E&I_coursework1

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
1
Contents
Intorduction..................................................................................... 2
Concept of this business............................................................... 2
What is About the Fit................................................................... 2
The model of “About the Fit”...................................................... 3
The implementation of “What about Fit”...................................... 4
Distribution of this business ...................................................... 4
Market size ................................................................................... 4
Characteristics of customers ..................................................... 5
Competition.................................................................................. 6
Resource ...................................................................................... 6
Speculation of running cost. ...................................................... 7
The reflection while developing About the Fit. ............................ 8
Reference ........................................................................................ 9

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
2
Intorduction
Although technology has been developed and influenced many aspects of the
society such as transportation and mobile devices, in clothing shopping
industry, it seems that people may not receive enough profit from technology.
As a matter of fact, survey conducted by netvouchercodes.co.uk revealed that
a quarter of people feel annoyed by rude staff when they are shopping.
Moreover, shoppers feel irritated when they find inconsistent sizing (14%)
and small changing rooms (9%) (Coles, 2013). Additionally, Steve Barnes
commented:
"Shopping on the high street has become an increasingly frustrating
event and is no longer seen to be a leisurely activity especially when
customers have to deal with various annoyances." (Barnes cited in AOI,
2013, pp1)
This paper is going to talk about new business that may bring change in the
shopping industry. Firstly it will explain the concept of this business and
how it is like, then analysing how this business would work in the real time.
After that, it will identify how successful it would be and finally end up with
speculation of this business in terms of running cost.
Concept of this business
What is About the Fit
The new model of online clothes shopping, which is called “About the Fit”
would be produced as the website for busy people can enjoy shopping while
being relax at home. This website (Image1) can create an avatar that is
similar as individual customers in terms of the physical proportion.
Therefore, customers can see exactly how would be like to take clothes on the
avatar before purchasing of it.
(Image1)

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
3
How it would be like when customers can take clothes on avatar
Also customers can select the brands that they like as favourite brands in
the side column. About the Fit can provide the information about how much
each clothes is, how much total cost would be (including the delivery cost).
Moreover, customers can access to the websites that sell clothes just in case
when they would like to see how companies work for. Therefore, customers
can enjoy take the clothes that are sold in different brands on the avatar and
find the best combination of clothes that suit them on this platform.
The model of “About the Fit”
According to Innovation Toolbox, there are two different types of innovation.
the table 1 shows the differences between incremental innovation and
radical innovation.
(Table1)

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
4
Innovation toolbox, 2009
This new business can be categorised to incremental innovation because
About the Fit will improve the service and business model by exploiting
existing materials. For instance, our service can be delivered to customers
online through the laptop. The avatar of customers can be created by using
some technologies that have already introduced in the real world. For
instance, the technology that is used in video game (Dark soul, FIFA) can
apply for making avatar 3D. Also the 360 views of avatar and clothes can be
applied by the technology that is used in the official apple website. In
addition, application (Face Swap live) can be used for creating individual
face.
The implementation of “What about Fit”
Distribution of this business
As About the Fit will be used online, it can be categorized as e-commerce.
This channel of distribution supports a supplier to access to consumers all
around the world. However, due to international trade policies and local
disciplines that caused by commerce conducted in foreign countries, it would
be difficult to manage this distribution channel. Also it would be challenging
to keep updating real-time stock figure for consumers (Root, 2016).
Market size
Even though About the Fit would be designed for people who are busy for
working, clothing is commodity so market size of this business can be

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
5
enormous. As a matter of fact, investigation conducted by Land Securities in
2014 revealed that value of the clothing and accessories market is predicted
to be £ 46 million by 2017. Also people ages 15-64 that supply labour for the
production of goods and services in 2014 were 68.7% of population in the
world (World Bank, 2014). In other words, approximately five billion people
can access to the website if they are interested in this. Moreover, According to
statistics conducted in 2015 by Euromonitor (Figure1), global retail
e-commerce will have increased steadily to $1,506 billions by 2018
(Figure1)
Characteristics of customers
Since our company would produce the service in the online platform, it is
necessary to consider the customers who have strong interests about online
store. It was found that consumers who often purchase products more
convenience-oriented. These customers consider convenience is at the top of
list when making purchase decisions (Li, 1999). Additionally, the
investigation conducted in 2012 by the PrestaShop proved that Li’s finding
were still applicable for current online users. In terms of functionality, 91.4%
of users regarded ease of navigation as a crucial point while 91.2% also

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
6
considered fast site load time as the most important aspect. Moreover, in
order to crate high customer experience, easy navigation was found the most
important feature by 37% of those users. Then, 18% mentioned that fast lad
times could lead to a solid customer experience (Shaw, 2012). Based on the
statistics mentioned above, the assistant tool for screening of possible
alternatives and simplifying in-depth comparisons among alternatives need
to be utilizable on the platform, which can lead to attract online customers
and keep them using our service.
Competition
Since About the Fit is the business that is based on existing services, there
might be several competitors such as the official websites that clothing brads
manage, online retail companies (Amazon and Rakuten) and individual
online retailers. Also the service of this business will be operated on the
Internet, which means that the companies that are dealing with business
online can be considered as competitors such as Google. Therefore, this
market can be high competitive In fact, the current investigation conducted
by Deloitte revealed the e-commerce market became increasingly competitive
(Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 2014). In addition, company (Fit.Me) has
developed the same concept of business as companies’ service. However,
unlike Fit.Me, our company will introduce the service to customers directly
not companies as a free website. This means that the targeting customers are
different and our company therefore can become a leading company in the
market.
Resource
About the Fit is business that is composed of intangible and tangible resource.
Intangible resource would be webpage, database, application soft, and
security soft. Tangible resource is place for taking pictures of clothes to create
360 views, clothes and warehouse. When implementing this business, most
things can be done online according to Shopify. However, after starting

