dc.description.abstract | Online dating is a growing trend because it breaks through the constraints of location and time in helping people to look for a date; it creates opportunities for meeting and dating people that otherwise would never have been possible. The market for Taiwanese dating websites is a highly competitive one, having multiple platforms with each serves its own niche market.
This leads to great interest among researchers to analyze the business models of the participants. Accordingly, the motivation of this study is to examine how different dating sites create differentiated business models.
Specifically, this case study aims to analyze the business model of the leading dating website – www.i-Part.com in order to understand the company′s sustainable competitive advantage in the industry. By analyzing the constituent factors of its business model, the key success factors to its success are visible.
Findings are summarized as follows:
1. i-Part′s Business Model
(1) Customer Value Proposition:
Targeting the “dating service” niche market.
(2) Profit Formula:
Its revenues are primarily from a membership fee, and gaining cost advantages through economy of scale.
(3) Key Resources:
It focuses on researching and innovation capacity, a large number of members, brand equity, cross-industry alliance, and OTC (over the counter) financing.
(4) Key Processes:
Its interactive mechanism of dating, meeting the demands of women, attention to the dating safety, and pluralistic consumption.
2. i-Part′s Key Success Factor
(1) Dating websites are satisfying a timeless and huge need.
(2) The market positioning strategy is clear.
(3) Continuous innovation to deliver its unique customer value proposition.
(4) Identify the key profit mode.
A successful business model needs to be accommodating a large potential market and be providing a strong customer value proposition as a competitive basis. Then, the key resources and key processes are integrated to find a profitable model for the customer value proposition. This study concludes that i-Part meets the above establishing conditions, listed below:
First, there is a high customer demand in the online dating market.
Second, i-Part′s value innovation laid the foundation of its survival and development.
Third, i-Part masters the key profit, and finds its lucrative profit formula.
Keywords: business model, key success factor, on line dating web site | en_US |