Fen-Hui Lin & Yu-Ting Hsiao
Like a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes:
the Yahoo Kimo Super Mall
(Received Sep 12, 2014; First Revision Oct 31, 2014; Second Revision Dec 17, 2014;
Accepted Dec 23, 2014)
Case*
A press release dated May 27, 2014 from Yahoo Kimo
announced that the e-commerce deputy general manager, Jacky Wang, will be promoted to the position of
e-commerce general manager as of June 1. Because
Yahoo Kimo has been the largest portal and e-commerce
website for almost a decade in Taiwan, the news was
like a severe earthquake that soon spread throughout
the internet. As Jacky watched the influx of mobile
messages of congratulations, his mind was already
pre-occupied with the strategies and plans to integrate
the three e-commerce platforms of Yahoo Kimo:
e-Auction, Shopping Center and Super Mall, and to
generate an operating synergy in the new era of mobile
commerce. Recalling the time when Jacky became
the chief operating manager of the Super Mall that
had been suffering from bad revenues for months
since its opening, closing the Super Mall was being
seriously considered by the executives of Yahoo
Kimo. Jacky adopted a whole new strategy: let the
Super Mall become the e-commerce total solution for
those well-known and established brick-and-mortar
businesses. In four years, the Super Mall has become
the most lucrative, generating the highest profits
among the e-malls in Taiwan. Step by step, Jacky was
ready to lead Yahoo Kimo e-commerce toward the
next level of mobile commerce.
Yahoo Kimo Super Mall
The Super Mall was established in November 2008
and by April of the following year it was able to
replace the existing e-mall named the “Shopping
Pass.” Then it was confronted with a great crisis when
RakutenIchiba and PCstore scored a resounding success in the e-commerce segment of the e-mall platform in Taiwan. The following will divide the operating duration of the Super Mall into three periods: (1)
its beginning, (2) it being the e-commerce solution
for physical businesses, and (3) its moving toward the
O-to-O new era.
Fen-Hui Lin is a Professor of Department of Information
Management, National Sun, Yat-sen University.
E-mail: fenhui.lin@gmail.com
Yu-Ting Hsiao is a Postdoctoral Fellow of Genomics of
Research Center, Academia Sinica.
1. The Beginning
Back to the year of 2009, the Yahoo Kimo
e-commerce business had three platforms: e-Auction,
Shopping Center and Shopping Pass that were characterized as C-to-C, B-to-C and B-to-B-to-C, respectively. E-Auction had the largest market share when
compared with other operators and was directly run by
Yahoo Kimo. The Shopping Center was an e-retailer
outsourced to Friday.com that was later to be merged
into Yahoo Kimo. The third e-commerce platform,
Shopping Pass, was run by eDynamics. However, because its performance could not meet the expectations,
in April 2009 it was replaced by Super Mall operated
by Yahoo Kimo. At this time, the Super Mall had 387
e-stores on the website but was confronted the competition from the PCstore and RekuteIchiba with their
5400 e-stores and 750 e-stores, respectively.
In the early stages of e-Commerce in Taiwan,
people were familiar with the business models of Cto-C like eBay or B-to-C like Amazon. Most of brickand-mortar businesses did not understand e-commerce
at all and only played the role of product providers
for e-retailers. Moreover, they were quite hesitant to
take the step in the e-auction direction. Therefore,
e-auction had become a playground only for internet
players who started from C-to-C as an individual seller
and then moved up to become a company seller with
their business operations and efficiency. In order to
provide those successful sellers with better transaction services, Yahoo Kimo developed the Super Mall
with safer transactions, more payment options, more
convenient shipping and delivery policies for its
customers and other support systems.
Unfortunately, PCstore and RekutenIchiba were
already occupying better positions in the e-mall market. The comparison among these three platforms is
listed in Table 1. As a late player in the e-mall arena,
the Super Mall had to deal with the disadvantage of
charging a higher annual fee and had a fewer number
of e-stores. In addition, the Super Mall had set strict
regulations for e-stores violations of which would attract penalties. All these factors did not help the Super Mall to attract more e-stores nor enhance the
prevailing situation.
Jacky took over as Super Mall director in 2009
and was immediately confronted with the challenge
from executives: “shall we keep the Super Mall?”