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
7
operation, huge place can be needed for engineers to update the website
contents with cooperating with colleagues, for service assistances to answer
the personal questions from individual customers, and also for preserving
clothes that might be taken pictures in order to create a 360 view and
transfer into visual ones. Additionally, this business will deal with massive
data so place for securing the database.
The reflection of new business model
Speculation of running cost.
It is assumed that this business is operated by 15 workers in Chicago, the US.
Mechanical engineering professionals provided document, which was about
the speculation of expense of hiring a mechanical engineer on staff (Table2).
It showed total cost of keeping mechanical engineer with 5-year experience is
$ 10,008.33 per month. In addition to this document, Average annual cost to
rent office space per worker is $7000 in Chicago according to Market Watch.
Moreover, it was stated that Facebook was estimated to spend over $1million
on running electricity. Although new business may not be as large as
Facebook, it might cost $20,000 per month for hosting online service
(Chowdhury, 2012). Speculating total cost of running this business by
considering of information mentioned above, it would be around 280,000 per
month.
(Table 2)

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
8
(Table 3)
The reflection while developing About the Fit.
On the process of developing this business model, there were some aspects
that have been found to be successful and unsuccessful. In terms of designing
the business plan, it was found to be failure. For example, the concept of
business that I thought to be innovative has been already created. This was
caused due to lack of research for our business model and products that are
related to. However, while going through such a failure, there were some
aspects that end up with being successful. The business model was found to

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
9
be not innovative pushed to reconsider our business model in detail. During
the time when thinking about it, many new ideas that seemed to improve our
business. For example, our service can be applied for social net such as
Facebook. Customers can compare their best combination with each other on
the platform and share it with friends on the Facebook. This could be
happened due to my personal characteristic of being high concerned about
searching something new or interesting in daily life.
Reference
Bellman, S., Lohse, G., and Johnson, E. (1999) “Predictors of online buying
behaviour”. Communications of the ACM (42:12) pp. 32-38.
Carter, B, C. and Parsons, S. (2014) “Fashion retail 2014: the future of
fashion retailing in a digital age”. [online]
Available<http://www.landsecuritiesretail.com/media/18900/fashion-insi
ght-report-final.pdf> [Accessed 30 March 2016]
Chowdhury, A., (2012) “The true costs of launching a startup” [online]
<http://www.fastcompany.com/1841912/true-costs-launching-startup>
[Accessed 30 March 2016]
Coles, S. (2013) “What are our top shopping frustrations?” [online] Available
at <
http://money.aol.co.uk/2013/03/26/what-are-our-top-shopping-frustratio
ns/> [Accessed 30 March 2016] AOI pp.1.
Deloitte Touche Tohamtsu and India Provate Limited. (2015) “Future of
e-Commerce: Uncovering Innovation” [online] Available at
<http://www.assocham.org/upload/event/recent/event_1113/Background
_Paper_Future_of_e-Commerce_web.pdf> [Accessed 30 March 2016]
French, S. (2015) “Here’s how much your company pays to rent office space”

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
10
[online]
Available<http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-your-co
mpany-pays-to-rent-office-space-2015-05-27> [Accessed 30 March 2016]
Haubl, G., and Trifts, V. (2000) “Consumer decision making in online
shopping environments: the effects of interactive decision aids,”
Marketing Science (19:1) pp. 4-21
Innovation toolbox., (2009) “Innovation can be incremental or Radical”
[online] Available
<http://www.innovationtoolbox.com.au/why-innovate/innovation-can-be-
incremental-or-radical> [Accessed 30 March 2016]
International Euromonitor. (2015) “Global e-commerce sales” cited in
Atkearney, (2015) “Global retail E-commerce keeps on clicking” [online]
Available
<https://www.atkearney.com/consumer-products-retail/e-commerce-inde
x/full-report/-/asset_publisher/87xbENNHPZ3D/content/global-retail-e-c
ommerce-keeps-on-clicking/10192> [Accessed 30 March 2016]
Li, H., Kuo, C., and Russell, M. G. (1999)“The impact of perceived channel
utilities, shopping orientations, and demographics on the consumeris
online buying behavior,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
(5:2).
Mechanical Engineering Professionals. (2005). “Mechanical Engineering
Professionals' Rates and Fees” [online] Available
<http://www.mechanicalengineeringpros.com/Costs_of_an_Engineer_on
_Staff.pdf> [Accessed 30 March 2016]
Root III, N, G. (2016) “Challenges channels distribution retail businesses”
[online]
Available<http://smallbusiness.chron.com/challenges-channels-distribut

UB: 15014022
MAN4284M
11
ion-retail-businesses-21263.html> [Accessed 30 March 2016]
Shaw, B. (2012) “Six Key Factors to Creating a Successful Online Store
(Infographic)” [online] Available at <
https://www.prestashop.com/blog/en/six-key-factors-creating-successful-
online-store-infographic/> [Accessed 30 March 2016]
Shopfiy. (n.d.) “General business resources” [online]
Available<https://www.shopify.co.uk/resources/general-business-resourc
es> [Accessed 30 March 2016]
The World Bank. (2014) “Labor force participation rate, total (% of total
population ages 15-64)” [online]
Available<http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS/countri
es/1W-JP-FR-GB-XC?display=graph> [Accessed 30 March 2016]

E&I_coursework1

More Related Content

What's hot (18)

Viewers also liked (20)

Similar to E&I_coursework1 (20)

E&I_coursework1