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Marketplace identification

Custom writing services market is a sector of the e-commerce industry. Custom made writing services are fee-based.

Market size

The precise size of custom writing services market is unknown, though a few rough estimate could be made. The amount of competitors in the market approaches nearly two hundred. It is also known that around 30 % of organizations in the industry have annual turnover amounting to $120, 000 approximately, whereas other 70 percent have almost twice as low yearly turnover. Total market size is estimated at $10, 800, 000 each year. The size of the market in relation to the economy is yet unknown.

Segmentation

Segmentation is the process of allocation of specific homogeneous sub-markets within a heterogeneous market. A market is a multitude of sub-markets which have similar motivations.

In the case with the marketplace concerned, segmentation is interpreted the following. Companies that operate within the market could be divided in accordance to field of expertise differences into such categories: (a) generally-oriented companies; (b) particularly-oriented companies. Generally-oriented companies are those that produce custom-written papers on a wide variety of topics. As a rule, such organizations hire writers symbolizing different specialties or simply those capable of perform on appropriate level in one or several fields. Companies attributed to another organizational category usually run within a narrower framework. In the market you can find companies that offer custom-written papers specifically on math, physics, sociology, the particular African-Americans, William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, etc .

Other products and services offered by the industry representatives include proofreading and editing services, plus pre-written papers.

It is noteworthy that there are companies in the market that offer both custom-written and pre-written papers. This, nevertheless , may have nothing to do with violation of ethics, but what about privacy of these students who previously ordered the custom-written paper, which might have been later on re-sold to another student?

Growth speed

Growth rates of the market are usually varying over the time. Thus, in 2000 there were nearly 25-30 businesses offering custom-written/pre-written essays, term documents, cases studies, and other types of study papers. Over the 5-year period the amount of companies in the market grew up to almost two hundreds.

The leap within growth rates of the market is definitely noticed to take place in 2003-2004 when sudden change in pricing occurred. The number of companies in the market increased nearly 30 percent and now estimates around 80 companies. This leap was possibly caused by the tendency towards ecommerce solutions being new to hoards of entrepreneurs in a number of developing countries such as India, Ukraine, Poland and other nations. Companies headquartered in these countries started offering similar services but with reduce fees as compared to those located in the U. S., Canada, or Down under. More on pricing policies see in Pricing.

Today, market's growth acceleration is rather low as the market can be full-fledged due to a variety of services offered by market participants.

Geographical distribution associated with services

It is worth mentioning the researched market is a subdivision of ecommerce industry. This gives ground to conclude that either products or services produced by industry's parties are of intangible character rather than of tangible. This specifically concerns custom writing services market, that provides its customers intangible products sent to them mostly via email.

It should be clear that no matter where a company keeps its general/backup office, it works worldwide.

The only principle that adjusts geographical distribution of custom-written papers is linguistic attachment. Among major countries using the service are: the usa of America, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and some European and Asian countries.

In season character of the market

Another aspect of the market is its seasonality. Periodic character of the examined market will be sharply defined. As services provided by the market participants are oriented with student needs throughout the academic year only, the season of active sales almost coincides with the academic calendar year. The first half of September - usually passive - is compensated with several weeks in June.

Such seasonality of the market explains its instability of prices. It was noticed that prices for services increase throughout the year along with peaks in December - January plus April - May; and fall dramatically during the summer season.

Customers/Clients

Clients of online services such as custom made writing services are usually students of high schools, colleges, and Universities, of 16 to 25 years old. As prices in the market is relatively low, target group of the market covers the so-called center class and higher. A research demonstrates in 2005 from 14 percent to 23 percent of college students (considering seasonality correction) have in due time applied to custom services (IAS, 2005). In other words, one-seventh to one-fourth of students has bought at least one paper during 2004-2005 academic years. The same research offers data that gives ground to conclude in regards to the growth of the market. It is announced that in 2003 peak rate of students who applied to the service at least once was 25 percent, whereas in 2005 it is estimated to reach 36 percent (IAS, 2005).

Consumer loyalty

Customer loyalty is obviously a behavior demonstrated by frequent or systematic purchases of a company's service or product. Customer loyalty could be achieved through customer-friendly pricing policies, various low cost programs, incentive plans etc . Consumer loyalty is also an aspect of a company's customer retention or loyalty programs.

