International Business - Why Google Failed in China

Question1. Opportunity identified. What is it? How did the student spot it?  

With the development of the Internet, shopping online becomes more and more popular and brings more convenience for consumer. However, it is a pain for many buyers when it comes to buying online for beauty products that we cannot touch, smell, and try the products. Therefore, it often ends up with dissatisfaction after purchasing the full-size products. In addition, women love to experience new products, but if they try to keep up with the frequency of new release items, they will go broke.

As a frequent online shopper, I also face this trouble. I have had purchased cosmetics online many times and many products do not suit me even though I have read others’ reviews and feedbacks before deciding.

From my experience when I buy from online cosmetics in the US, at some value of an order, they will give you some samples of products. Therefore, you have chance to try some new products. However, it is still costly, since you have to place an order of around $50 to receive free samples (Sephora and Ulta). Then, I came up with the idea that why we do not sell samples at affordable price. This offering could solve both problems, then now consumers have opportunity to test the product before buying a full-size and also trying latest launch at reasonable price.

Question 2. Brief explanation of the offering/solution. 

The business is an online shopping website offering customers a monthly box contains the samples from beauty brands at reasonable price, so consumers have opportunity to try the products to test whether the color, the smells or the ingredients suits them or not. Additionally, beauty lovers could update with the latest trend in the industry without spending a lot of money.

Every month, customers would receive 5 beauty samples of mid-end and high-end brands. The samples would range from skin care, color cosmetics to styling products. The entire samples are in the deluxe size and consumer will not know which are in the box until they receive and unbox it.

The business will curate the samples to put in the box for customers. To send the box that satisfies the needs and demand of customers, we provide them a form to fill out their beauty profile, so that we can understand them more and know what they are looking for.

The beauty box would be sold at 179,000 VND for monthly subscription or 895,000VND for 6 months subscription (1 month free) or 1,611,000VND yearly (3 month free).  For the monthly subscription, the bill would be charged in the 1st day the month and the box would be delivered between 5 days, subscriber could cancel the subscription at any time. For the semi-yearly and the yearly subscription, customers would be billed for the full year and they could only cancel within the first month.

The payment could be made via online banking, money transfer or via COD (Cash on Delivery).MacbookPro        Page 1        7/31/15

Question 3. In order to move ahead with this offering, what questions does the student need to answer?  How will the student find these answers (research methods, applying tools)?  (1 page, 3 marks)

Note: This is not asking for the answers, but rather how the students intend to obtain the answers.

1. Where can I get the products to sell? (Supply)

- Go to the Internet, researching about the beauty brands in Vietnam and then use sale pipeline to became their partners.