Jacky considered the “free” policy adopted by Yahoo
Japan to compete with Rekuten and said: “It is like
Management Review
Vol. 34 (Apr 2015), 157-164
Table 1
During the period of 2008 to 2009, the fee comparison among
PCstore, RekutenIchiba and Yahoo Kimo Super Mall
PCstore
RekutenIchina
Yahoo Kimo Super Mall
Entrance fee
Annual fee
30,000 NTD
3,000 NTD
15,000 NTD
36,000 NTD
Transaction fee
2%
Members information
No
15,000 NTD
36,000 NTD
6.25% / 5.25% of member /
nonmember expense
Extra cost
Customer Analyses
e-stores
(2009/04)
No
Yes
No
5,400
750
387
2.5% or 5%
No
Source: Shop123 (2014).
Table 2 Well-known brick-and-mortar stores that
joined the Super Mall (from 2011 to 2013)
Year
2011
2012
2013
Brick-and-mortar Stores
Hanshin
Department Store
Dollars Outlet
Mall
Watsons Personal Care
Stores (Taiwan) Co,. Ltd.
Emphasis Jewellery
(Taiwan)
Hearts on fire
Toys “R” Us
YCYF
The Grand
Hotel
BMW-shop Taiwan
Ganso
Digital Kingstone
Co., Ltd.
Uwood
The Ambassador
Hotel
Taipei Leechi
Source: Yahoo Kimo Super Mall.
while you break a leg, I would cut off a hand in order
to win the market. Yahoo Japan offered everything
free, including the entrance fee, annual fee, and transaction service fee.” At that time, Yahoo Kimo was the
largest website in Taiwan with the highest traffic flow.
The free policy might be able to attract many e-stores
within a short time. However, executives of Yahoo
Kimo did not approve of the idea. Jacky was also
concerned that the free policy would exhaust most of
their human resources in recruiting new e-stores while
only a few would left to provide e-commerce training
and services for the already existing e-stores on the
Super Mall. Is there another way to win for Super
Mall? Before entering the e-commerce, Jacky had been
in the brick-and-mortar businesses for years and understood the profound anxiety of those physical businesses when facing the e-commerce monster that
seemed so different from the other forms of channels
that they have previously met. Jacky targeted the
prestigious brick-and-mortar establishments as the
potential e-stores. He analyzed that those big sellers
of e-auction started from nothing because the platform charges very low entrance fees and cheap transaction costs. The nature of their business being cost
sensitive, they were hesitant to pay for another platform like Super Mall, not mention that Super Mall
charges were more expensive than the other e-malls.
On the other hand, the prestigious brick-and-mortar
stores have already been used to the physical store
costs such as house rent, clerks, utilities, etc. What
they care about is whether the store can bring in customers and revenues. Jacky had the confidence that as
long as Super Mall can bring e-commerce revenues
for those brick-and-mortars, the platform charges of
Yahoo Kimo should not really be a concern to them.
158 Management Review, April 2015
2. Providing e-Commerce Total Solutions for Physical Businesses
2.1 Consumer Behavior is Changing
Jacky set a goal to recruit fifty prestigious brickand-mortar stores to the Super Mall and reached
about half of his target by the end of 2013 (see Table
2). Although the goal was not completely met, whenever the Super Mall adds one well-known company,
such as Watsons, Cosmed or Toys R Us, it attracts
other brick-and-mortars or even some e-auction big
sellers that had gone away to re-join Super Mall. Jacky
thought that Super Mall needed to have a famous department store to complete the store portfolio of a
shopping mall. He went to Kaohsiung for more than
twenty times in two years and finally persuaded the
CEO of Hanshin Department Store to organize an
e-commerce team and open an e-store on Super Mall
in April 2011. Hanshin became the first department
store to adopt the e-commerce solution provided by a
platform like Yahoo Kimo. In the beginning, customers came from all possible cities in Taiwan. Then during the Hanshin annual sale in December, a surprise
finding was that the largest customer group was from
Kaohsiung area. It implied that when customers can
purchase the annual sale items online, they would not
bother to go to the department store to line up for the
premiums. It provided the evidence for Jacky’s belief
that is always to act on what customers really liked
instead of on what the business operators liked to do
which may even be disliked by the customers.
Jacky uses three aspects of rhetoric to convince
the brick-and-mortar stores to transfer to e-commerce.