Customer retention programs are usually complicated systems that include two or more elements listed above. As regards the market of custom writing services, the following was noticed in the course of the research held by the author: (a) more than 80 percent of the market uses basic techniques in acquiring client loyalty such as permanently variable prices that depend on demand for the service or product throughout the year, bonus plans (such as bonus key that allows up to 4 percent reduction), and other techniques; and (b) nearly 10 percent of businesses within the market use complex consumer loyalty programs such as flexible special discounts (sometimes up to 30 percent! ) in the combination with weekly feedback bonus deals, personal selection of a writer, order position check, 24/7 customer care, and other modes of customer attraction.

Factors that influence buyer's choice

Among elements that have impact on customers' choice in the market of custom writing services are cost, quality of products and services (including exclusiveness, professionalism, and compliance with the requirements), and delivery time.

As to price and quality of a specific program, these two factors are the most important. It is essential for companies to balance in between price and quality values considering that optimum correlation between these two classes benefits both a service provider and a customer. It is worth mentioning that there are companies that offer papers written by Ph level. D. s for "as low as $8. 95 per page". Quality of a paper is straight related to its price and vice versa.

In respect of the delivery time, many companies offer urgent order accomplishment within 12 (and sometimes even 8) hours. Some of them restrict the volume of an order to particular number of pages, though there are some companies that accept urgent orders with no volume limitation.

Pricing

Custom writing services market has been experiencing a drop in prices lately. As it was mentioned earlier in this research, presently there had been fall in prices in 2003-2004 caused by sudden increase in market's development rates. By far, average fees are usually kept at the level of $15 for each page for regular (5+ days) orders, $20 per page to get urgent (24 to 48h) purchases, and $30 a page for extremely urgent orders (within 24h).

You will find companies offering custom-written papers fifty percent price as compared to average pricing. This fact may indicate that a company either hires instant workers through developing countries or is a new comer to the market and provides such a low prices policy in order to enter the full market and gain certain status.

Principles of operation

Principles of operation are the same throughout the industry. Intangible nature of products produced by competitors on the market implies single system of relationships between a company and a customer irrespective of an organization's capacities.

Companies that offer custom-written papers (essays, term papers, case studies, literature reviews, executive summaries, dissertations) operate through their sites. Websites are supplied with all necessary and optional features such as bank card processing system (necessary), online customer care (optional), and auto-responder to provide present customers with automated thank yous and newsletters, and other features.
A client places an order, which is then forwarded to a writer. This step is usually omitted in small companies where two or three people wear several caps, e. g. one person could execute as an administrator, a writer, and a customer service representative. If there ARE a couple of authors working for a company, one of them accomplishes an order, which is then delivered to the client via email.

It is worth observing that major attention is paid to a company's website. It is common for a company producing custom-written papers to have as many webmasters as writers. Hard to believe? In your opinion, what is the correlation between webmasters/programmers and book reviewers working for Amazon. com?

Competitors plus leaders

As mentioned above, the number of competitors in the market estimates nearly 200. Management in the market where companies offer custom-written papers of any kind is defined exclusively due to a company's website's position in various search engines. The most powerful search engines like google are Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Altavista, and Alltheweb. Moreover, websites are ranked in accordance to their content oriented at different key words. Thus, various websites could be leaders in the exact same search engine, though for different keywords or phrases.

Regulations

Being a subdivision of the ecommerce industry, custom writing services marketplace is regulated by nothing but many codes like BBB Online that will refer to web entrepreneurs. In general, e-commerce industry is poorly regulated.

Current trends within the industry and market success factors

Among current trends in the market particularly three aspects are worth mentioning: (a) constant fall in price; (b) constant increase in the amount of competitors; and (c) diversification of services offered by companies.
Constant increase in the number of competitors is obviously caused by simpleness of operations and growing amount of freelance writers who once decided to start out their own business.

Permanent fall in cost is caused by growing number of competition and similarity of services provided by companies in the market.
Finally, diversification associated with services is a logic consequence from the same increase in the number of competitors.