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September 18, 2005

Week 3 lecture: The competitive landscape

In today’s class, we’ll look at a few real world examples that will help you get your head around the issues you’ll address in your final project.

Case studies

A. KansasCity.com

The goal: To get media outlets throughout the metro area to work together to drive traffic and build something bigger than any individual outlet could drive.

Kansas City Star was at the center

Pulled in TV, Radio and other groups. But over time, the portal unraveled.

Compare

KansasCity.com 2000

KansasCity.com 2005

B. BostonWorks.com

Notice the list of partners...

http://bostonworks.boston.com/

Common threat: Monster.com.

Seacoast Online (an Ottaway paper) promotes Boston Works on its jobs site

C. Knoxville News Sentinel and WBIR TV

PrepXtra-- News Sentinel
PrepXtra -- WBIR

GoVolsXtra -- Knoxville
GoVolsXtra -- Memphis

D. New Century Network

From Business Week article: "Started with $1 million each from Knight-Ridder, Tribune, Times Mirror, Advance Publications, Cox Enterprises, Gannett, Hearst, Washington Post, and New York Times, New Century seemed an entrepreneurial dream.
The Internet had just opened to the world, creating vast new competition for readers--and for the advertisers that pump $40 billion into newspapers. But it also gave newspapers a chance to capture national accounts that favored the one-stop-shopping convenience of TV and national magazines."

E. TBO.com

F. Aggregators

Oodle

So in summing up, here are key questions we should be asking in these situations:

  1. What is the goal of your partnership? What is the “win-win” for each side, and how will you define success?
  2. In entering the partnership, what are your risks? Could you end up giving a competitor an edge? Is there a danger of confusing your audience or diluting your marketing message?
  3. How will the partnership function? Who will give, who will take and how will that occur?
  4. What incentive does each partner have to remain in the partnership and ensure that it succeeds?
  5. What is your exist strategy? If the partnership doesn’t work out, how do you extract yourself from it with minimal impact on your existing business.

Click here for your lab assignment ...

Posted by Bob Benz at September 18, 2005 03:57 PM

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