Are you looking at other forms of online marketing like viral? Roberto Hortal, MORE THN:

57 All organizations operate within an environment that influences the way in which they con- duct business. Strategy development should be strongly influenced by considering the environment the business operates in, as illustrated in Figure 2.1. To inform e-commerce strategy, the most significant influences are those of the immediate marketplace of the micro-environment that is shaped by the needs of customers and how services are provided to them through competitors and intermediaries and via upstream suppliers. Wider influ- ences are provided by local and international economic conditions and legislation together with whatever business practices are acceptable to society. Finally, technological innovations are vital in providing opportunities to provide superior services to competitors or through changing the shape of the marketplace. Strategic agility The capacity to respond to these environmental opportunities and threats is commonly referred to as strategic agility . Strategic agility is a concept strongly associated with knowl- edge management theory and is based on developing a sound process for reviewing marketplace opportunities and threats and then selecting the appropriate strategy options. See Mini Case Study 2.1 for an excellent video introduction to the principles of strategic agility. The e-commerce environment Strategic agility The capability to innovate and so gain competitive advantage within a marketplace by monitoring changes within an organization’s marketplace and then to efficiently evaluate alternative strategies and then select, review and implement appropriate candidate strategies. from MORE THN and have complete editorial control, freed the content by using a non-restrictive Creative Commons licence throughout the site and allowed it to become part of the fabric of social networking by providing countless ways to share, bookmark, recommend, rate and comment. We also made sure the site was easy to use, accessible and effective at interacting with search engines. And of course we give it daily in-depth, engaging, original content so our audience will always find a new topic to add to their online conversations. We launched the site just a couple of weeks before the big flood events last year. When the floods hit we published an article on how to best prevent flood damage and make a successful claim. It shot up to position one on Google for the search ‘flood advice’. Even now, over a year later, it sits comfortably at position three, just below the entries from the environment agency and direct.gov. The site is clearly delivering its stated goals of being eminently useful and creating long-term engagement with the brand. It’s constantly developing as a result of user feedback, broadening the topics covered and providing the types of content and serv- ices its increasingly numerous audience find useful. It is really taking on a life of its own. And all the while, it is delivering a branded experience to the thousands of people who decide to spend the time of the day in conversation with MORE THN. Source: Econsultancy 2008 QA: MORE THN’s Roberto Hortal Munoz on comparison sites, 8 August. www.Econsultancy.comnews-blog366073q-a-more-th-n-s-roberto-hortal-munoz-on-comparison-sites.html

Chapter 2 E-commerce fundamentals

58 Mini Case Study 2.1 Professor Donald N. Sull is an Associate Professor of Management Practice on the Strategy and International Management faculty at the London Business School. In the first video tutorial, ‘Fog of the Future’ on strategic agility visit www.ft.commultimedia and search for ‘London Business School’, he asserts that traditional management models of creating a long-term vision are flawed since our knowledge of the future is always imperfect and marketplace conditions are changing continuously. Rather than being the captain of a ship surveying the far horizon, analogous with the top-down model of strategy, the reality for managers is that their situation is more akin to that of a racing car driver on a foggy day, constantly looking to take the right decisions based on the mass of information about their surroundings coming through the fog. He believes that having a clear long-term vision, particularly where it isn’t based on environment analysis isn’t practical in most industries. Instead he says that companies should ‘keep vision fuzzy but current priorities clear’. He gives the example of the failure of Microsoft to respond sufficiently fast to the growth of the Internet. In a second video tutorial, ‘Strategic Agility’, he explains the basis for strategic agility. He explains that all knowledge of the future is based on uncertainty, but that managers must act now so they need to put in place US Marine Corps-style reconnaissance missions as an army would in order to make their battle plans. He gives the example of Dell, explaining how they spend relatively little on research and development, but are instead constantly probing the marketplace, trialling new ideas with multiple probes into the approach. He stresses the importance of finding anomalies in the marketplace where it doesn’t appear as expected and these may repre- sent learnings or opportunities. Detailed customer insights and business performance are necessary to iden- The Marine Corps demonstrates strategic agility Part 1 Introduction Figure 2.2 Professor Donald Sull of London Business School talks about strategic agility Source: www.ft.com