Business Idea Assignment: “Student’s Mate” Application Development

Question

Task Description:
Strength of Business Idea: For each item, circle the most appropriate answer

1. Extent to which the idea:

Takes advantage of an environmental trend
Solves a problem
Addresses an unfilled gap in the marketplace

2. Timeliness of entry to market

3. Extent to which the idea "adds value" for its buyer or end user

4. Extent to which the customer is satisfied by competing products that are already available

5 Degree to which the idea requires customers to change their basic practices or behaviors

Industry-Related Issues

Number of competitors
Stage of in ustry life cycle
Growth rate of industry
Importance of industry's products and/or services to customers
Industry operating margins

Target Market and Customer-Related Issues

Identification of target market for the proposed new venture
Ability to create "barrie-ys to entry" for potential competitors
Purchasing power of customers
Ease of making customers aware of the new product or service
Growth potential of target market

Founder- (or Founders-) Related Issues

Founder's or founders' experience in the industry
Founder's or founders' skills as they relate to the proposed new venture's product or service
Extent of the founder 's or founders' professional and social networks in the relevant industry
Extent to which the proposed new venture meets the founder's or founders ' personal goals and aspirations
Likelihood that a team can be put together to launch and grow the new venture

Financial Issues

Initial capital investment
Number of revenue drivers (ways in which the company makes money)
Time to break even
Financial performance of similar businesses
Ability to fund initial product (or service) development and/or initial start-up expenses from personal funds or via bootstrapping

Answer

Introduction
This Business idea assignment considers entity that is formed for performing different commercial activities. A business organisation mainly comprises of group of people working together for attaining the goals and objectives of a business. In order to develop a new business it is significant for the organisation to consider the market as well as customers issues that can either hinder or help the business to grow and reach its zenith. The task will focus on a new business idea that will explain on the different market problems and the issues among customers that can be solved with the help of the business idea. A brief discussion on the proposed model and the critical success factors that has to be considered during the execution if the idea is also discussed.

1. Effective explanation of the customer/market problem that needs solving and/or the reason the innovation is required.
The business idea is to develop an application named “Student’s Mate” that will help the students who travel to abroad in order to complete their studies. The Business idea assignment explores how in the current times it has become very popular among students to travel to different countries in order to complete their education. Studying abroad is a whole new experience for the young students and it is practically very exciting. However, even it seem really exiting, in the real life the students face many problems after travelling to a new country (Wu, Garza & Guzman, 2015). A new country means new types of food, life styles, climates and surroundings. The main problems that the students face after travelling to a new country are finding proper food, genuine and affordable accommodation and transport facilities. These are the three basic requirements of every person out there (Wu,Garza & Guzman, 2015).

All people do not prefer all types of food. As for example is a person is travelling from China to Australia for studying, he or she may not prefer the types of food available at Australia and might want to have Chinese but finds it difficult to find Chinese food options in the country. Another problem is a person travelling to a new country may not find cars or public transports that are new to him or her. Mainly the accommodation that needs to be proper and affordable (Mesidor, & Sly, 2016). This application will serve the students and caters to solve these issues in an efficient way, by finding them their preferable food options, good accommodations and transport facilities.

2. Persuasive argument of the benefits to be generated by the idea.
Students are young people, who might travel to other countries in order to complete their education. However, as discussed above they face several problems such as finding proper food options, good accommodations and transport facilities (Mesidor& Sly, 2016).The idea of the Business idea assignment is to develop a useful and efficient application named “Student’s Mate” for those students who travel abroad in order to complete their education. This efficient application is developed for both android as well as ios operating system, so that it makes is suitable for both apple phone users as well as android users. This application will consist of a registration portal and will designed exclusively for the students. The students will need to register their names, contact numbers, name of the university in which they are going to enroll, the country to which the university belongs, the nationality of the student, and an id number of their respective nationalities. This basic information are required in order to register correctly. The country in which the university is situated needs to be different from the nationality of the student, if not then the student is not eligible for the registration. Business idea assignment assignments are being prepared by our Management assignment help experts from top universities which let us to provide you a reliable business assignment help service.

Once registered, the students will receive some points and these points will help them get discounts when then book accommodations, transports and order food. The students will also receive some discounts when they refer this application to their fellow mates who are in search such convenient facilities. The application will automatically detect the location of the university and hence provide many accommodation options to the students that are situated near the university. The students can choose from these options whichever they prefer. The application will contain authentic and true pictures of the accommodations. The food options are provided in the application as well. This Business idea assignment focuses on how the will also have facilities for online food delivery as the students are very busy with their schedules and need to complete their works on time, so they have less amounts of time to visit the restaurants or food stalls physically. Lastly, transportation facilities will also be provided, in which the students can book personal cabs, share cars (very popular as it saves money and reduces pollution), even book tickets for buses and trains. These facilities will surely prove to be beneficial to the students and will be very convenient.

3. Discussion of the proposed business model

Key partners: The key partners of the application named “Student’s Mate” are application developers, hotels, locals who want to rent their houses, hostels, buses, cabs, food delivery platforms and others (Joyce &Paquin, 2016).

Key Activities: The key activities of Student’s Mate on this Business idea assignment are to enhance their value propositions, provide support to the customers, improve the customer experience, and generate more demands.

