Woot! a Social Media Phenom
Introduction
The internet is jammed packed with companies pushing products and attempting to find some form of leverage over their competition. WOOT.com (Woot) is a deal site which has the tagline “One day, One deal”; a tagline which for the most part describes them well.
If one searches Google.com for ‘top deal sites,’ the site lifehacker.com comes up as each of the first four hits (excluding the ads). The third hit is titled “Five Best Daily Deals Sites.” This is the category in which Woot belongs. After further inspection, the top five daily deals sites listed by lifehacker.com are: WOOT!, Groupon, LivingSocial, TeeFury, and 1 Sale A Day. Is this pure coincidence that Woot is at the top of the list? What is Woot.com and how are they maintaining and arguably gaining in this genre of daily deals sites? These questions, as well as an analysis of how Woot harnesses social media (SM) in order to gain competitive advantage will be discussed throughout this paper.
Contents
Introduction ii
Driving and constraining factors related to SM adoption in the origination 1
Performance indicators related to SM 2
Impacts of SM in the organization 4
Formulating SM strategy for the organization 6
Concluding comments 9
Works Cited 10
Driving and constraining factors related to SM adoption in the origination
WOOT.com started as a way for Matt Ruttledge, Woot’s founder, to sell off unsold inventory. This inventory was primarily electronics, as Ruttledge ran a wholesale electronics distributor. Rutledge never would have guessed that Woot was destined to be the harbinger site, a new business model for online deal-a-day shopping, meshing bargain shopping and humor. There is also an urgency factor he cleverly infused as well as a limited inventory, which when coupled with WOOT’s splash of humor (Thomas, 2008) became their M.O. (mode/method of operation/Modus Operandi) (askville.amazon.com, 2012).
With
The internet is jammed packed with companies pushing products and attempting to find some form of leverage over their competition. WOOT.com (Woot) is a deal site which has the tagline “One day, One deal”; a tagline which for the most part describes them well.
If one searches Google.com for ‘top deal sites,’ the site lifehacker.com comes up as each of the first four hits (excluding the ads). The third hit is titled “Five Best Daily Deals Sites.” This is the category in which Woot belongs. After further inspection, the top five daily deals sites listed by lifehacker.com are: WOOT!, Groupon, LivingSocial, TeeFury, and 1 Sale A Day. Is this pure coincidence that Woot is at the top of the list? What is Woot.com and how are they maintaining and arguably gaining in this genre of daily deals sites? These questions, as well as an analysis of how Woot harnesses social media (SM) in order to gain competitive advantage will be discussed throughout this paper.
Contents
Introduction ii
Driving and constraining factors related to SM adoption in the origination 1
Performance indicators related to SM 2
Impacts of SM in the organization 4
Formulating SM strategy for the organization 6
Concluding comments 9
Works Cited 10
Driving and constraining factors related to SM adoption in the origination
WOOT.com started as a way for Matt Ruttledge, Woot’s founder, to sell off unsold inventory. This inventory was primarily electronics, as Ruttledge ran a wholesale electronics distributor. Rutledge never would have guessed that Woot was destined to be the harbinger site, a new business model for online deal-a-day shopping, meshing bargain shopping and humor. There is also an urgency factor he cleverly infused as well as a limited inventory, which when coupled with WOOT’s splash of humor (Thomas, 2008) became their M.O. (mode/method of operation/Modus Operandi) (askville.amazon.com, 2012).
With
Cited: Armstrong,/Kotler, 2011. Marketing: An Introduction (10th edition). Prentice Hall. Malzone, Kristen. (July 1, 2010) “Woot’s Up With Amazon” http://www.likeable.com/2010/07/woots-up-with-amazon/ Nations, Daniel Wysocki, Allen F. & Ferdinand F. Wirth, (2001) Strategic Marketing Management: Building a Foundation for Your Future. EDIS Document FE 299, Food & Resource. Economics Department, IFAS, UF. Woot (July 2007) Woot-Off Sale (May 2012) “Woot-Off Sale”. http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/woot-daily-deals/28590.aspx. Retrieved 6-15-2012. Sirzman (April 2010) “Bag of Crap, or should I say Bag of Oh my God!”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WKP0aOobKU. Retrieved 6-15-2012. Sirzman2 (April 2010) “Woot Bag of Crap Item 3 - The Letter (for wootoff 3/26/2010)”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qth4pJLaffQ&list=UUItK5ji2SknbeIeued9_VfQ&index=4&feature=plcp. Retrieved 6-15-2012. Levine, Barry (July, 2010) “Irreverent Woot Retail Site Becomes Part of Amazon”, http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Irreverent-Woot-Now-Part-of-Amazon/story.xhtml?story_id=0010004EEW47&full_skip=1 Alexa.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/woot.com FAQ, http://www.woot.com/faq, accessed June 2012. Shirt.woot, (Febuary 2012) Lilmisssunshine (January, 2010) “I find Woot.com to be entertaining while getting a good deal”, http://www.viewpoints.com/Woot-com-review-d2b8 Shapiro, Aaron Forsyth, Hamo. (November, 2010), “Bottled water has become liquid gold”, available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11813975