The Curse of the Dot Com
Over the last few years, we have all seen commercials and other advertisements for all kinds of Internet companies. It started an Internet revolution, including such common things as shopping, stock trading, even entertainment. Recently, however, many have noticed that so many of these once growing companies no longer exist. They filed bankruptcy. Why? Because this new market became saturated, and there was not enough demand to support all of the companies.
Here’s an example; Mother Nature dot com. The company went belly up in 2000, and actually started the trend. We all saw the ads for Mother Nature dot com, they were the ones with all the natural health supplements. The problem was, the supplement trend is still new, and people jumping on the wagon want to have it as soon as possible, and Mother Nature was an online mail order.
Then there’s the most famous belly-up dot com; Pets dot com. Everyone knew their slogan; “Pets dot com, because pets can’t drive.” They had the funny little sock puppet dog as a spokesman. Publicity wasn’t their problem. As a pet owner, I can tell you that when I get something for my dogs, I don’t know what I’ll get before I leave the store. I need to browse the store to know what there is. An Internet site won’t let you just see what’s there, you can’t feel it, or touch it. Sure, that system works well if you know what you want, but what if you’re not sure?
Internet companies are going bankrupt mainly because not that many people like the idea of not seeing, touching, etc., what they bought until a week or more after they bought it. You can see some harm to on site stores from dot coms; it helped Wards to close their doors.
In the article “Where Profit Margins are Hefty, Online Upstarts Muscle In,” it speaks about how there are many companies who have a lot of profit by selling things online and this allows new firms to enter the market to get a piece of that profit. When there is a very large profit margin, new firms want to enter to get that money. The big companies start overcharging and this leads to the new companies offering something better at a lower
Many believe the internet was an over night sensation, that one day, someone invented the internet and it spread in popularity faster than Tickle Me Elmo or the Macarena. Although the internet did have a surge of commercial popularity, with the invention of Mosaic and later with e-commerce, it was created many years ago with the development of military networking technologies. Also, the internet, unlike many pop culture fads of the nineties, will continue to see a growth in popularity and usefulness as a form of media throughout the information age. Sure, the internet became overambitious to the point where many internet start-up companies lost their businesses in the recession of the past few years. The quality of the internet, however, has increased as companies realize that there exists competition and smarter consumers that demand superiority. The internet has taken the world so far in its short commercial life; the future of the internet provides limitless possibilities of a much different future.
When the internet first made an appearance in the business world, outside of government and military use, the term dot.com was introduced. The technical term “.com” is defined as a suffix used to describe a company that uses the internet as a primary or only marketplace for transfer of goods and services. It was being used as a suffix to the several existing web addresses. It only took a few months for .com websites to become the dominant form of business transaction (Simpson & Simons, 1998). The phenomenon behind this story lies in the rapid rise and fall of the dot.com companies and the players, events, and mindsets that accompanied the bubble boom and bust (Simpson & Simons, 1998).
So how does this relate to And Then We Came to the End? The dot-com bubble caused companies to depend on the Internet as they never had before. They found that they needed the Internet for customer bas expansion and marketing or else they would lose their clients. In And Then We Came to the End shows us how major companies that previously flourished experienced mass losses and layoffs in the rush of the bubble. Since the time of the industrial revolution, companies main focus were powerful executives, which changed swiftly with the Internet companies focus on the individual customer. Suddenly, they were losing out to small companies started in people’s own homes. People were getting rich quick, and the dot-com bubble suggested that if a company was to survive they needed to focus on expansion, even if revenue losses were large.
The rapid growth of the internet worldwide in the early 1990s sparked a technological revolution that continues to shape the world we live in today. This boom brought with it the perception of limitless opportunities and success in the "dot com" world. As a result, entrepreneurs of all kinds took to the internet with their ideas. After the initial rush into this new-found gold mine, the advantages of the World Wide Web were apparent to all who came to know and love it. While the success of opportunities appeared to have come to a screeching halt, several entities still continue to make the best of the situation. Today, names such as EBay and Amazon are commonplace in almost every household with a computer and internet connection. But, perhaps even more surprisingly, the name Google has become more than just a silly word with a meaning most people do not know. It represents a story of unbelievable success in a market that did not take kindly to small competitors. Google Inc. is now a major public corporation in the United States, but going back to its inception, growth, and success, we witness a truly compelling story.
