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QUIDSI Project
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Market Analysis of ecommerce
company Quidsi
Submitted By:
Group 5 (Section D)
Amit Nangia (15P185)
Prabodh Dasari (15P195)
RamaKrishna K (15P205)
Nidhin Thomas (15P215)
Sambit Dash (15P225)
Sunakshi Bansal (15P233)
1
Executive Summary:
The objective of this project is to apply the various concepts of marketing learnt
during the course of study to a company in the real world and arrive at insights
based on the same. This exercise imparts a clear design and practical knowledge on
the implementation of marketing strategies and plans.
The company ‘Quidsi’ has been selected for analysis because it has created a
revolution in the space of e-commerce by changing the way people shop for baby
products. The main motto of the company was to make life easier for new parents.
The company has given a fight to ecommerce giants like Amazon and Mom and Pop
stores in the baby care product segment. The company has been acquired by
Amazon for 545$ million in the year 2011 and continued to operate individually under
the same leadership team.
The report covers SWOT analysis, PEST analysis and Porter’s Five Forces model to
evaluate the positioning of the company in the market and the brand value it has
created. A questionnaire has been floated to understand the consumer behaviour for
the baby care product segment.
Coming to the analysis based on the conducted survey, we found that consumers
prefer buying from online portals over buying from offline stores and prefer to buy
baby care products from customized websites over general e-commerce sites.
Diapers.com despite being a key player in this segment, the consumer awareness
for this company is limited. It is far more limited for the sister sites of the company.
Hence, it can be inferred that there is a huge market available for the company to tap
into. Low prices/discounts still stand outs to be the main preference of the consumer
followed by free shipping, faster delivery and attractive packaging.
It has also been observed that while making an online purchase for baby products,
the consumer considers reliability/brand value of the website to be the most
important factor.
The above analysis shows that Quidsi should continue to follow its strategy and
make sure it expands so as to capture the untapped market share.
2
Table of Contents
Phase 1 4
Introduction 4
Purpose and Objective 5
Significance and Justification 6
Outline/ Flow of the project 7
SWOT Analysis 8
PESTLE Analysis 11
Phase 2 14
Porter’s five forces model 14
Literature Review 16
Methodology Approach 18
Primary Research Analysis 19
Phase 3 22
Positioning Strategy 22
Conclusions and Implications 25
Suggestions and Foresights 26
Limitations 27
References 28
Appendices 29
Date: 30th August, 2015
3
Introduction
About the company:
Quidsi owns and operates a family of sites linked together which deliver baby
products starting from diapers to clothing. The main motto of the company is to make
Mom’s life easier with quick delivery, free shipping (as per the applicability), focussed
customer care and one shared cart & checkout while delivering the products.
Quidsi started as an e-commerce company which deals with diapers and then later
expanded into many other categories under Mom’s essentials category. Quidsi
continues to redefine e-commerce for baby products by changing the way people
shop for almost every part of their lives.
The company positions itself as a mom-centric retail technology company. They
understand Mom and deliver delightful experiences, products, and expertise at the
moment she needs them.
Illustration of the different categories the company is into:
Diapers.com for consumables such as diapers, wipes
Soap.com for health, beauty, and household essentials
BeautyBar.com, a luxury beauty destination
Wag.com, a pet specialty site
YoYo.com for toys, books, and games
Casa.com for decor and home products
VineMarket.com for natural and organic groceries
AfterSchool.com for kids' sports and activities
Look.com for kids' clothing
Amazon.com acquired Quidsi, Inc. for $550 million in 2011, though the company still
operates independently from its Jersey City office and follows an integration model
similar to the one Amazon uses with Zappos.com.Diapers.com was ranked #35
overall, #1 for Retail, #3 in NY-NJ-PA, and #5 Top Indian Run Companies by Inc.
magazine in the year 2009.
4
Purpose and Objective Of Project
The purpose of this project is to study the consumer behaviour with respect to the
online purchase of products pertaining to baby care category. It has been done
through analysing the customer oriented approach of Quidsi, Inc. as well as its
unique distribution network used to ship products to its consumers.