Value Propositions: “Student’s Mate” will provide a proper planning with a in depth content of various staying points. It will broadly reduce the risk of individual in an unknown place thus acting as a companion while a student goes out in an unknown atmosphere. Thus, a student can judge various aspects of places from the genuine reviews (Caetano et al., 2017).

Customer Relationships: The major advantages of “Student’s Mate” is its 24*7 chat support. The students get a great list of reviews from the user based on the satisfaction or may be dissatisfaction if caused by any issue during their interaction which would be solved with utter concern.

Customer Segments: The customer segments of Student’s Mate will be the young students who travel to foreign countries to complete their education. The students who travel to foreign countries will be in search of accommodations, food options and travel facilities. The application will target those students.

Key Resources: The key resources of “student’s mate” application is the wonderful content and the broadness of the content. It comes with a deep inventory where a great user data algorithm enhances the user experience and establishing a great global network. This skillfully designed app meets the demands with a great user experience.

Channels: The channels of Student’s Mate are online application, advertisement channels, emails and social media handles (Tuten & Solomon, 2017).

Cost Structure: The cost structure will involve the operational costs such as marketing and sales, content development and technology used and equipment.

Revenue Streams: The revenue of the Student’s Mate application will be generated accommodation revenues, membership costs, transaction revenues and click based advertisements.

4. Critical success factors to be managed during execution of the idea
It is the mission of Student’s Mate to develop their application in such a supreme manner , that it can help the students get their accommodations, food and transportation at ease in the foreign countries where they go for higher studies. This Business idea assignment reviews how these days of globalization and technological advancement, one such application that can fulfill all the needs of the foreign students will be highly acclaimed by them. In order to make this new business idea a grand success there can be number of success factors that together shoulder the responsibility of helping the business attain its mission and objectives. The primary critical success factors are people, strategic focus, operations, finances, and marketing and technology (Rosemann & vomBrocke, 2015).The strategic focus deals with appropriate planning enhanced management as well as good leadership. All the plans should be well formulated to make the business of Student’s Mate much more realistic and acceptable for the students. A good leader is required to provide proper guidance to their employees and in this particular business model; leader has to be technically aware. The leader should know the whereabouts of the e commercial business and the niche technicalities of virtual platforms. Another important critical factor is the people involved in this business. It is worthy to make them trained and must have technical skills too. Operation involves the business process, which has to be technically aligned with the virtual, platform of Student’s Mate. Apart from these, the business must also consider their resources, which incorporates their finances, budget, and other expenses. Since it is, a new business budget allocation should be done carefully. Finally, technology and marketing has to be strong enough to help the business launch and spread its wings on the multichannel platform (Choshin&Ghaffari, 2017).

5. Evaluation of the feasibility of the idea
Before making investments into a new business, it is very important to study the feasibility of the idea that is proposed and make relevant evaluations out of that (Barringer, 2015). The business idea in this case is to develop an application that will run on mobile phones, personal computers, tablets and some other popular gadgets. To develop this application some backend programing needs to be done and this will be done by a software engineer. The application will prove very useful and become very popular among the students as in the present times, many students from all over the globe travel out of their countries to peruse their education.

This application will be very unique as it will provide the students will food options, transportation facilities as well as accommodations. The students will need to download this application for free from a platform and then have to take a membership. As they register themselves, they will have to pay a small amount of money and become a member. The Business idea assignment and application will also have a trail version in which the students register themselves free of cost and try the application for 7 days, if they are satisfied then can become a member a further use it. The members will get many discounts. This application will be very popular and useful for students worldwide and thus it makes the business idea feasible.

Conclusion
The task has successfully developed a unique business idea for solving the issues of numerous students who go abroad to undertake their higher studies. Student’s mate can lend their helping hand in helping them find a home away from home along with food and transportation. The different issues and market challenges that can affect the growth and success of the business have been discussed to give an idea of how a business can be developed and successful run in the global e commerce market. The feasibility of the Business idea assignment and the benefits that can be generated from such business has been discussed too.

References
Barringer, B. R. (2015). Entrepreneurship: Successfully launching new ventures. Pearson Education India.

Caetano, A., Antunes, G., Pombinho, J., Bakhshandeh, M., Granjo, J., Borbinha, J., & Da Silva, M. M. (2017). Representation and analysis of enterprise models with semantic techniques: an application to ArchiMate, e3value and business model canvas. Knowledge and Information Systems, 50(1), 315-346.

Choshin, M., &Ghaffari, A. (2017). An investigation of the impact of effective factors on the success of e-commerce in small-and medium-sized companies. Computers in Human Behavior, 66, 67-74

Joyce, A., &Paquin, R. L. (2016). The triple layered business model canvas: A tool to design more sustainable business models. Journal of Cleaner Production, 135, 1474-1486.

Mesidor, J. K., & Sly, K. F. (2016). Factors That Contribute to the Adjustment of International Students. Journal of International Students, 6(1), 262-282.

Rosemann, M., &vomBrocke, J. (2015). The six core elements of business process management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2017). Social media marketing. Sage.

Varasteh, H., Marzuki, A., &Rasoolimanesh, S. M. (2015). Factors affecting international students’ travel behavior. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 21(2), 131-149.

Wu, H. P., Garza, E., & Guzman, N. (2015). International student’s challenge and adjustment to college. Education Research International, 2015.

Appendix
Business Model Canvas:

Application Development Business Model Canvas