Etoys Essay Research Paper II Company Mission

Etoys Essay, Research Paper

II. Company Mission; Background/History

The vision of eToys is to create the premier family-oriented destination on the Internet. eToys was launched in October of 1997. eToys was created to offer an extensive selection of products from well known and specialty toy brands, a combination that would be both economical and physically impractical to stock in a traditional store like KBToys or Toys R Us. It came became known as the leading Internet retailer of children.s products, carrying more than 100,000 competitively priced items. Another key feature of eToys is the fact that people can shop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and have instantaneous access to product information, helpful shopping services, and innovative merchandising strategies. Not only does eToys provide toys, but they also provide a number of services to the consumer. They supply gift recommendations by age, relationship, and price specification, child-appropriate gift wrapping, personalized message cards to accompany the gifts, and electronic gift certificates. eToys also provides a birthday reminders service, through which they notify shoppers of a child.s birthday three weeks in advance via e-mail. Through the Wish List service, parents and children can e-mail family members and friends a list of the gifts they would like purchased for them. eToys launched http://BabyCenter.com as a resource for shoppers of infants and toddlers. Another website wholly owned by eToys is http://www.ParentCenter.com which serves as a resource for parents as their children grow beyond BabyCenter.s prime age range. This new parent center site also provides the company an additional high margin revenue opportunity. eToys advertises on major sites such as AOL, Sesame Workshop, Excite, Infoseek, Microsoft Network, Yahoo!, and Lycos. In October 1999, they initiated an international expansion by launching http://eToys.co.uk. Then, in March 2000, eToys launched their BabyCenter.s sister site, http://www.babycentre.co.uk. These sites were designed to meet the unique needs of customers in the UK and will spread across Europe. As of July 31, 2000, EToys had approximately 1000 full-time employees. Looking into the financial future, EToys expects its quarterly loss to narrow from year to year. The company launched a fully integrated holiday marketing program that includes two new television commercials that began airing in late September, a consumer catalog premiering in November, and new or renewed partnerships with Rosie O.Donnell Show, McDonald.s and Cheerios. eToys continues to grow and give Bracken Mortar stores like Toys R US and KB Toys a run for their money through new expansions to their sites and new marketing strategies.

III. Competitive Forces Model

Customers

eToys uses advertising and promotion to target purchasers of children.s products. Their main focus is on mothers. Mothers are considered to be the main decision makers in the purchase of children.s products. They are also strong influences in purchase by friends and family.

Suppliers

eToys carriers over 100,000 children.s products. They also carry more than 750 brands. Some brands that are carried are Barbie, LEGO, and Disney. They also have special brands such as BRIO that are not sold at toy superstores. Along with toys, eToys also carries books, videos, games, software, music, and party goods for those 750 manufactures.

Top Competitors

eToys has three companies that are considered its top competitors. Amzon.com, which was started in July of 1995, is one of the three competitors. They offer products such as free electronic greeting cars, online auctions, millions of books, CDs, videos, DVDs, toys, and games. Amazon.com serves over 20 million people in more than 160 countries.

Another competitor is Wal-Mart, who was founded by Sam Walton. It is considered the number one retailer with about 4,000 stores and online shopping. Wal-Mart is an unavoidable retail force, which knocked Toys R Us off its number one spot for toy retail. Wal-Mart has the ability to offer toys at a discounted price, making it harder for competitors to compete.

The last competitor would be Toys R Us. Toys R Us offers toys, games, sporting goods, and software. It has more than 1,500 stores, websites, and catalogs in which is sells children.s clothes and babies clothes. Toys R US is now restructuring by closing some stores and redesigning other because of its lost in market share to companies such as eToys, Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

New Market Entrants

There are several businesses that are trying to become the number one toy store of the internet. Smarterkids.com is one of them. Smarterkids.com is said to be leading online store for parents with children. The company has thousands of quality educational toys, games, books, software, hand-on-activities, and services from many leading manufactures. Smarterkids.com feels feeding the brain will give its online toy sales some muscle over its competitors eToys, Inc. and Amazon.com, Inc.

Another online store that feels overtime it will be a number one online toy company is Toys2Wish4.com. Toys2Wish4.com was founded in Connecticut. It is a new online toy store that opened December 15, 1999. The founder and CEO, Howard Lawrence, believes that his company brings a unique selection of the world.s greatest toys to the