American Online Case Study
Q1: The major explanations to the reason why AOL was so successful in the commercial online industry comparing to its competitors CompuServe and Prodigy are as follows:
· AOL offered the unique and board range of features such as Online Community, Computing and the like, so their services are relatively differentiated
· AOL kept good relation with its customer because of the easy access to AOL’s online service which only required to have a personal computer, a telephone line, and a computer, and also reflected in AOL’s rate structure which was the easiest for consumers to understand and anticipate, relative to its competitors
· The bargaining power of AOL with supplier is achieved by making strategic partnership with American Express, and so on; and completing its acquisitions of Internet software developers, along with AOL’s growing membership base, in order to strengthen its new interactive services industry by means of pursuing a number of initiatives.
· The threat of new enchant is low, since there is not much service providers, like AOL, acted as middlemen between thousands of content providers and millions of customers, which provided lucrative profits prior to 1995.
Q2: There are several crucial changes happened in the commercial online industry in the year of 1995 and after:
· With the advent of the Internet World Wide Web and the entrance of Microsoft Network, content providers had substitution distribution channels that offered greater control over their products
· Under the background that the migration of proprietary services and content to Web sites, the exclusive offerings of AOL was declining, thus it was likely reduce the market share of AOL in the industry and subsequently posed negative effect on its profitability
· Since everyone with a PC was his/her own publisher, customers would sign up for an Internet on-ramp service provided by other companies and they were tend to use the other companies’ browsing software to surf the world’s
· AOL offered the unique and board range of features such as Online Community, Computing and the like, so their services are relatively differentiated
· AOL kept good relation with its customer because of the easy access to AOL’s online service which only required to have a personal computer, a telephone line, and a computer, and also reflected in AOL’s rate structure which was the easiest for consumers to understand and anticipate, relative to its competitors
· The bargaining power of AOL with supplier is achieved by making strategic partnership with American Express, and so on; and completing its acquisitions of Internet software developers, along with AOL’s growing membership base, in order to strengthen its new interactive services industry by means of pursuing a number of initiatives.
· The threat of new enchant is low, since there is not much service providers, like AOL, acted as middlemen between thousands of content providers and millions of customers, which provided lucrative profits prior to 1995.
Q2: There are several crucial changes happened in the commercial online industry in the year of 1995 and after:
· With the advent of the Internet World Wide Web and the entrance of Microsoft Network, content providers had substitution distribution channels that offered greater control over their products
· Under the background that the migration of proprietary services and content to Web sites, the exclusive offerings of AOL was declining, thus it was likely reduce the market share of AOL in the industry and subsequently posed negative effect on its profitability
· Since everyone with a PC was his/her own publisher, customers would sign up for an Internet on-ramp service provided by other companies and they were tend to use the other companies’ browsing software to surf the world’s