Quidsi’s mission is “To inspire passion into our customers”. Even the guiding
principle of the company focuses mainly on connecting them to the customer and
understanding them to the maximum extent possible. Their prime focus is on
customer acquisition and retention. Quidsi started selectively into the diaper to
acquire customers and then later diversified after knowing their initial customers.
This allowed them to cross-sell and up-sell specifically the product that the customer
would buy in the near future. Another key area of their focus was customer
development which means focusing mainly on what customers would buy not what
they can sell.
5
Significance and Justification
The e-commerce revolution has made the Old customer transform into a new
customer who not only spends over 200 minutes every day on his smart phone, but
also prefers to shop online for all types of products ranging from salt to inner wear to
high end electronics gadgets. In addition, consumers are becoming more and more
brand conscious and prefer to shop from customized portals selling specific
products.
Owing to excessive workloads and stifling deadlines, our new customer has been left
wanting for time and if there’s a particular product that has seen a massive shift from
offline to online purchases, it’s the baby care products. The baby care market has
experienced exceptional growth over the past few years due to changing consumer
mindset and increased penetration of baby care products. It’s also worth mentioning
that baby care products is one e-com category where the vertical players have
managed to stand on their own and a few players broke out of the pack. Quidsi is
one of the companies which has operated in this segment and has come out to be
extremely successful and hence we have based our analysis on the same
Diapers.com, the parent company of Quidsi, when they started in 2005, was the first
company to sell diapers online. Amazon started selling diapers only a year after
Diapers.com and other major players like Walmart.com and Target.com were not
concentrating much on the sector either since diapers were not thought to be a
product which could be sold on the internet: they were bulky and expensive to ship,
they had very low margins and the product had little to offer in terms of variety.
Despite that, in a matter of five years, Diapers.com grew in revenues from zero to
$300 million before being acquired by Amazon. So this speaks of the tremendous
opportunity of not only the conversion rate of buyers from offline to online, but also
the advantages of an online play.
We are trying to analyze the business strategy of Quidsi and to traverse their path. A
closer look at Quidsi’s model reveals that its underlying theme is to cater towards the
entire family as they have seven other sister sites soap.com, beautybar.com,
yoyo.com, wag.com, casa.com, vinemarket.com, afterschool.com and look.com. We
are also trying to figure out the various specific attributes a customer looks upon
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while making an online purchase of baby products considering Quidsi as a
benchmark.
In these competitive times of many new players coming up, it will be interesting to
study that how Quidsi plans to market itself to maintain its No. 1 position amidst all
the growing competition.
Outline/flow of Project:
The purpose of the project is to understand the basics of the marketing world. The
initial phase involves selecting a company for analysis pertaining to marketing
planning. Detailed analysis of the company and their product portfolio would give a
better understanding of the marketing strategy and domain knowledge of that
industry.
Upon deciding the products and the company, a basic marketing strategy would be
developed, staring with elementary due diligence about the industry, the product, the
concerned company and potential competitors. Some basic understanding of the
internal and external environment of the company would be done through SWOT
and PESTLE analyses. This would help understand the internal and external
environments, as well as analyse the political, social, economic and technological
aspects. In the next section of the project the focus will be on the detailed analysis
and review of the product by going through relevant literature, and by collecting
market data to come up with the analysis. In the last section phase of the project,
more emphasis will be on the market trends and the future prospects of the product
portfolio of the company, and the project will be concluded
7
Strengths:
Focus on an exclusive category: The exclusive product focus that the company
had gave it a real advantage. Specialization worked very well for them because they
have designed the website targeted to a particular audience which has offered great
convenience to the customer in terms of its usage as well. It is also easier for the
company to take care of the back-end logistics as well due to the exclusive focus.
Inventory Management: They have developed an exclusive algorithm for figuring
when and how much stock to reorder for a particular item. They were able to build a
joint probability distribution through which they were able to determine when and
how much to order and be right 95% percent of the times. This has resulted in a real
impact in terms of the sales and cost minimization while handling the inventory
Domestic market: Given the kind of product they were dealing with most of the
sales are expected from the domestic market and they could easily grow into it. As
most of the orders were from the domestic market, shipping was comparatively
easier to deal with.
