TripAdvisor: The Traveller’s One Stop Shop

23

October

2017

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Founded in 1999, TripAdvisor has become one of the most well known travel businesses in the world with millions of members contributing to the platform every year. As of October 2017, TripAdvisor had recorded over 535 million reviews and opinions, over 415 million monthly average unique visitors, and over 7 million total businesses reviewed (accommodations, restaurants and attractions). TripAdvisor was started with the goal to allow travellers to research and plan their trips using professional reviews sourced by the company. However, it has become much more than this over the past 18 years. TripAdvisor now allows travellers to contribute to a global travel community while providing services that allow customers to: research and plan their trip, compare prices, book through the TripAdvisor site, and gain access to reviews while travelling.

What makes TripAdvisor unique in the online travel business is that it is a full-service platform that aims to create a community of like-minded travel individuals. While other sites like Booking.com or Trivago aim to assist travellers in specific areas like hotels or flights, TripAdvisor has made the choice to become a one-stop shop for all of a traveller’s potential needs. Membership to the site is free and access to content is unrestricted. With millions of reviews and active users, TripAdvisor has become the place to go to plan a trip, which shows strong network effects in play.

Since TripAdvisor does not charge membership fees, it collects its revenue in other ways, such as advertising and acting as an intermediary between consumers and travel businesses, such as hotels. While other travel sites have consolidated their services and built niches in the market, TripAdvisor has taken a different route. Their approach has been to open up their services even more and encourage greater contribution from active members through loyalty and recognition programs. By building up their portfolio of services and membership, TripAdvisor has chosen to diversify their revenue streams so that they are not dependent on just one service to ensure the future of the company. One example of this is in their hotel booking branch of their business where nearly 50% of TripAdvisor’s revenue comes from Expedia and Priceline. While this seems quite risky, this is considerably better than direct competitors like Trivago, which rely on the same two businesses for 80% of their revenue.

Since it was founded in 1999, TripAdvisor has consistently shown the value of free user-generated content both for revenue and consumer value generation. As one of the only full-service travel platforms, it provides a unique and sustainable business model that is globally recognized. With continued growth and added features, it is likely to remain the go-to resource for global travellers.

References:
https://tripadvisor.mediaroom.com/US-resources
http://marketrealist.com/2015/11/tripadvisors-revenue-drivers-largest-revenue-stream/

TripAdvisor in the Age of Platforms Tries the Full-Service Model

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Doctor Did Know Best: The Story of AI in Healthcare

23

October

2017

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Illness and disease have always existed, so it makes sense that medicine has been practiced in various forms since the start of humankind. In the mid-19th century, humans entered into a new phase of “modern medicine”, which was characterized by the scientific breakthroughs in genetics, medical technology, and chemistry, which allowed trained physicians to more accurately diagnose and treat their patients. Since then, progress in the medical field has increased life expectancies and improved qualities of life for many populations around the world.

One of the biggest challenges facing the human population today is the shortage of qualified physicians to take care of the ever-growing world population. In an article published by TheNextWeb.com (2017), it is estimated that the shortage of healthcare professionals worldwide is now over 7 million. Having worked in a hospital in Kenya, I can personally attest to the issues that arise when qualified there is a lack of health education in a certain area. With millions of people without access to a physician or other health education source, issues are missed that could easily be solved with the advancements that we have recently seen in the medical field.

What has been interesting over the past few years is to see how artificial intelligence can play a role in helping to even these numbers. AI has been incorporated into healthcare systems, hospitals, and into patient driven devices that can be used to close the gap between people and the healthcare system. Some of the major developments that have been introduced include: chatbots, virtual assistants, and emotional intelligence indicators, which aim to provide health education, while also identifying patients who may require professional assistance.

While the goal of using AI in healthcare is not to replace healthcare professionals, it is certainly changing patient and physician practices. Not only can AI be used to provide physicians with all of the data and information that they need to make an informed decision on their patient, it also changes the patient population. Recent trends in health AI show that using advanced technologies allows for physicians to see more patients in a shorter amount of time, while also allowing for patient triage (sorting the patients by urgency) before the patient even enters their healthcare providers office. While AI may not be able to produce more physicians, being able to get rid of repetitive jobs while streamlining physician’s time is a big step to solving our medical shortage.

