Abstract
Create Happiness is a business idea that is intended to generate income for charitable organizations in order to help people suffering from poverty, diseases, and natural calamities. In the given research, the means to attract such target sources of donation as restaurants, hotels and other enterprises involved into the entertainment industry are going to be considered.
By creating a range of links between the Create Happiness organization and such entrepreneurship chains as restaurants, hotels, Carrefours, 7/11 stores, outfit brands, and other companies of the like, Create Happiness will be capable of improving the quality of life of those suffering.
Introduction
Create Happiness is a business idea intended to generate revenues that would be channeled to charitable organizations in this country. The motivation of this business venture came from the fact that people would always want to get involved in good deeds as a way of achieving self-satisfaction (Kyle, 2008).
This organization will be acting as a marketing unit of charitable organization because the whole idea is to generate revenues for charities. Create Happiness will target corporate bodies within this country in the hospitality industry. We will target hotels, restaurants, car rentals, and supermarkets, pharmacies, outfit brands, etc.
Concept and Vision
Vision
As it has been stressed above, the Create Happiness is going to be focused on the regular provision of marketing services to the target customers. However, it is noteworthy that, unlike traditional marketing companies, the Create Happiness Company is going to promote charitable concepts to the corresponding organizations. Therefore, the role that the company is going to play within the given market will concern selling ideas to other companies.
What the emphasis should also be put on is the target audience. Unlike the rest of marketing companies, Create Happiness is not going to be concerned with people as natural persons; on the contrary, the organization will be targeted at other companies and interaction with legal persons. Thus, it will be possible for Create Happiness to expand and reach out for an entirely new level of business relations.
Concept
The Create Happiness Organization will be aimed at signing an agreement with the Red Cross and creating the premises for the Create Happiness and the Red Cross, as well as its equivalent in the East, the Red Crescent. The company envisions its own path as the mediator between major charitable organizations and the companies that provide hospitality services and the services related to entertainment to their clientele, largely, hotels and restaurants.
The Create Happiness Company, therefore, will also try to engage other potential donors, which are major companies within the entertainment industry, such as hotels, restaurants, etc. The Create Happiness will encourage these potential second-party donors by selling its cards and other company products to them. As soon as Create Happiness signs an agreement with these companies.
Market Analysis
The Create Happiness Company is definitely going to face tough competition, since there are a number of companies providing support to charity organizations and serving as mediators between the entertainment industry and charity. In addition, it is noteworthy that the given market, i.e., the hospitality industry, is, though quite competitive, very attractive in that it is always relevant and that it allows for an interrupted stream of revenues within an entire season.
As the latest researches within the hospitality market promotion show, the domestic demand is growing currently, which means that the prices for restaurant and hotel services are escalating. As the statewide statistics shows, the USA was going to host at least 10 million visitors from China in 2013 (Top 10 hospitality industry trends for 2013, n. d.), which means that the competition rates are going to be very high in the 2014.
The problem of marketing strategy to be adopted is also rather urgent, since major companies in the hospitality industry seem to have succeeded impressively over the past five years (Top 10 hospitality industry trends for 2013, n. d.). At present, it seems most reasonable to consider the power of social networking in promoting the Create Happiness cards to large corporations.
Defining the issues that will be crucial for the evaluation of the Create Happiness Company’s place within the hospitality market, the restaurant and hotel business niche in particular, one must mention that the company will have to evaluate its partners based on such important aspects of their operations as the price per room and occupancy percentage.
However, the aforementioned detail will help define the company’s course as per the choice of possible partners, i.e., the choice between the Hilton chain and the Sheraton Company. As far as the rivalry among the marketing companies dealing with the promotion and support of major entrepreneurships goes, Create Happiness will definitely need an elaborate plan, seeing how the competition rates are quite high in the given sphere.
As the recent market research shows, the number of marketing companies is growing, since new and promising marketing strategies appear. Therefore, it will be necessary to deploy the latest technological advances in order to make sure that they are going to work for the benefit of the company. It should be noted, though, that the hospitality market does have certain issues that may later transform into obstacles.