Table 3
The e-store numbers and revenues for
PCstore and the Super Mall
e-store numbers
2009
2013
Revenues
2009
2013
PCstore
5,000
15,000
PCstore
1.4 billion
2.7 billion
Yahoo Kimo Super Mall
200
4,000
Yahoo Kimo Super Mall
Unavailable
4 billion
Source: Yahoo Kimo Super Mall.
2.1.1 The life style has changed in the same way as
customer shopping behavior. People nowadays spend more time on exercises and the
pursuit of a healthier life style. For example,
more people are involved in sports activities
such as Marathon or long distance biking.
The trend also indicates that people spend
more time on the internet and less time on
brick-and-mortar store shopping. In addition,
while e-commerce provides more product
options, easier price comparisons and convenient delivery modes that can save everyone’s
time when compared with store shopping enabling them to engage on other fun or leisure
activities. The brick-and-mortars cannot just
blame the economic depression for their decreasing revenues. They should aggressively
consider how to adopt the e-commerce shopping option with its more time efficient approach.
2.1.2 Working hours becomes the limitation for
workers who shop in brick-and-mortar stores.
Jacky used an example to persuade Watsons’s CEO to open an e-store on the Super
Mall. Miss Chang who is a pink-collar employee who occupies a small room upon the
upper floor of Watson’s very expensive store
right on Zhongxiao East Road in Taipei. Miss
Chang fills all the target customer characteristics of Watson’s. However, she has never
stopped by Watson to purchase any of its merchandise. Because her working time is parallel with the Watson’s store operating time,
whenever she leaves for work or comes back
from work, Watson’s door is always already
closed. How can she purchase from Watson?
Jacky further elaborates on the rationale that
the retailers can no longer see the 2-D map
to find a store location according to the residence density. Instead, they should refer to a
3-D map for their retail businesses. Jacky
said: “the third D is TIME. The brick-andmortar stores can provide extended shopping
services through e-commerce for those people who cannot shop at the brick-and-mortar
stores due to the limitations of time and geographic distances.
2.1.3 Yahoo Kimo brings in the internet traffic:
many brick-and-mortar stores had established
an independent e-commerce website for the
company but bring nothing in because of the
lack of internet traffic. Jacky suggested that
those brick-and-mortars can keep their business websites and guide their customers to
make their purchases on their Super Mall
e-store. Moreover, the brick-and-mortar
store can also attract the internet shoppers
drawn by Yahoo Kimo’s internet flow. Some
brick- and-mortars are concerned that their
competitors are also on the Super Mall. Jacky
explains that the same problem is also present in the physical stores too because competitors also have stores in the same neighborhood especially in the downtown area. That
the clustering of similar stores generates a
bigger pie effect, gradually attracting more
customers. This also happens in the internet.
2.2 e-Store Counseling
The Super Mall provides a counselling program for new entrant e-stores. In the beginning, there
is a three-and-half day class on e-commerce and then
each e-store is assigned a consultant for three months
to answer all the questions that the e-store may face
on their e-commerce problems. Jacky would try his
best to persuade the brick-and-mortars to organize an
e-commerce team that is dedicated to the e-commerce
instead of part time workers who have to work on
e-commerce together with other job requirements of
the business. Moreover, large brick-and-mortars might
organize a bigger team to handle the new e-commerce
business with the Super Mall. When they join the
Super Mall, because of their unfamiliarity with EC
know how, Jacky said: “Sometimes we have to get involved even in those companies’ internal affairs. For
example a ten-person EC team, how many of them
should work on the design or the shipping and handling?”The high involvement counseling enables the
Super Mall to work out a tight cooperation relationship with these e-stores that eventually becomes a
support system when Yahoo Kimo steps into the mobile commerce and the O2O marketing.
Table 3 summarizes the e-store numbers and
revenues of PCstore and the Super Mall for 2009 and
2013. The average e-store revenue of the Super Mall
in 2013 is estimated to be about seven to ten times
that of the PCstore. The change policy in 2009 turned
out to be one in the right direction with two implications: (1) the more the e-store earns, the more the
Like a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes 159
Super Mall earns, too. In 2013, the transaction fees
charged from the e-stores was the main revenue
stream for the Super Mall because the entrance fee
and the annual fees constituted about 13% of the yearly revenues of the Super Mall. (2) The higher annual
fees when compared with the other EC platforms (see
table 1) had become an exit door for those e-stores that
cannot earn profits. Although the number of e-stores
would not increase quickly, the Super Mall can maintain the service quality with the available counseling
resources.