8
Shipping: They have offered free overnight shipping for around 70% of the U.S. on
orders over 25$ and this is a market where quick delivery is of utmost importance.
Quidsi uses different shippers to deliver to different places, depending on the rates,
which vary by zone.
Technology: With the use of technology, they have developed their back-end
logistics building their own supply-chain management systems and box selection
software. Leapfrogging the normal approach, they have used robots in the
warehouses while during packaging and inventory management which helped them
cut down on the logistics cost to a great extent.
Expansion to other product categories: The Company has opportunities to
expand into various products in the same domain. Most part of the technology and
back-end logistics which has already been set up can be expanded easily and the
profits, revenues and profitability while during this process can be improved
significantly
Weaknesses:
Change in leadership: After the acquisition of the company by Amazon, the
leadership team comprising of Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara has left the company and
moved on to their next big adventures. The innovation of the company has started to
become stand still and the company is slowly losing its identity.
Only online presence: Quidsi as a company has online presence only. It does not
have mom and pop stores catering to the product portfolio it offers. Thus, the
company can cater only to a limited market.
Price war: The products being dealt with operate at a very low margin which makes
it difficult for the company to with stand the fierce competition from the other online
retailers and mom and pop stores
9
Opportunities:
Growing Demand: The global baby care cosmetics and toiletries market was worth
USD 41.3 billion in 2011 and is expected to reach USD 62.3 billion in 2017, with a
CAGR of 7.1% from 2011 to 2017. The baby care product market growth is largely
fuelled by the growing baby population in developing nations.
Growing disposable income levels: Disposable income of parents in developing
nations has been constantly on a rise. Moreover, the average age of parents across
the globe has also increased in past few years. Higher aged parents are considered
to be financially more stable and hence have more money to spend on their baby’s
care and convenience. In addition, growing number of women entering into
mainstream workforce has helped the baby care market to grow, as the average
disposable income of the family has grown.
Increase in awareness: Baby care market has also witnessed a growing trend in
baby specific products, especially baby cosmetics, which are organic in terms of
ingredients used and pose no threat to baby’s health. Key factors that influence
parents’ decision while purchasing baby care products include health benefits,
convenience, and organic aspects.
Threats:
Competition: All successful Internet businesses attract competition. Since Quidsi
sells the same or similar products as high street retailers and other online
businesses, it may become more and more difficult to differentiate the brand from its
competitors.
Online Security: Quidsi stores its online shoppers’ personal information, such as
bank account details, which is a target for online thefts. The more online customers
the company has, the more attractive as a target it becomes.
10
PESTLE Analysis
Political Factors:
11
Economic Factors:
Social Factors:
12
Technological Factors:
Legal Factors:
Environmental Factors:
13
Porter's five forces model:
Threat of New Entry:
Quidsi, being an e-commerce company, can be thought to have tough competition
from new companies entering the same market. But, Quidsi has an advantage of
selling its own products rather than connecting buyers and sellers on a platform.
Moreover, for a new entrant to set up a company like Quidsi, it needs good amount
of funding and good knowledge on present Mom and Pop stores that are already
present. A good presence of Quidsi in the present market space and a good
relationship with the customers is an added advantage to Quidsi which makes it
difficult for the new entrants to grab the market share of Quidsi. But, there is a
chance that a company which is already well established can expand itself into this
business with ease and can be a threat to Quidsi.
Buyer Power:
The buyers present in the Mom and Pop store business are primarily those people
who have kids aged anywhere between 0-12 years. So, this can be considered a
compulsion to use the baby products but there are competitors. So, a buyer has
many options as the buyer can approach any of the sellers if he/she, is not satisfied
with the product or is not happy with the way the seller's relationship with them. So,
the buyers have enough capability to control the market by choosing a different
seller. Hence, the buyer is to be considered as the most important entity to the seller
and should maintain a good relationship with the buyer. So, the buyers have a good
chance in winning over the pricing of a company's products as they can bring down
the price of a company's products by shifting their base to other sellers.