To be more exact, the need to coordinate the work of the industry departments, as well as cooperate with the partners, has arisen. With the advent of a technological breakthrough, the idea of information management between strategic partners seems quite simple, yet, in fact, because of the massive information flood, it is extremely complicated to control the data stream.
PEST Analysis
Graph 1: Pest Analysis
SWOT Analysis
The Create Happiness definitely has a number of strengths that will help it beat the rivals and become one of the most influential charitable organizations within the current market. However, it is necessary to take into account that the company has a few weaknesses, primarily regarding the technological aspect, and that new opportunities for fighting these weaknesses should be sought.
Graph 2: SWOT Analysis
Competition and Positioning
Apart from a cohesive advertising campaign that will help the company land at the top of the marketing charts, the Create Happiness Organization will need to analyze the current market and come up with a compelling positioning idea, which will help the company fight the rivals efficiently.
When taking a closer look at what makes Carte Happiness different from a bunch of other companies of the kind, one must mention the benefit positioning, which comes as a result of the company’s specific vision.
For instance, in a hypothetic situation when the Create Happiness offers its partnership to Hilton and Sheraton and get support from the former, the company will get its benefit percentage from the people who will find out about the case and consider Hilton a more supportive, charitable and, therefore, trustworthy service to use. As soon as the Create Happiness gains the approval of the donor organizations, Create Happiness will market the idea of cards and card devices to the target audience.
Another crucial parameter that needs to be evaluated before launching the company, the suggested input percentage predetermines the company’s future revenues to a considerable extent.
It should also be born in mind that the Create Happiness will have to file the input tax; seeing how the latter amounts to 7%, according to the latest data, it will be required to have $500,000 of the startup capital at the very least, seeing how the company is going to use the latest technologies in order to promote organizations in highly competitive hospitality sphere.
Key Partners
Our key partners in this new business venture will be charitable organization with known reputation in helping the needy in the society. As stated above, the ultimate goal of this new business venture is to help the needy. Partnering with charitable organization is one of the best ways of achieving our objectives.
The Red Cross (Red Crescent in the East) will be our main partner in distributing the revenues generated from different sources. We will deliver the money to the Red Cross so that it may channel it to the poor and other needy members of the society through its well-established channels.
Key Activities
The first major activity would be to seek approval of Red Cross (Red Crescent) in order for them to become our partners because it will be our main distribution channel.
Our key activities are aimed at seeking partnership from the key distributors; once the latter realize that the Create Happiness Organization will be able to promote the concept of charity among the major enterprises, these organizations will decide to assist Create Happiness in its endeavors.
Our main activities involve the process of assigning up service organizations for participation in our charity business. In addition, the organization will aim at convincing the so-called “normal” donors (the personnel) to not only buy cards, but also promote them to the rest of the target audience.
Value Proposition
According to Hougaard (2005), for a firm’s product to be appealing to the customer, it must have some value that offers satisfaction to its consumers. This is a charitable organization with a sole focus of improving lives of the less fortunate members of the society. Our clients will be the poor members of the society. The donors, including both the personnel and the service organizations, will be our shareholders because they will be financing the projects meant to help these members of the family.
Customer Relationship
To maintain customer relationship with the donors, we will always keep them posted on all the activities carried out using their donations. This will be done through our website and direct phone calls. We will also appreciate their work in our journals as a way of marketing their businesses. This will help in creating loyalty with them.
Customer Segment
It is important to understand that our product is unique in that we do not offer direct products to people, whom we rely on for all our income. We offer a form of satisfaction to the donors who give us money, and material support to recipients who give us the moral desire to continue with our charitable programs.
According to Hopkins (2013), segmentation is one of the most important activities in marketing. The clients that will form the market segment will be Red Cross and Red Crescent, who will further distribute the products to those suffering from poverty, diseases and illiteracy. These are members of the society who need our support in order to get basic needs such as food, clothes, shelter, medical attention, and basic education.
