University Business Plan: Austric E-commerce Strategies and Analysis

This business plan outlines the strategy for Austric, an e-commerce company specializing in gardening products. The plan includes a detailed line of business description, focusing on the domain and nature of the products (gardening gloves and pots) and the warehouse management. It analyzes the purpose of introducing e-commerce, highlighting the benefits of creating target communications and overcoming geographical limitations. The marketing plan covers target audience segmentation, competitor analysis (Nursery and Garden Supplies, Gardening 4 Kids), and advertising strategies. The revenue model discusses setup and maintenance costs, including web hosting options like Google and Amazon, and projected income. The plan also addresses website design and customer interaction, emphasizing the importance of customer care and a user-friendly online experience. The plan also includes segmentation of the target audience based on geographic, demographic, and psychographic factors. The competitors' weaknesses are also discussed, and strategies for gaining competitive advantage are highlighted. The advertising strategies emphasize the importance of an attractive website and excellent customer service.

Running head: BUSINESS PLAN ASSIGNMENT
Business Plan Assignment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
1.
Line of Business:............................................................................................................................2
1.1 Domain:.................................................................................................................................2
1.2 Nature of Product:..................................................................................................................2
2. Purpose of Introducing E-Commerce:.........................................................................................3
3. Marketing Plan:...........................................................................................................................4
3.1 Target Audience:...................................................................................................................4
3.2 Competitors:..........................................................................................................................5
3.3 Advertising Strategies:...........................................................................................................7
4. Revenue Model:...........................................................................................................................8
4.1 Setup and Maintenance Cost:................................................................................................8
4.2 Income:..................................................................................................................................9
5. Website Design:.........................................................................................................................11
Bibliography:.................................................................................................................................16

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1. Line of Business:
1.1 Domain:
The name of the organization is ‘AUSTRIC’. The domain name selected for the
Organization is austric.org.au. The domain name is available.
1.2 Nature of Product:
Austric is known to be a small e-commerce company which is specialized in selling two
kinds of gardening goods like gardening gloves and gardening pot. The website aims to purchase
different gardening goods from different suppliers and after that, it is stored in the warehouse
(Majumder et al. 2018). One of the biggest plus point of this e-commerce website organization is
all about selling products which are stored in the warehouse. The product needs to packed and
shipped to most of the customer after purchase. For ensuring the perfect condition of the given
product, there is a need for such great care at the instance of storing the products (Mandel 2017).
This organization makes use of certain steps for better management of the warehouse.
Labelling products for easier management: The organization aims to labelling its
products so that it will reduce the effort at the instance of packaging and shipping.

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Sorting Products considering the demand: Considering the sufficient kind of marketing
skills, Austric needs to focus on gardening gloves and gardening pots which are in higher
demand (Pearce and Pinto 2018). Some of the products are seen a large number of sales in the
whole year, there is need for giving priority to the inventory management.
Training Employees: Moving from packaging along with getting products which are
ready for the process of shipping. There is need for some additional staff required for running
much efficient warehouse system.
Cleaning the warehouse at regular time Interval: Austric aims in cleaning the website
at regular interval, which ultimately aims in reducing the time for accessing and retrieving
different products.
2. Purpose of Introducing E-Commerce:
Ecommerce can be defined as the mode of buying and selling of different goods or
service by making use of internet platform (Garín-Muñoz et al. 2019). There is a need for
transfer of both money and data which help in executing the transaction. E-commerce is all about
sale of some of products through online platform. There are merely four models in E-commerce
like business to consumer, business to business, consumer to consumer and lastly consumer to
business. E-commerce will bring huge number of benefits like
Creating Target communication: By making use of information from customer end,
which is provided in the registration form (Sisodia 2016). Using cookies on the computer will
help Austric to get access to lot of customer information. This can be used for communicating
some of the relevant messages.