2.3 Free Shipping Services and the Cooperation
with the Super Store Chains
The transaction data showed that the lowest
purchases usually happened on Fridays. One reason is
that people don’t want to stay at home on the weekend to wait for the parcel delivery. Another problem
was that e-stores always added the shipping charge
upon the purchases no matter how much the customer
purchased. Super Mall then held a campaign with
“Free shipping on orders over 800 dollars and picking
up of the parcel from a nearby super store.” After the
campaign, many e-stores got used to providing free
shipping services. In addition, the super store chain
saw the new opportunities to cooperate with Yahoo
Kimo because the picking up of parcels brings more
customers to stop by at the super stores.
2.4 Super Mall Is a Co-competition Platform
The Super Mall provides many resources to help
e-stores grow in the e-commerce arena. The over 4,500
e-stores on the Super Mall also face severe competition. Popular merchandise can be promoted according to the website mechanism to the front page of the
Super Mall and earn more customer’s notices that
might result in more purchases. However, the unpopular merchandise is soon overwhelmed by hundreds
of thousands of desirable products. Every e-store needs
to provide the hottest or the most popular products of
their brand to attract their customers and generate
revenues. On the other hand, if most e-stores only use
the EC platform as a clearance venue for off-season
inventory, the vicious cycle will push customers away
from the Super Mall.
2.5 A Successful Case: Hanshin Department Store
It took Jacky twenty round trips from Taipei to
Kaohsiung in order to persuade the CEO of Hanshin
Department Store to join the Super Mall. Hanshin
Department Store is the largest and most well-known
department store in the southern part of Taiwan. It
opened a branch department store in Jingmei, Taipei
only to close it after years of unsatisfactory performance. The CEO who is from Japan had seen how the
brick-and-mortar department stores in the country
generally declined but that the e-commerce had grown
significantly. In order to extend the market from southern Taiwan toward the northern part, he agreed to join
the Super Mall in 2011 after twenty meetings with
Jacky. Manger Nicole Liu of the Super Mall was assigned as the project manager to work with Hanshin.
160 Management Review, April 2015
2.5.1 Hanshin EC team: Hanshin had already played
a role in a value chain is similar to the Super
Mall. They were the channel used to sell for the
product providers. While the CEO of Hanshin
was determined to join the Super Mall, an EC
team with about ten persons was considered
as a replication of the organizational structure
of the Super Mall with product managers, customer service, information management, design and advertisement, etc.
2.5.2 Standard operating process: Nicole helped the
Hanshin EC team to build the SOP for procedures before and after the transactions. Hanshin
developed a parallel EC platform that collected all the product information from vendors
and then connected with the database of the
Super Mall.
2.5.3 The Super Mall provided the training programs for the Hanshin EC team members and
vendors.
2.5.4 Nicole would accompany the Hanshin EC
team in recruiting the vendors from the department store to join the selling on the Super Mall.
Sometimes, Jacky would accompany the CEO
of Hanshin to meet some prosperous vendors,
such as Mode Marie, to convince them to join
the Super Mall.
2.5.5 The EC policy of Hanshin:
A. The hot merchandise: In a department store, the
floor managers do not need to know what are
the hottest merchandises of each vendor or brand.
However, the product managers in Hanshin EC
team have to find out what are sold the best for
each brand or vendor. On an EC platform, every vendor or provider should offer their best products so that when the internet shoppers come
and see, they then get attracted. Otherwise, Nicole
said, “internet shoppers will leave quickly and
be gone forever, and might never come back
again.” Nicole was concerned with a situation
where vendors or product providers perceive the
EC only as the place to sell off-season goods or
outdated stocks. This does not work because the
customers see it and won’t pay for it.
B. The pricing: Hanshin keeps the same price on
both the physical store and the internet.
C. Promotion: Hanshin has three annual sales in
April, October and December on both the physical store and the Super Mall. Hanshin also
imitated “Yahoo’s one-day special” and would
choose some popular merchandise as the oneday special to attract customers entering the
Super Mall.
D. e-Coupons: Hanshin gives e-coupons through
its Facebook Page or its website. Some of them
even have up to a 50% discount.
2.5.6 Cooperation: The EC team of Hanshin continues growing to more than twenty persons.
Product managers of Hanshin and Super Mall
have weekly meetings on the issues of operations, promotions or data analyses and interpretations, in addition to planning for special
event sales or holiday sales. For example, the
planning for “double 11” event (November
11 Sales) started in September and the vendors of Hanshin needed to prepare the proper
inventories for the sale.