References
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/medicine/modern-medicine.php
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/slideshow/how-ai-transforming-healthcare-and-solving-problems-2017

Artificial Intelligence Will Redesign Healthcare

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Technology of the Week – E-Commerce Platforms

22

September

2017

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The Alibaba Group was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma along with 17 co-founders. It started as a business-to-business portal with an aim to connect Chinese manufacturers with international buyers. Nowadays, it is one of the biggest company platforms in China providing C2C, B2C and B2B services via e-commerce.

 

Alibaba is disrupting the e-commerce industry by introducing a new way of conducting business that focuses more on corporate social responsibility and helping small businesses grow, which is different from many companies who focus on price differentiation and user experience. Alibaba has committed itself to its stakeholders with expansions to their platform that are designed to offer more value to users. Platformization can be seen as the gradual integration of different markets and services with their own respective consumers, wholesale buyers and manufacturers. The traditional business model describing definitions such as B2B, B2C and C2C are united in platformization. This disruptive model is changing the ecommerce industry as incumbent companies struggle to find ways to compete.

 

We can see several effects that are caused by the growing e-commerce economy. Network effects entail the increasing value of a platform when more people begin to use it. The idea is that more users bring more credibility to the platform, which brings in more users. Related platform indirectly benefit from this effect, which is called second-order network effects. The second effect is the Long Tail, of which we explain that product variety on e-commerce platforms increases as marginal costs drop. Niches are brought to the front.

 

The recent trend of e-commerce giants diversifying their platforms to make them stronger, underpins an industry development: platformization, which points out the rise of the platform as a dominant economic model. The paradox is that open e-markets like AliBaba’s lower entry barriers for everyone but the platforms owners themselves.

 

Alibaba has made a goal to have 2 billion customers by 2036 (Weinswig, 2017), which means that one out of four people on the planet would be using, or have used, their platform. This is potentially challenging as Alibaba is still struggling with the “Made-in-China” issue and a lack of brand awareness in foreign markets.

 

The ecommerce industry, as a whole, is also likely to see changes in the coming years.

  1. M-commerce has been rising in popularity and is likely to continue to do so as mobile technology continues to improve (Meola, 2016). E-commerce companies are going to need to develop strategies that take this trend into account or risk having their industry disrupted.
  2. Artificial intelligence continues to be an exciting area of research and could translate into major changes for e-commerce as businesses are able to more accurately target their products to their customers needs.
  3. Technological advancements in the logistics field, such as drone technology, is likely to usher in an age of same-day shipping possibilities. As consumers expect more shipping options, e-commerce companies will need to ensure that they have built out this capability.

From Team 2! Allie, Ana, Bastiaan, and Gudo.

References:

 

Brynjolfsson, E., Hu, Y., and Smith, M.D. 2006. From Niches to Riches: Anatomy of the Long Tail. Sloan Management Review 47(4) 67-71.

(ICFAI), P. B. (2014, November 13). What is Alibaba? Retrieved September 19, 2017, from http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/111314/what-alibaba.asp#ixzz4t7ZOvl1u

History and Milestones. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2017, from http://www.alibabagroup.com/en/about/history

How mobile is playing a huge role in ecommerce. (2017). Retrieved September 22, 2017, from http://www.getnet.co.nz/how-mobile-is-playing-a-huge-role-in-ecommerce

Meola, A. (2016, December 21). The Rise of M-Commerce: Mobile Shopping Stats & Trends. Retrieved September 22, 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-commerce-shopping-trends-stats-2016-10?international=true&r=US&IR=T

Porter, M.E. 2001. Strategy and the Internet. Harvard Business Review 79(3) 62-79.

Ramos, A. A. (2017, May 18). Expand Globally, Using Alibaba’s Ecommerce Ecosystem Strategy. Retrieved September 21, 2017, from https://business.ebanx.com/en/blog/expand-globally-using-alibabas-ecommerce-ecosystem-strategy

Weinswig, D. (2017, June 19). The Domestic Roots of Alibaba’s Global Vision. Retrieved September 22, 2017, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahweinswig/2017/06/16/the-domestic-roots-of-alibabas-global-vision/#296ec6cb5736

Zucchi, C. K. (2014, December 17). How Does Alibaba Make Money? A Simple Guide. Retrieved September 22, 2017, from http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/121714/how-does-alibaba-make-money-simple-guide.asp

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