The Eharmony Competition

eHarmony’s major competitors are Match.com, Chemistry.com, and Yahoo! Personals. Its biggest competitor is Chemistry because of the emphasis on long-term relationships ultimately ending in marriage. Match focuses on people who are looking to date, but they carefully avoid references to marriage. Match has a large overseas market, which is an advantage over eHarmony. In 2006, Match launched Chemistry to compete on a better level with eHarmony, because the fact that Match focuses on short to medium-term relationships makes it harder for them to become a serious competitor to eHarmony. Match realized that consumers who were looking for serious relationships were more likely to pay for memberships. A major distinction between Chemistry and eHarmony
This feedback was used to improve the quality of future matches. Chemistry has even tried an advertising campaign against eHarmony, with the tagline, “Who knows why eHarmony has rejected over a million people looking for love? But at Chemistry.com, you can come as you are.” This campaign got no reaction out of eHarmony. In the future, Chemistry is likely to increase advertising and continue to compete with upcoming feature of eHarmony. Yahoo! Personals isn’t much of a threat to eHarmony. One competitive edge Yahoo has over eHarmony is that users can browse a few personals for free before deciding to pay for a membership. In 2004, Yahoo launched a new service using relationship and personality tests to match individuals to compete with eHarmony. It cost more than Yahoo’s regular service, but was not very successful due to lack of resources behind the business. I don’t believe that there is very much that Yahoo! Personals can do in the future to become a larger competitor of eHarmony. Right now it is not much of a threat, and their attempt to become a more substantial competitor of eHarmony was somewhat of a
The fact that Chemistry.com does not reject any potential new members gives them a competitive edge. This is an option that eHarmony is considering, but is not too sure on how that would affect the high levels of marital satisfaction. Another reason why Chemistry is such a large competitive threat is because of Match’s presence overseas, which could make it easier for Chemistry to be rolled out globally. One of eHarmony’s options is to expand globally, but if they don’t do so soon, Chemistry might already have taken over that market. eHarmony is still number one, but if significant changes or advancements are not made, Chemistry could wind up being right next to