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Overcoming geographical Limitation: There are a certain number of boundaries in case
of the physical store due to the obstacle of geographical areas (Nkwo and Orji 2018). By making
use of e-commerce website, Austric can do business with its customer on global platform. In
addition, the development of m-commerce on mobile devices has completely dissolved the
different limitation of geography.
3. Marketing Plan:
3.1 Target Audience:
Austric aims in segmentation, positioning and even targeting, which requires the
involvement of certain set of activities (Abou-Shouk, Lim and Megicks 2016). It aims in
determining certain specific groups as customers along with developing products and service for
attracting group. Segmentation is complete division into groups as per the characteristics. On the
contrary, targeting is all about making a choice of particular group which the outcome of
segmentation result (Kanade and Peters 2019). Positioning can be defined as the selection of
marketing mix which stand out to be most suitable for different customer. Austric aims in
providing range of products and services related to electronic goods along with exploiting more
than a single segment. Austric aims in targeting young people who stand out to be Tech savvy.
The age of these kind of people lie in between 15 -30 years (Degenhardt et al. 2018). The people
of these age group stand out to be very much interested in technology. Austric position itself as
the small online organization which aims in analyzing certain number of changes in outside
marketplace.
Type of Segmentation Criteria for segmentation Austric targeted customers
Geographic Region In Australia Only

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Density Both Rural and Urban Areas
Demographic Age 6 and more than that
Gender Both Males and Females
Life Cycle Stages Young, Single, Married, Kids
Occupation Student, professionals and
lastly employees
Behavioral Loyalty Switchers, hard care loyal
Benefits Range of Products,
competitive price
Personal Easy going
User Status Non-user, first time user
Psychographic Social class All social classes, lower,
middle and upper class
Lifestyle Redesigned, explorer
3.2 Competitors:
Two of the well-known competitors of Austric are nurseryandgarden supplies and
gardening4kids. Nursery and Garden is a well-known family-owned business in Queensland
which provides best service, quality of product and price (Carpineto and Romano 2017). The

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organization has been there in the domain of horticulture for the last 25 years. The organization
comes up with passion of matching with right kind of product needed. This makes the overall
experience of gardening much pleasure. The organization has a registered business and trading
name for HT concepts Pty Ltd. The organization asks for payment right after when the purchase
has been done (Mou et al. 2017). The organization is looking for some ways which help in
achieving goals in different areas like gardening, landscape and growing. On the contrary,
Gardening 4 kids were started in the year 2010. This completely owned and operated by Erica
Lovel, mother of four and keen gardener. Erica is completely passionate about gardening for
environment and sustainability. She aims in sharing the passion with most of the children and
even inspires many young people.
Both the organization faces a certain number of weakness in their business-like
Limited distribution channel: In the distribution channel, it is the logistic domain which
lowers the overall cost. The reach is completely affected as the result of weakness in both firm
(Robinson 2017). As a result of outsourcing, some of the global giants like Coles and bay can
easily deliver their products at any location in Australia.
Acquisition Cost: As a result of tough competition in the market and low value in
retention of customer, acquisition cost stand to be high for both ecommerce organization
(Baporikar 2017). It is expected both the organization spends around 10 Dollars for acquiring a
new customer on average basis.
Power in buyer’s hand: The whole industry is flooded with a large number of players,
but the buyers does not have a range of option to choose. Complete switching of cost is not much
less for different customers. It is mainly done so that customer can switch a given service right

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from online retail to another one (Nkwo and Orji 2018). Much similar kind of products will be
provided in the online websites. Both the websites lack products differentiate. The real fight is
seen comes considering the price of product.
Ecommerce has completely change the way of doing business so Austric follow some
strategies for gaining competitive advantage.
Picking up the right audience: With the passage of time, people are becoming much
more dependent on technology (Pearce and Pinto 2018). This merely focus on growing use of the
Internet Technology in the upcoming days. Most of the consumer are focusing on online
shopping instead of going to physical stores.
Personalization of Website: Austric needs to design website in such a way that it can
target the audience when they visit the website. Developers should put the required on the
website if and only it stand out to be relevant (Garín-Muñoz et al. 2019). There is need for using
images at the required stages, but the user should not overdo it. The overall ease of use comes up
with compatibility of device.
Interacting with Customers: The whole domain of ecommerce stand out to be virtual
where only customers are real (Sisodia 2016). The whole business is operated on selling
gardening gloves and gardening pot, but the customers are paying whole money. It is vital to
have complete knowledge from different customers.
3.3 Advertising Strategies:
It does not matter whether the online store is used for some times as the user is merely
making adventure for e-commerce. Austric can make use of two advertisement strategies like

