e-Business should focus on marketing through social networks and a website; through identifying potential suppliers. We can't sell food and drink online so the site is mainly for promotional purposes. The cafe's main metrics will be page impressions, Facebook fans, Twitter followers. Reaching out to customers using social media can help to inform them about promotions and new products. Social media is also the modern-day equivalent of knowing all of your customers by name (though that would not hurt either) as it helps to foster a relationship allowing for improved retention. A portal is not of much value for the employees. At best, they can check the schedule online. We don't have that many people working at Broadway, an expensive back end system for staff we see everyday is poor value. I would not use kiosks in the cafe. I would focus on a Wifi network and let the customers bring in their own computers.
I do not need my website to be sticky. I do not sell food and coffee online. There is no evidence that food service is viable as an online retailer. I need my shop to be sticky. Morrison Cafe has the best metrics. The language is probably superfluous but there is a direct link between the surfing and the money. If this was an e-business I would want evidence linking my time, the cost of the website and the revenue of the website in order to compare with the investment of my time and money in the cafe itself. If it was demonstrated that the website was more profitable, I would pursue building a full slate of metrics, the most important of which are found in Exhibit B. Basically, I want to know how many people are visiting, what my conversion rate of visitors to customers is, and what each customer is spending. I want this data in aggregate, too, rather than for individual customers.
I would not build a collaboration. As Milton Friedman pointed out, the social responsibility of business is to make profits. That is the guidepost by which I shall operate. Only collaborations that directly benefit the business should be offered. A coffee tasting would be possible, but only after I fire Brazil Beans as supplier. I would be interested in testing new equipment, but the equipment would need to be donated. Corporate money should not be spend indulging my passion for coffee toys. The coffee tastings, however, would add value to the business in that they would attract customers and more importantly convince them to buy premium, higher margin beverages. This is directly congruent with the differentiated strategy. Such events would be promoted in store and on the website/social media.
There is little value to a Wiki. It does not directly drive revenue and at the expected traffic volume of the typical coffee shop website would not be sufficiently active to justify the time and expense of setting one up and...
Just because an idea exists, does not mean it needs to be implemented. I am concerned that wikis would not provide a positive net present value for my organization and therefore I would minimize the risk by not using them.
There is value in blogs for promotional purposes. A purely promotional blog may not be that effective in terms of marketing, but it is possible if we can generate sufficient content. Content takes time to develop, so more success relative to the time taken to create content might be had with Twitter - see this link as an example: http://blog.mrtweet.com/twitter-to-go-how-one-local-coffee-shop-used-twitter-to-double-his-clientele
Some blogs that are good models are:
http://denvercoffee.blogspot.com / http://purecoffee.blogspot.com / http://sisterscafe.blogspot.com/
Exhibit a: "Optimal" Bean Purchase
Weight
Cost
cost/oz
Sale Price
sale/oz
Profit/oz
Gold Ground
14
8
0.571429
13
0.928571
0.357143
French Vanilla
13.5
7
0.518519
11
0.814815
0.296296
Special Dark Roast
13
6
0.461538
9
0.692308
0.230769
Vanilla Hazelnut
12.5
5
0.4
7
0.56
0.16
Organic
10
5
0.5
6
0.6
0.1
Amount to order
# of bags weight
Profit
Gold Ground
4
56
20
French Vanilla
4
54
16
Special Dark Roast
0
0
0
Vanilla Hazelnut
0
0
0
Organic
4
40
4
Total bags
12
Total weight
# of bean types
3
Total profit
40
Exhibit B:
Website Metrics
Broadway Cafe
Visitor
Time Spent
Data Transferred (MB)
Customer ID
Page Views
Previous Website
Total Purchase
Works Cited:
QuickMBA. (2007). Porter's five forces. QuickMBA.com. Retrieved April 27, 2010 from http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/porter.shtml
QuickMBA. (2007). Porter's generic strategies. QuickMBA.com. Retrieved April 27, 2010 from http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/generic.shtml