Innes, W. (2006). Charities, non-profits, and philanthropy under the Income Tax Act. Toronto: CCH Canadian.
Key Resources
The activities to be carried out will depend on some specific key resources. The physical resources will include cards and card devices that would be sold to the participating donors, i.e., personnel and organizations. Other physical resources include the periodicals that will be old to the donors, and other members of the society as part of income generation activities.
Human resource will be needed for the purpose of marketing this organization, designing of the cards, receiving and distributing of the cards, and other activities relevant in this project. Financial resources will be needed to facilitate movement and other vital activities of this organization. Sources of financial resources are further discussed in sections below.
Channels
One of the most obvious improvements concerning the methods adopted by the Create Happiness concerns the fact that the donors will not have to use boxes or bank services anymore; buying a card and showing it to a stakeholder organization will be all that they will be required to do.
With a list of the stakeholder organizations provided at the Create Happiness website, the process is going to be simplified considerably. After the customers purchase the card, a particular sum will be automatically taken from their account as a part of a charity program.
Cost Structure
In our business model, it is important to understand the cost structure in order to determine the expenditure. The table below shows some of the main areas of expenditure in this project.
Revenue Stream
This business idea can only be sustainable if it has a clearly defined revenue stream to support its planned activities. It is important to understand that some of the sources of income in this business idea that will be able to support activities identified above. It has been made clear from the above discussion some of the planned costs that would be incurred to facilitate the operations of this firm. Below are some of the specific revenue streams for this project.
- Sale of cards
- Sale of card devices
This project will depend on the sale of cards and card devices to individuals who will accept to be members of our charitable organization. All registered members will be expected to have a card (individuals) or a card device (companies) as identifications. They will buy the card at 2 dollars, the revenue received from selling cards going to the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, the Red Crystal, and other charity organizations.
The card devices will cost 25 dollars each. It is estimated that the combined cost of the two items will be 2 dollars. This means that from each member, we will generate 27 dollars. It is also important to make sure that cards should have expiry dates; thus, it will be possible to use them more than once.
- Percentage of the revenues collected from donors
Before going any further, one must mention that the Create Happiness is going to take 1% of each purchase amount for instance if I bought from Carrefour items and I paid 300$ then an amount of 3$ to allocated for donation. 40% of the 3% will be taken by Crate happiness company and 60% will be sent to Red Cross, so we will take $1.2.
It has been stated that the organization will act as a link between donors and Red Cross/Red Crescent, which is the distributing partner. However, we must get some income from this in order to enhance sustainability. We intend to keep 40% from all the donations received from hotels, restaurants, car rentals, and supermarket.
- Sale and advertisements on our periodicals
We intend to publish journals that would tell the stories of the suffering of people whom we are trying to help, how they are neglected by the government, and what members of the society are doing to help them. It would take a slight political tone to attract a wide reading. These journals will be sold to members of the society at $1.5 per copy. The cost of producing one copy is 3 dollars. This means that sale of one copy would give us 7 dollars.
Lessons Learned
The creation of Create Happiness and its introduction into the market obviously offers a lot of lessons to learn, especially in terms of promoting a company that primarily is going to be based on charity. To start with, the seriousness of the competition and the necessity to promote the company among the target customers has been proven.
Another important lesson concerns the reputation of the company in question. As the example of the Hilton hotel chain provided above shows, once people realize that a company has specific moral obligations towards a particular group of people, they feel more inclined to use the given company’s services. Therefore, the necessity to introduce a strong vision and values has become obvious in the process of designing the Create Happiness market strategy.
References
Hopkins, B. R. (2013). Starting and managing a nonprofit organization: A legal guide. Hoboken: Wiley.
Hougaard, S. (2005). The business idea: The early stages of entrepreneurship. Berlin: Springer.
Innes, W. (2006). Charities, non-profits, and philanthropy under the Income Tax Act. Toronto: CCH Canadian.
Kyle, T. (2008). 400 latest & greatest small business ideas from around the world. London: World’s Biggest BooksCom.
Top 10 hospitality industry trends for 2013 (n. d.). Web.