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Beautiful Store: The very first thing which should be taken into account is that the
website is attractive or not. The complete design of online store stand out to be very much
important as customer will not stay on an ugly website. The purchase decision from user end is
merely made right after the three seconds of website visit (Nkwo and Orji 2018). So, the first
impression of website stand out to be very much useful. If the customer does not like the
website, then they would not buy anything and even won’t come again.
Care of Customers: The point should be noted that customer care stand out to be another
vital point for attracting different users. Austric needs to understand the point that there is no
kind of better promotion like satisfied client. It is the duty of the organization to make the
experience of buying at this online store a memorable one (Abou-Shouk, Lim and Megicks
2016). If Austric wants to attract new client for their business, then they need to provide reply for
different comments and inquires. Timely response stand out to be important aspect for the
overall success in the zone. Customer care stand out to be an important criteria for success of
business. Austric needs to be nice, competent and much helpful as it will help in attracting most
of customers. The point should be understood that mouth of marketing stand out to be very much
important.
4. Revenue Model:
4.1 Setup and Maintenance Cost:
Web hosting stand out to be a service which help the different firm and individual to
easily post the web page on the internet (Kanade and Peters 2019). Web hosting service
providers can be stated as a business which provides certain number of technologies and service
needed for website. Two of the popular website hosting platform are

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Google web hosting: It stand out to be cheapest among the big three e-commerce
platform. Google cloud platform stand out to be pricing model which is much more than the
extra cost which is mentioned by hosts. Google charges around 44.66 on monthly basis where it
offers the customer with 3.75 GB of hosting solution (Degenhardt et al. 2018). If the user
provides extra 10 dollars, then they can an extra space of 4.25GB. As per many reviewers,
Google completely wins the war in terms of pricing and performance among the three providers
of big cloud.
Amazon Web Hosting Pricing: Amazon comes up with free web hosting which does not
have most of the features. Amazon web services stand out to be flexible as per the pay-as-you-
model for most of its cloud infrastructure service providers (Carpineto and Romano 2017). For
most of the business which does not want to commit on the large chunk of budget.
Among the two stated domain, Google stand out to be the best domain as wins the war
with respect to price and performance among some of the big cloud providers. On an average
basis, the overall upfront cost for a site of both launching and design. The total cost of website
development for Austric stand out to be at 5000 dollars (Mou et al. 2017). The routine cost of
maintenance for website ranges between 35 to 70 dollars per month.
Category Employee
wages
Email Rent Insurance Utilities Advertising
Cost
(Dollars)
2500 200 800 300 700 500

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4.2 Income:
Total Cost for the project
Planning for
implementation of cleaning 1250
Conduction of cleaning
activity 3750
Total Cost for the project 5000
Year of
Project
year 0 year1 year 2 year 3 year 4 year 5
TOTAL
S
Net economic benefit $0.00
$5,500
.00 $6,800.00
$7,500.
00
$8,000.
00
$8,200.
00
Discount Rate 8% 1 0.9259 0.8573 0.7938 0.7350 0.6806
PV Of Benefits $0.00
$5,092
.59 $5,829.90
$5,953.
74
$5,880.
24
$5,580.
78
NPV of all BENEFITS $0.00 $5,092
.59
$10,922.5
0
$16,87
6.24
$22,75
6.48
$28,33
7.26
$83,98
5.06
One Time Costs $5,000
.00
Recurring Costs $0.00
$100.0
0 $100.00
$100.0
0
$100.0
0
$100.0
0
Discount Rate 8% 1.0000 0.9259 0.8573 0.7938 0.7350 0.6806
PV Of Recurring Costs $0.00 $92.59 $85.73 $79.38 $73.50 $68.06
NPV Of All Costs $5,000
.00
$5,092
.59 $5,178.33
$5,257.
71
$5,331.
21
$5,399.
27
$31,25
9.11
Overall NPV $52,72
5.95

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5. Website Design:
Home Page:

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Shop Page 1:

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Shop Page 2:

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Contact Page:

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policy, 43(1), pp.100-111.

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