Virtual Vineyards Internet Marketing

Virtual Vineyards Internet Marketing

Thesis Statement

The future, Virtual Vineyards should not only focus on the attractive value of the new IT but also the special needs of an on-line marketing strategy.

Introduction

This paper focuses on analysis of Virtual Vineyards (VV)'s online successful experiences. The paper is well structured in three major parts. In the first part, the paper firstly outlines competitive advantages. Meanwhile, the organizational structure and culture of VV are addressed. In addition, the paper shows the key factors that VV should take into consideration in marketing. In the second part, the customer interface of VV and channel factors affected VV will be discussed in detail. The final part gives some recommendations for VV's operation in the future, and evaluation of its successful performance (Christopher, 2001).

Corporate Perspectives

Competitive Advantages

Virtual Vineyards is a pioneering direct marketer of wines on the Internet. The Internet has dramatically changed the commercial wine industry's traditional three-tier system of distribution: winery to wholesaler to retailer to consumer. In terms of e-tailing, Virtual Vineyards has achieved competitive advantages as below (Krowczyk, 2001):

Better Customer Relationship

EC enables the learning about customers due to its ability to record every event in which a customer asks for information about a product, buys one, requests customer service, etc. Through these interactions, the needs of the customer are identified and will feed future marketing efforts. The most popular option is email used by customers to communicate with the firm and other customers. Through electronic mail and other mechanisms, Virtual Vineyards is able to establish a better and more inter-active relationship with its customer base at low cost (Kerr, Scott 2000).

Advanced Technology

According to Olson, the founder of Virtual Vineyards, the core competency of Virtual Vineyards is the technology. There is a staff of 15 in Virtual Vineyards; however, they are technical staffs with advanced Internet technical skills. These skills would include Active Server Pages development, Java, JavaScript, Enterprise Java Beans, Dynamic HTML, Flash, database web-enablement, Internet security or Internet systems architecture (Heng, Christopher 1999). In addition, Virtual Vineyards used the standard encryption software, SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and highly sophisticated encryption technology to assure customers that credit card purchases via the Internet are secure. Virtual Vineyards made efforts in getting into the retail business by taking fully advantages of advanced technology (Haapamaki, 2000).

Online Brand Building

Virtual Vineyard provided detailed, rational information about its offerings to build up brand awareness. Its web site serves as a signal to current and prospective customer by motivating customers with an information/image-rich communications message (Greenberg, 2000).

First-Mover

Virtual Vineyard was the first mover that entered a niche market for specialty labels and quality wines. The niche market holds 20% in total market share. For Virtual Vineyards, premium wines--scarce and hard-to-find vintages that sell well when customers are given a wealth of information--are a commodity tailor-made to be sold on the Internet. VV's position of market dominance meant it could charge higher prices for wines (Gause, Edward 1999).

Good Content

Content is the design, text and graphical information that forms a web ...