3. Toward O-to-O Marketing
The strategy of recruiting substantial brick-andmortar stores allows the Super Mall to become the
most profitable e-mall in Taiwan. Jacky follows two
steps towards enabling mobile e-commerce. The first
is to build a LINE page that grew quickly to accumulate three million fans by the end of 2013. The mobile
fans reacted to the Super Mall promotion sales with a
lot of enthusiasm that it was able to generate ten
million dollars of revenues in only a three-hour sale
activity. The second is to issue an app. Yahoo members can use the app to make a purchase in the Super
Mall simply by scanning the barcode or QR code of
the merchandise that they want to buy whether they
stay at home or shop in the brick-and-mortar establishments. Jacky thinks that the tight cooperation between the Super Mall and many substantial brickand-mortar stores has become a privilege for Yahoo
Kimo to break the ground for the O-to-O marketing.
With mobile commerce, customers can purchase online
even while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores or redeem e-coupons while purchasing in the physical stores.
3.1 Competitors: PChome develops the thirdparty payment application to integrate clicks
and mortars
The Legislative Yuan has passed the bill for the
third-party payment on January 16, 2015. It can fill
the gap for the transactions not supported by other
payment systems. For example, there are those young
consumers who are not yet qualified to be issued credit cards. It also makes it more convenient for those
buyers on the e-auction to transact even with small
payments. The PChome has developed the third-party
payment sytem called PChomePay. Although the transaction amount was less than one billion NT dollars in
2013, the amount is expected to grow to 10 billion
NT dollars in only one year. Moreover, it can provide
overseas services to attract foreigners to sell on the
e-commerce websites of Taiwan. The PChomePay also
provides the service that enables people to pay for
their utilities. The goal is to allow consumers to pay
for virtual transactions as well as the physical consumptions to link the consumer’s daily lives between
the clicks and mortars (Chen and Chang 2014).
3.2 Internet Advertisers: The O-to-O layout of
Open Life
Open Life that started in September 2011 with
a capital of about seventy million dollars has been the
largest service providers of bonus point exchange and
e-gift certificates. Their recent goal is to provide the
O-to-O total solution for the brick-and-mortars. In its
early stages, Open Life has signed more than one thousand stores or businesses in a joint loyalty program
that has more than two-hundred thousand members
where consumers can collect and redeem the bonus
points of Open life through the consumption in those
stores. Open Life adopts the technology of iBeacon to
provide the location based on in-store promotions.
Members can earn extra bonus or free-gifts while stopping by an appointed place or buying a product or
brand.
4. Next Challenge
The mobile commerce and O-to-O marketing
will integrate the virtual and physical channels. New
services associated with new opportunities shall create
a new war for E-commerce. It is a whole new challenge for all the e-commerce operators or players. Jacky
explains that the brick-and-mortars were used to
compete in pairs. For example, 7-ELEVen vs FamilyMart, Carrefour vs RT-Mart, or ShinKong Mitsukoshi
vs SOGO. However, e-commerce sells everything, so
that “brick-and-mortars used to hate the internet,”
Jacky adds. He also makes the comment that “the
brick-and-mortars aim to attract customers to walk
into their stores, while the e-commerce establishments
like their customers to stick to the internet.” For the
new era of O-to-O marketing, the real challenge is to
provide a seamless shopping experience to integrate
the brick-and-mortars and the internet as the clicks
and mortars.
Teaching Notes
1. Introduction
This case describes how the Super Mall has
changed the e-store recruiting strategy from e-auction
big sellers to substantial brick-and-mortars as their
e-commerce total solution and then progress toward
the new era of mobile commerce and then to O-to-O
marketing. There are two teaching goals: (1) The introduction of the B-to-B-to-C platform operations; (2)
How the strategy change has caused the adjustment of
the business model. The case is suggested to be taught
in the classes of information management, e-commerce,
internet marketing and strategy management.
2. Discussion Questions
Question 1. What difficulties did the Super Mall face
during the early stages?
Question 2. Does the B-to-B-to-C platform possess
the property of network externality or the winner
takes all? In 2009, the PCstore had over 80%
market share, how can the Yahoo Super Mall
overtake the PCstore with the advantage of
“winner take all”?