Shopping online has started to become the norm in society. It is actually happening faster than anyone predicted. Retailers for the first time since 2014, will generate half their income on the Web. Companies are struggling to keep up with the new trend. I witnessed this first hand and didn’t even realize it. All the radio shacks around town were closing down and I thought that was very strange. I buy a lot from Radio Shack and now there no longer available and I didn’t know why. The article written by Matt Townsend actually mentions Radio Shack. It is because everything Radio Shack has can be bought off the internet. There is no reason to come into the store anymore. This statement from Townsend “The stampede online will only accelerate
Websites can also be set up for potential buyers. On the site, such things as contacts can be listed. Phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses can be shown, as well as fax numbers, for those who do not feel comfortable with new technology.
The presence on the internet is basically about shifting the thoughts of the former business world. It is no longer true that in order to conduct big business, you must be a big business. The internet has virtually evened the playing field in the small vs. big business arena; however, the marketplace is still an increasingly complex division where positioning is key to standing out from the crowd.
Even though the internet has been a catalyst of major change in business issues such as marketing, many people still play old tapes that prevent them from seeing the way things really are.
...e the companies do intense online advertising which might slowly decrease the total revenue of the industry as the higher advertisement cost that government might charge to the industry in the future.
Wray, R. (2005). Boo.com spent fast and died young but its legacy shaped internet retailing. Theguardian.
Ever since internet connection was widely provided to consumers, internet business has grown rapidly and its development also made marketing easily accessible. As a result, countless types of businesses opened on the web and countless numbers of people have been using internet services every day. Meanwhile, not every customer is satisfied with every internet service. Have you had the experience of locating wrong information while you were using search engines like Yahoo' or Google' to look for something? Have you had difficulties separating good information from bad because you had too much result? Maybe Yes'. As a matter of fact, not all internet businesses accomplish their own goal- "to provide consumers with the best service and to maximize a profit". Some businesses made a lot of profit and others failed in a few years with a big loss even though they invested huge amounts of money. Are there any specific reasons why some companies are successful and others not? Why do many big corporations keep failing in internet business even though they have a lot of experience in other than internet business? Although it might appear that the success of an internet business depends on a particular kind of service which a company provides, the real strategy of earning popularity in on-line business actually depends on how well the company manages its web site content to provide the most effective ways to give consumers satisfaction.
Yahoo!’s chances for future success would be greatly aided by diversifying their business plan. Currently, Yahoo!’s chief source of revenue comes in the form of selling advertising. Two areas can be improved here. First, Yahoo! should look to attract more traditional companies and not rely solely on “.com” firms. Secondly, Yahoo! would benefit from another, more stable source of income. One suggestion would be to alter their present format and offer a business suite that provides the simplicity and speed of Yahoo!’s traditional service as well as a professional appearance. Such products as business email, videoconferencing, and other telecommunication tools could be packaged and sold for a flat rate that would provide additional income.
An excellent example is Netflix, which became a huge success because it continued to innovate. Back in 1980s, Blockbuster, a video rental shop chain was a huge hit among the masses where people could rent videos from thousands of available titles by visiting a store nearest to them. Netflix, started in 1997, knew that in order to thrive in the video business world, they would have to adopt a different approach and that resulted in the inception of mail-order delivery system where customers could rent videos from the comfort of their homes, which became a huge hit and resulted in losses for blockbuster which was left for bankruptcy and was bought by Dish network at a bankruptcy auction for about $320 million. Lack of innovation killed
New online retail brand e.g. Amazon, Lastminute.com - Essentially these companies could not have been conceived without the creation of the Internet. New companies sprang up as the Internet began to be adopted. Entrepreneurs were investing heavily in all sorts of start-ups. Some were successes, most were not. [pic]