, so they can have access to the internet everywhere.
We will not make us of search engine marketing, display adds, affiliate programs, etc. because we
dont have the budget for it. But our hope is that potential clients will reach us through social search.
This is a search engine to find pages based on what youre searching for and social reviews from your
friends through recommendations, past web visits and use of like buttons.

E-mail:
The second type of e-commerce presence we will discuss is e-mail. Keeping our eye on our budget
restrictions we will only make use of direct e-mail marketing, where we send messages directly to
interested users who signed up for our newsletter. This way we can keep them updated on recent
developments and inform them about our weekly special.
For us its a very interesting medium to begin with because it has a low cost, high response rate,
mass reach and it gives us the ability to drive traffic to our website.

Social media:
The third type of e-commerce presence we will discuss is social media. Here will be our biggest ecommerce presence because this is the place where our target group spends the most of time.
The platforms we will make us of are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. So we can reinforce our
brand message, engage in conversation with our customers and potential customers, share
information with them and hopefully encourage them to like and share our page.

Offline media:
And the last type of e-commerce presence we will discuss is offline media. Possible platforms for this
kind of presence is print, radio and TV.
TV is for the moment totally out of the question since its a very expensive platform. But we would
like to collaborate with local university radio stations, because it would be a good way to get our
message out and to target our specific target audience.
And when it comes to print media we want to use the same approach as with radio and build our
presence up in magazines specifically meant for students, like Guido magazine. But also hand out
flyers in the streets of Ghent and in the vicinity of universities. By doing this we hope to get the
people more acquainted with our brand and to get more exposure.

7. Timeline
Business process

The
concept

Fine
target
group

Inventory

The
wholesale
r

Administr
ation

Return
policy

Marketing
strategy

Group brainstorming session

Analyze possibilities
Create a realistic view
Students
Ghent
East-Flanders
Flanders
The Netherlands
Calculate the optimal inventory
Find a stock room that can maybe grow with the business
Define the cost of the inventory
Research a wholesaler
Location
Reviews
Get a good price
Hofw fast can they deliver
Packing slips
Invoices
General return policy
what if the package has been opened
The law
SEO
Social media

Production process

Order is
made

Order
confirmation

Supply check

Dispatch

Costumer orders a package on the website

The costumer will receive an order confirmation

We receive a BCC email labeled as 'order'
We check our supplies
We prepare the package to be sent
The package is send to the costumer
The costumer receives an email with the shipment information

8. Costs
The Web sites of large firms that offer high levels of interactivity. Find out the budget needed
to set up a web presence
Phase 1. Planning ; we worked for two days to build the site. Afterwards we only have to
change our cocktails once a month and every week the special. In total that's 4 cocktails a
month, so every owner can do one additional cocktail a month.
Phase 2. Web site development : We used Jimdo because it's really easy to use and you have
everything to build a web shop. Now we're using the free version. We'll upgrade to the Pro
version if we start our project.
Phase 3. Web implementation : We won't need anything from another site because we will
write everything ourselves, we made our own logo. And we're going to take the pictures
ourselves of the cocktails we made.
Phase 4. Marketing Communication plan : We will communicate with each other in real life
but also by texts, mails, calls. And we will communicate with our customers by mail and by
phone.

Phase 5. Social media plan : we're going to make page on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
They're all for free. On Facebook we're going to make a fanpage. People can like it, share it,
join it. On Instagram we're going to put beautiful pictures of our cocktails and ingredients.
And we can tweet about the new products. On our website there are also to buttons to share
our product with the social media world.

Mobile plan:
Everyone with iOS or Android can already reach our website on their smartphones. We can
also change the website if necessary from our phones. Now we're still using the free version
of Jimdo and that one is limited.
http://tipsythirstdays.jimdo.com
Well have to do an upgrade in the future. There are two possibilities ;

1.Jimdo pro
60 euro's per year

Includes a custom domain name, 5GB of storage, and faster customer support.

2.Jimdo business
180 euro's per year
Includes two custom domain names, unlimited storage, 20 email addresses, and the
fastest customer support

We will choose the Jimdo pro because it's cheaper and we don't need so many storage. The
only thing we need is a custom domain name. We also don't need 20 email addresses. We
made a free e-mail account on outlook and we all now the password so we can all log in and

work on that one. It's possible to start with the Pro and then change to the Business version if
our needs change. To come on top of the search against Jimdo offers even SEO options. It
includes metatag editing and SEO-friendly URLs.

Extra;

computer
camera
internet
electricity
anti-virus
phone
telecom

Total Package

Rent
Gas, water, electricity, heating
Software Windows for business
Iphones
Computers
Insurance for the goods
Telephone, internet
Company contribution
Cost deposit accounts
Municipal taks
Publicity
Exhibitions
Personal equity
Family loan
Loan from a financial institution
CVBA
Stock
Total costs
Total investments

0
1902
1079.8
3196
3716
163
2400
348
153
124
700
1500

We will be running our business from

home.
158.5 on average a month
269.95 x 4
799 x 4
929 x 4
Calculation done online
Mobile Vikings 50/month X4

Each of us will invest 2000 euro to start

8000 with
Each of us will have to ask friend and
6000 family to invest for a Total of 1500 euro.
30000
6200
5000
26481.8
44000

9. Sources :
Dillen, J. (2013), opnieuw meer studenten in Gent, geraadpleegd op
18/12/2014,http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20130917_00746073
Vlaams onderwijs, onderwijsstatistieken 2013-2014, geraadpleegd op
18/12/2014,http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/onderwijsstatistieken/20132014/VONC_13-14/VONC_2013_2014_Integraal.pdf

Vlaamse vereniging voor alcohol en drugsgebruik, geraadpleegd op

18/12/2014,http://www.vad.be/media/134858/perstekst_studentenbevraging.pdf
Universiteit gent (2014), Alcoholgebruik bij helft van de studenten niet zonder risico, geraadpleegd op
18/12/2014,http://www.ugent.be/nl/actueel/persberichten/alcohol-middelengebruikstudenten-vad.htm
Stad Gent ( 2014),Honderdduizend studenten drinken te veel, geraadpleegd op
18/12/2014,http://www.gentgezondestad.be/nieuws/honderdduizend-studentendrinken-te-veel
Druglijn, alchol, geraadpleegd op 18/12/2014,http://www.druglijn.be/voor-studenten/feiten-encijfers/alcohol.aspx
Pinterest, geraadpleegd op 18/12/2014 ,
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/560557484843519728/