Like a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes 161
Table 4 The comparison among PCstore,
RekutenIchiba and Super Mall (2009)
RekutenIchina
PCstore
Entrance fee
30,000 NTD
Annual fee
3,000 NTD
Transaction fee
Members
information
Customer Analyses
e-stores
（2009/04）
2%
Win
Win
15,000 NTD
15,000 NTD
36,000 NTD
36,000 NTD
6.25% / 5.25% of member /
nonmember expense
No
Yes
Win
Win
2.5% or 5%
No
Extra cost
No
5,400
Yahoo Kimo Super Mall
Win
750
No
387
Source: Yahoo Kimo Super Mall.
Question 3. While the Super Mall has changed the
e-store recruiting strategy, how is the business
model affected?
Question 4. Using the SWOT model, analyze how
the Super Mall is developing O-to-O marketing.
3. Discussions
3.1 Warmup (10 minutes)
The instructor can ask the students to briefly
describe the characteristics of B-to-B-to-C, or share
their purchase experiences on the Super Mall. If there
are students have work experience in the e-commerce
companies, ask them to speak their thoughts about
this case.
3.2 Quetion 1.
What difficulties did Super Mall face in the early
stages?
This question is for the students to reflect on
the case content. According to Table 1, the instructor
can draw on the black board to compare the three
platforms (see table 4) and then let the students talk
about the problems that the Super Mall faced in the
early stage. The following are the possible answers:
(1) Super Mall is a follower without the advantages of the pioneer or the first mover.
(2) The e-store number is less than a-tenth of the
PCstore; moreover, the annual fee is ten times
less than that of the PCstore.
(3) The lower fees or free policy are not a consideration for the executive of Yahoo Kimo.
(4) Except for the strategy change described above,
what are other possible solutions that students
can figure out for Super Mall to overcome the
come-from-behind situation?
3.3 Question 2.
Whether the B-to-B-to-C platform possesses the
property of network externality or the winner
takes all? In 2009, the PCstore had over 80% of
the market share, how can Yahoo Super Mall
162 Management Review, April 2015
overcome PCstore with the advantage of
“winner takes all”?
The Super Mall is a two-sided marketplatform
with customers and e-stores. More customers on the
Super Mall will draw more e-stores to join; on the
other hand, more e-stores with more product options
will attract more customers to shop on the Super Mall.
This is called the cross-sided network effect.
PChome and Yahoo have been the two largest
e-commerce websites in Taiwan. When the Super
Mall started operations, the PCstore that was the
e-mall of PChome had e-store numbers that was ten
times that of the Super Mall’s e-stores. Considering
the cross-sided effect, the PCstore would draw more
internet shoppers because of the overpowering
number of e-stores.
However, it was possible for Super Mall to
overcome the com-from-behind situation. Because
Yahoo Kimo had the highest traffic flows in Taiwan,
if the Super Mall can decrease its service fees or even
offer a free policy, the Super Mall might be able to
attract many more e-stores to join and compete with
PCstore. According to Eisenmann, Parker, and Alstyne
(2006), the price subsidies can be considered to grow
the one side market quickly. Using free or low fee
policies to attract customers of “A side”, while A side
customers grow quickly, it would also attract “B side”
customers to join. The platform can make profits by
charging the B side customers. Therefore, as long as
the e-stores are abundant to attract customers, more
customers do more purchasing so that the Super Mall
can realize the earning and profits. However, the
executive of Yahoo Kimo does not agree with this.
Jacky saw another possibility to get rid of the
price competition, by changing the recruiting target
on the brick-and-mortars to provide them with an
e-commerce total solution. According to the case description, the strategy and the execution make Super
Mall the most profitable e-mall in Taiwan.
3.4 Question 3.
While the Super Mall has changed the e-store
recruiting strategy, how is the business model
affected? Table 5
Business Model
Client segment (e-store)
The change in business model
Cost structure
Old Strategy
e-auction big seller
Providing better support and service
for e-stores
Needing little counseling or coaching
resources
Recruiting from e-auction sellers
Entrance fees, annual fees, transaction
fees
Recruiting costs more than coaching
Key activities
Recruiting, counseling in the beginning
Key resources
E-auction platform helps sellers
succeed
Partners
Big sellers, e.g., Tokichoi.scom
Value proposition
Client relationships
Channels
Revenue Streams
Change strategy
Substantial brick-and-mortars
Providing e-commerce total solutions
Needing a comprehensive counseling
program into e-commerce
Recruiting from the brick-and-mortars
Entrance fees, annual fees, transaction
fees
Coaching costs more than recruiting
Recruiting and persuasion, personal
counseling and coaching
Yahoo’s front-page advertisements and
e-commerce coaching programs
Substantial brick-and-mortars, e.g.,
Hanshin Department Store
3.5 Question 4.
3.5.4 Threats
Using the SWOT model to analyze how the
Super Mall develops O-to-O marketing.