Threat of Substitution:
Though we can state that there are no substitutes for the baby products as they are
compulsory for kids, we can state that there are a large number of products by other
sellers which can be thought of as a substitution. Alternatives in these kind of
products can be tough because there is no substitute for milk required for babies, oil
used for babies etc. There are competitors but there are not many substitutes one
can think of. These can be outsourced by an e-commerce company as an e-
commerce company is a platform where buyers and sellers meet. So, if a new e-
14
commerce company includes baby products in it's portfolio, then one can say that
outsourcing of goods is being done by the company. However, in case of Quidsi, it
can't outsource the complete operations because the main business model of Quidsi
is selling the goods required by manufacturing them and not by outsourcing.
Supplier Power:
The supplier here when referred to as the supplier of raw materials for the company
to manufacture its products, it can be mentioned that the supplier can control the
situation only to a certain extent because Quidsi is a diversified operating store
where the raw materials required to manufacture different products are different and
there are many suppliers to provide the raw materials. But, there might be some
categories where there might be only one supplier and hence there is a good chance
of supplier controlling the price in this case.
Competitive Rivalry:
The competition in this segment is huge but the competitors are diversified into a
larger portfolio than Quidsi's. There are huge competitors who have capability to
sustain losses and have the capability to manipulate the price of the competitive
products for a certain amount of time. But there is an advantage to Quidsi in terms of
good relationship with the sellers and as it concentrates only one a particular
category of products, it can have a customer base which is completely oriented to
the portfolio of Quidsi when they visit their website.
Along with that, there are also brick and mortar stores which provide stiff competition
to Quidsi as there might be people who want the product right away and may not
want to wait for a couple of days or so. Moreover some people might prefer brick and
mortar stores to online stores as they believe that the products in the brick and
mortar store can be verified by themselves and so have an added advantage.
15
Literature Review:
Introduction
A literature review, with respect to the baby care market in India and abroad, was
conducted. The study included a review of research on the global baby care product
consumption trends along with the consumption trends in India. A study on the risks
involved was also identified in the review. The results from the various studies are as
discussed and summarized.
Worldwide Baby Care Products Trend:
According to Transparency Market research, Baby Care Products market will reach
USD 66.8 Billion globally in 2017. Global baby care product market was worth USD
44.7 billion in 2011 and is estimated to grow at a rapid pace. In the overall global
market, EMEA region is expected to maintain its lead position in terms of revenue till
2017. EMEA is expected to enjoy 34.7% of global baby care market revenue share
in 2017 followed by Asia-Pacific. The baby care product market growth is largely
fuelled by the growing baby population in developing nations, where the disposable
income of parents have also increased considerably at the same time. Baby skin
care and toiletries are major segments of baby care market with high market share
and positive future outlook. Currently, baby hair care segment has small market
penetration, however is expected to grow healthy in near future. Baby care market
has also witnessed a growing trend in baby specific products, especially baby
cosmetics, which are organic in terms of ingredients used and poses no threat to
baby’s health.
Baby Care Products Trend in India:
The Baby Care market in India is expected to grow significantly at a CAGR of around
17 percent in terms of revenue over the period 2014-2019. The Baby Care market in
India is driven by per capita increase in disposable income among consumers who
are more willing to buy luxury goods, such as baby accessories and cosmetics. It
has the largest population of children in the world with more than 20 percent of the
global population of children in the age group of 0-3.
16
But, in a country like India, there is one core challenge which needs to be addressed.
The Indian baby care market is restricted to majorly the urban areas. Despite
accounting for majority sales, the urban areas are still yet to be fully penetrated when
compared to other developed and developing markets in the Western countries. The
other challenges include areas like competition from cheaper substitutes, cultural
aspects and regulations on ‘Infant Food Promotion’ which can play a key role in
hindering the growth of this potential market in the country.
In the coming years, innovation in products and marketing strategies will be the key
focus areas for most of the companies operating in the Indian baby care market. The
main drivers for the baby care market in India, will however, remain to be the rise in
investments from companies, the towering demand and the increasing working
women population apart from the factors mentioned above.
