Dynamic shift: Tapping the world’s largest social website
BlueEX is one of many companies growing with the number of facebook users.
KARACHI:
The growth and popularity of facebook has paved the way for young entrepreneurs, with technological expertise, to grab a slice of this rapidly growing market – which is likely to define business models in the social media landscape.
Pakistan with over six million facebook users is 26th in the list of countries where facebook users are based. It, therefore, offers scores of business opportunities in online retail market.
Companies like blueEX – a subsidiary of Universal Freight Systems – offer a good case study of how retail businesses can tap the rapidly growing online retail market by stretching beyond a facebook fan page.
BlueEX’s business model has almost all the ingredients needed to capitalise on growing facebook subscribers. It is designed around Cash on Delivery (COD), focuses on rural consumers and facilitates more than 200 brands such as Apple to deliver their goods to end-users entirely from facebook.
The company had a clear understanding of where the online retail market was going, according to director of corporate strategy and finance Imran Baxamoosa. It, therefore, designed a business model to provide a unique shopping experience to consumers – particularly those in rural areas – with the help of facebook.
A recent IBM study – that involved 1,700 plus marketing officers from 64 countries and 19 industries – revealed that majority of the world’s top marketing executives recognise a critical and permanent shift occurring in the way they engage with their customers. The study also said this shift requires new marketing approaches, tools and skills to effectively reach customers.
According to another IBM study – a survey of more than 28,000 consumers – shoppers are looking for more personalised shopping experiences and are even willing to share details with their favorite retailers.
Companies like blueEX, beliscity.com, homeshopping.pk, symbios.pk, libertybooks.com and shophive.com have earned great success by providing customers with more personalised shopping experience and delivering products at their doorsteps. In order to expand further, these businesses can’t ignore rural consumers – that account for more than 60% of the population.
“We have put in a lot of time studying the retail trends in Pakistan,” BlueEX director of corporate strategy and finance Imran Baxamoosa said adding that “as well as developing our COD (Cash on Delivery) technology which helps us catalogue, and reconcile cash handling down to a science.”
According to Baxamoosa, rural consumers are comfortable with COD for many don’t even have credit cards for online transactions – something that helped the COD model click as monthly shipments increased to 5,000 in 2012 against 250 in 2009.
BlueEX tackles online retail by three departments: Courier, digital media or social influence marketing and information technology.
Once a sale takes place, he said, their facebook app iCheckout automatically controls inventory, places an order and forwards it to blueEX. The company then picks up the product from vendor or blueEX’s warehouse – if the vendor stocked supplies with blueEX’s – and delivers the product to the end user.
Online retailers are greatly benefiting from the growing number of facebook users, there are strong signs for further growth thus a bigger market for businesses using facebook to sell their products.
According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, more than 20 million Pakistanis are online. The six million facebook users – of which 5.19 million are over 18 years of age – are not even half that total. Moreover, one million new users created their facebook account between August 2011 and January 2012 – a significant indication of the potential that facebook-oriented businesses can still exploit in the country.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 10th, 2012.
The growth and popularity of facebook has paved the way for young entrepreneurs, with technological expertise, to grab a slice of this rapidly growing market – which is likely to define business models in the social media landscape.
Pakistan with over six million facebook users is 26th in the list of countries where facebook users are based. It, therefore, offers scores of business opportunities in online retail market.
Companies like blueEX – a subsidiary of Universal Freight Systems – offer a good case study of how retail businesses can tap the rapidly growing online retail market by stretching beyond a facebook fan page.
BlueEX’s business model has almost all the ingredients needed to capitalise on growing facebook subscribers. It is designed around Cash on Delivery (COD), focuses on rural consumers and facilitates more than 200 brands such as Apple to deliver their goods to end-users entirely from facebook.
The company had a clear understanding of where the online retail market was going, according to director of corporate strategy and finance Imran Baxamoosa. It, therefore, designed a business model to provide a unique shopping experience to consumers – particularly those in rural areas – with the help of facebook.
A recent IBM study – that involved 1,700 plus marketing officers from 64 countries and 19 industries – revealed that majority of the world’s top marketing executives recognise a critical and permanent shift occurring in the way they engage with their customers. The study also said this shift requires new marketing approaches, tools and skills to effectively reach customers.
According to another IBM study – a survey of more than 28,000 consumers – shoppers are looking for more personalised shopping experiences and are even willing to share details with their favorite retailers.
Companies like blueEX, beliscity.com, homeshopping.pk, symbios.pk, libertybooks.com and shophive.com have earned great success by providing customers with more personalised shopping experience and delivering products at their doorsteps. In order to expand further, these businesses can’t ignore rural consumers – that account for more than 60% of the population.
“We have put in a lot of time studying the retail trends in Pakistan,” BlueEX director of corporate strategy and finance Imran Baxamoosa said adding that “as well as developing our COD (Cash on Delivery) technology which helps us catalogue, and reconcile cash handling down to a science.”
According to Baxamoosa, rural consumers are comfortable with COD for many don’t even have credit cards for online transactions – something that helped the COD model click as monthly shipments increased to 5,000 in 2012 against 250 in 2009.
BlueEX tackles online retail by three departments: Courier, digital media or social influence marketing and information technology.
Once a sale takes place, he said, their facebook app iCheckout automatically controls inventory, places an order and forwards it to blueEX. The company then picks up the product from vendor or blueEX’s warehouse – if the vendor stocked supplies with blueEX’s – and delivers the product to the end user.
Online retailers are greatly benefiting from the growing number of facebook users, there are strong signs for further growth thus a bigger market for businesses using facebook to sell their products.
According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, more than 20 million Pakistanis are online. The six million facebook users – of which 5.19 million are over 18 years of age – are not even half that total. Moreover, one million new users created their facebook account between August 2011 and January 2012 – a significant indication of the potential that facebook-oriented businesses can still exploit in the country.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 10th, 2012.