A. Yahoo, the global company: Yahoo had been
through many rough years before 2012 until
Marissa Mayer became the CEO in July of 2012.
Around the time, Jacky had been promoted from
the director of Super to be the vice president of
the e-commerce department, and became the
president at 2013. The global operations of
Yahoo indeed affected Yahoo Kimo in Taiwan.
Moreover, the internet technology has advanced
very quickly so that the website business needs
to invest on new technology to take advantage
of new business opportunities. The performance
of the global Yahoo has also been an influent
factor to Yahoo Kimo in Taiwan.
3.5.1 Strengths
A. The brand and traffic of Yahoo Kimo: Yahoo
Kimo has been the highest traffic website in
Taiwan for years.
B. The cooperative relationships between Super
Mall and the brick-and-mortars: Super Mall
has dedicated resources to coach those brickand-mortars to operate in the e-commerce
arena. As stated in the case description, the
Super Mall even gets involved into the teaming
management or the company counseling issues.
Those deep and tight cooperative relationships
can be the concrete base for Yahoo Kimo to
develop O-to-O marketing.
3.5.2 Weaknesses
A. Lack of innovative O-to-O marketing services:
e-coupons are the major tool used to lead customers from online to offline. It is not new. The
serious problem is the inconvenience for the
customers.
B. Competitors on mobile commerce: mobile commerce is a whole new internet commerce business platform and model. 91mai.com has developed apps and websites as a total solution
for mobile commerce. Although it has not yet
become a threat to Yahoo Kimo, the possible
competitors or killer applications might overthrow the e-commerce market in the blink of
an eye.
B. The software or hardware barriers: most of the
brick-and-mortars are not ready for the O-to-O
marketing because of the extra cost entailed to
install the software or the hardware in the stores,
not to mention the training of the clerks to get
familiar with the technology (Oliveira and Martins
2011).
C. O-to-O technology: iBeacon is the most well
known technology to support the in store shopping positions. However, the layout cost is expensive that it tends to slow down the business
application.
3.5.3 Opportunities
In the last five minutes, the instructor can help
students make a summary for today’s discussions,
There is no dominant leader in Taiwan: Although mobile commerce has been around for years;
however, there is no “killer application” on the market yet. While the small screen of the smart phones
add incredible convenience to the phone users; however, it is not easy for customers to search for goods
and then make a purchase.
4.1 Super Mall is changing the e-store recruiting
target from e-auction big sellers to substantial
brick-and-mortars to offer a total e-commerce
solution because of the lack of e-commerce
operation knowhow.
4. Conclusions
Like a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes 163
4.2 The strategy change needs a supporting plan.
In this case, the critical resource is to provide a
deep counseling program for the brick-andmortars to learn the operations of e-commerce.
Some companies even need advice related to
their organizational problems.
4.3 The cooperation with the super store chain is a
milestone for e-stores to absorb the shipping
costs. In addition, the super store chain has
started learning that cooperation brings more
customers into the stores.
4.4 Super Mall steps into the mobile commerce era.
REFERENCES
Chen, Yi-Shan and Hsiang-Yi Chang (2014), “Mobile
Electronic Payment, the Digital Wallet is Here,”
CommonWealth Magazine, 548(5), 150-154.
Eisenmann, Thomas, Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall W.
Van Alstyne (2006), “Strategies for Two-Sided
Markets,” Harvard Business Review, 84(10), 92.
Oliveira, Tigao and Maria Fraga Martins (2011), “Literature Review of Information Technology Adoption Models at Firm Level,” The Electronic Journal Information Systems Evaluation, 14(1), 110121.
Shop123 (2014), “Comparison Shopping Websites in
Taiwan,” (accessed May 20, 2014), [available at
http://www.shop123.com.tw/website_module_de
tail.php?website_module_classify_sn=93&websi
te_module_sn=72].
164 Management Review, April 2015