Risks Involved:
Intense competition for sales of the products, changes in consumer
purchasing patterns and the inability to innovate or market the products
effectively could have an adverse effect
International operations are subject to foreign market risks, including foreign
exchange risk, currency restrictions and political, social and economic
instability
Increasing dependence on key retailers in developed markets and the
emergence of new sales channels
Significant increases in prices for raw materials, energy, transportation and
other necessary supplies and services, without corresponding increases in
our selling prices
Disruption in our supply chain or the failure of third-party providers to
satisfactorily perform can hamper the Operations
17
Methodology Approach
Our approach was weighed heavily in favour of primary research. It helped us to
eliminate the risks of the collected data being outdated or not being applicable for the
specific purpose. Among the various research approaches, survey approach seemed
to be more practical and was well within our limitations. It was best suited for the
descriptive research. Using survey approach we could also cover large amount of
people. As the people who get surveyed were unpaid there was an increasing
chance for the surveys to get ignored if it is time consuming. Hence, questionnaire
with close end questions was chosen over qualitative measures. As we considered
the major consumer base for baby product consumables was in the age group from
21 to 40, the focus was mostly on people in that age group. The easiest and
cheapest way to get in touch with people in today’s world is through online medium.
So, online medium was chosen as the contact method. Throughout our research, our
major focus was on understanding how significant is the e-commerce platform to buy
baby care products. The extent of success of why people preferred Quidsi as brand
while they were choosing baby care products was analysed through various factors
of judging the e-commerce retail business. The various factors that were analysed
were the mode of purchase, customer service attributes of the company, site
preference and the preference of website attributes.
18
Primary Research Analysis:
We conducted a primary survey to gauge the preference of consumers for making an
online purchase for baby care products. Below is an illustration of the results:
Where do you prefer to buy baby care products?
57.48%42.52%
Mode of Purchase
Online RetailOffline Retail
Given the current market scenario, there has been a huge shift in the consumer behaviour where the mode of online purchase is gaining huge importance even for baby care products
Which of the following online sites have you heard of?
Diapers.com Soap.com Beauty Bar.com Wag.com Yoyo.com None0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
21.26%
11.02% 13.39%
5.51% 7.09%
55.91%
Customer Awareness
Diapers.com despite being a key player in this segment, the consumer awareness
for this company is limited. It is far more limited for the sister sites of the company.
Hence, it can be inferred that there is a huge market available for the company to tap
into.
19
Importance of attributes of Customer Services while making an online
purchase for baby products
1 2 3 40
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
3441
282426
40 39
22
53
3126
1714 15
34
64
Customer Preferences
Free ShippingFaster DeliveryLow Prices/DiscountsAttractive Packaging
Low prices/discounts still stand outs to be the main preference of the consumer
followed by free shipping, faster delivery and attractive packaging
Importance of attributes of an e-commerce Website
1 2 3 4 505101520253035404550
14
24
35 36
1819
27
19 20
42
2117
14
28
47
38
31 30
17
11
35
28 2926
9
Website Attributes
Expert/Consumer ReviewsDesignNavigationReliabilityPayment Gateway Options
While making an online purchase for baby products, the consumer considers
reliability/brand value of the website to be the most important factor. Also from the
data, it can be inferred that the payment gateway options and navigation play a key
role in forming a decision.
20
Which kind of sites do you prefer for baby products?
63.78%
36.22%
Site Preference
Customized website selling only baby productsGeneral e-commerce sites
Consumer seems to prefer a customised website selling only baby care products
while making a purchase which seems to work in the favour of Quidsi
21
Positioning Strategy:
Market Segmentation
Quidsi targeted parents who used baby products as part of their daily routine. The
company was founded by two dads who were tired of midnight runs for diapers,
frustrated searches for the right diaper size, and wasted time waiting in store lines.
The men looked for online diaper sources, found none, and decided to launch the
business. Quidsi targeted anyone who buys online baby products for family with
babies and toddlers. This means that the target age of the person is during the
development stages of babies and toddlers. This is a very big market that crosses
gender, race, and culture of the person covering 12 million American mothers with
children up to age 3 who shell out $2.5 billion a year on baby gear online. The
market churns a lot of American families having an average of 2.5 children who wear
diapers for an average 2.8 years–but during that window, business is quite sticky.
Moms would rather place an order once and rest assured the goods will keep
coming.
It required different strategies to reach respective members of the market. Guardians
can't be reached with the normal TV advertising commonly used to reach the general
market of anybody who buys baby products.
Market Position
The brand consisted of three major product lines namely: diapers, wipes, and
formula. Diapers and pants product line includes Swaddlers Sensitive Diapers,
Cruisers Diapers, Easy Ups Trainers for Boys, Splashers Swim Pants; the wipes
product includes: Clean'n Go Wipes, Calming Lavender Wipes, Skin Soothing
Moisture Wipes, and Swipers Wipes; and the Kandoo and bibsters product line
includes: instant foaming hand soap and pocket bibsters. These products are
formulated to meet demands and needs of parents as the baby grows up.
Quidsi successfully positioned itself as a brand in the market. The message of
quality and product value still rings a bell in the minds of consumers. By providing
fast shipping, award-winning customer care and one shared cart & checkout on the
22
possible products that can be used for the different developmental stages of babies,
Quidsi was able to gain loyalty from consumers. From time to time, Quidsi had
reinvented itself and the strategies being adopted to suit with the current atmosphere
and environment of the market. Quidsi provided unmatched customer service, made
possible by heavy investment in back-end logistics. The company also cued into its
customers' unique needs.
Marketing Mix
The marketing mix that Quidsi follows includes: products, pricing, distribution, and
promotion. These marketing mix followed by Quidsi is extensive and goal-oriented to
retain its strength in the competitive market. These four marking activities must work
together for the success of positioning process. This should be done at the same
time to avoid leaving a segment unattended.
Products:
First, the product marketing process involves the production of quality products that
can extract loyalty from consumers. Quidsi started with providing baby products such
as diapers and wipes but later expanded their market to include a whole range of
related products. Products target the overall development of a baby from birth to the
toddler age. This means that as the baby grows, Quidsi can still be used by
guardians, healthcare professionals, and general market segments without using
some other brands. This marketing strategy encourages loyalty from customers,
which is very important to measure the market reputation.
Pricing:
Second, the price strategy of Pampers is much of focus. Diapers, delivered fast and
cheap, were the initial hook. They accounted for 40% of the company’s revenue but
carried 7% to 9% gross margins, not enough to live on. Car seats, toys and other
goodies within the company’s 15,000-item inventory do 30% or better.
23
Place:
Third, Quidsi maintained its marketing channels and strengthen its physical
distribution network. The distribution channel follows the wholesaler-retailer-
consumer pattern. With the use of a systematic inventory and warehouse system,
Quidsi is able to save much from inventory cost. With this distribution channel used,
the brand can easily reach customers, thus increases engagement. Instead of just
relying on the action of consumers, Quidsi is doing the action for consumers to make
decisions regarding the product. Pampering customers with good service is one
thing; shipping bulky items such as those huge diaper boxes is another, especially in
one or two days, often with no shipping and handling charge. It invested most of our
time and resources early on figuring out the distribution process. It buys in truckload
quantities directly from all of the major manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble
and Johnson & Johnson. Buys and offers more economical bulk sizes that many
traditional brick-and-mortar stores don’t have the shelf space to house. The company
has built software that allows it to ship orders the same day until 6 p.m., even though
the UPS truck leaves at 6:30 p.m. The software determines the optimal mix of box
sizes and automatically allocates items in an order to the most efficient boxes. Has
negotiated discounts with shipping carriers.
Promotion
Lastly, the competitive advertising system of Quidsi uses different media to point to
consumers the special features, uses and advantages compared to other brands. It
provides low cost products with fast delivery time. It also provides coupon and
discounts from time to time to keep the customers hooked on their site.
24
Conclusions and Implications:
After completing our survey we found that consumers prefer buying from online
portals (accounting for 57.5% of respondents) over buying from offline stores. We
also found that consumers prefer to buy baby care products from customized
websites selling only baby care products over general e-commerce sites as a
significant 64% of respondents voted customized e-commerce websites over general
e-commerce sites.
Price is considered to be an important factor for a consumer. 53% of them rated
price as the biggest attribute of customer cervices while making an online purchase
for baby products. By this we can deduce that consumers in general are price
conscious in nature.
Free shipping is considered to be the next important factor. This factor is understood
because a customer does not want to spend much on delivery charges for having
baby care products delivered. In fact 34% of consumers rated it as the most
important factor. This fact tells us that Quidsi should follow its strategy and make
sure it provides free shipping when and where possible so as to capture more
market share.
Faster delivery is considered to be the third most important factor. This factor is also
considered to be important in purchasing baby care products online as 26% of
consumers rated it as the most important factor. It explains that the consumer wants
a product like baby care essentials delivered on the same day or within a few days of
making the purchase. This fact tells us that Quidsi should follow its strategy and
continue to provide same day delivery in the big cities and try to deliver on the same
day or within a day of two from making the purchase everywhere so as to capture
more market share.
Consumers feel that attractive packaging is not an important factor for buying baby
care products online as a whopping 64% of consumers rated it as the least important
factor. In fact this is self explanatory as consumers wouldn’t bother much about the
packaging attractiveness of an essential product such as diapers and hence the
company doesn’t need to focus much on the packaging.
25
Reliability and payment gateway are important attributes a consumer looks for in an
e-commerce website as 38% and 35% of respondents rated reliability and payment
gateway respectively as the most important attribute they look for in an e-commerce
website. Design and navigation were the least important ones as 38% and 35% of
respondents’ rated reliability and payment gateway respectively as the least
important attribute they look for in an e-commerce website.
Suggestions and Foresights
The global baby care market was worth USD 41.3 billion in 2011 and is expected to
reach USD 62.3 billion in 2017 with a CAGR of 7.1% from 2011 to 2017. The baby
care product market growth is largely fueled by the growing baby population in
developing nations, where the disposable income of parents have also increased
considerably at the same time. Moreover, the average age of parents across the
globe has also increased in past few years. Higher aged parents are considered to
be financially more stable and hence have more money to spend on their baby’s
care and convenience. In addition, growing number of women entering into
mainstream workforce has helped the baby care market to grow, as the average
disposable income of the family has grown.
Since more and more women are entering into workforce and parents are finding it
increasingly difficult to find time to visit retail stores to purchase baby care products,
online marketplace for baby care products are expected to grow at a much higher
rate than the offline market. Considering the above factors, Quidsi should focus on
expanding into developing nations and increasing its reach in the developed world to
every nook and corner.
Quidsi can reduce their focus on packaging as it doesn’t really have a major impact
on consumer preference. Based on our survey, less than one-seventh of the
consumers think of packaging as an important parameter to buy a baby care
product. So, Quidsi can digress to other important parameters than packaging.
We had identified in our survey that consumers are highly price-conscious and
hence Quidsi should try to increase its market share by offering discounts on its
products. Quidsi should also focus on making its website more reliable from a
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consumer point of view and ensure payment gateway options are enhanced as these
two are the most important attributes a consumer looks for in an e-commerce
website. Quidsi can reduce their focus on navigation and design attributes of the
website as consumers were largely indifferent to these two attributes.
Quidsi’s future seems to be very bright if they start focusing on expanding their
operations to developing countries, increasing their reach in the countries they
operate, offering more discounts to increase market share, ensuring same day
delivery and making its website more reliable from a consumer point of view.
Limitations
Quidsi is a US-based firm, but the data sample was collected primarily from
respondents in India.
The data sample collected was limited and restricted only to few sources such
as social online media.
Another limitation being the survey was restricted to few brands and only few
factors.
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References:
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/content/10_47/b4204047877696.htm
http://techcrunch.com/tag/quidsi/
http://qz.com/322875/this-startup-wants-to-beat-amazon-by-rejecting-its-confrontational-culture/
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/content/10_42/b4199062749187.htm
http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2011/Meloneras/SOMMEM/SOMMEM-32.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diapers.com
http://www.quidsi.com/about
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/content/10_42/b4199062749187.htm
http://qz.com/322875/this-startup-wants-to-beat-amazon-by-rejecting-its-confrontational-culture/
http://techcrunch.com/tag/quidsi/
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/content/10_47/b4204047877696.htm
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/2105717/baby_care_products_market_global_industry
http://www.euromonitor.com/baby-and-child-specific-products-in-the-us/report
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Appendices:
Screenshots of the online survey floated
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