Usuario:KandyPottinger
Market identification
Custom writing services market is really a sector of the e-commerce industry. Custom made writing services are fee-based.
Market dimension
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 200. 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 annual turnover. Total market size is estimated at $10, 800, 000 yearly. The size of the market in relation to the economic climate is yet unknown.
Segmentation
Segmentation is the process of allocation of particular 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 as follows. Companies that operate within the market could be divided in accordance to specialty area 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. Usually, such organizations hire writers representing different specialties or simply those able to perform on appropriate level in a single or several fields. Companies attributed to another organizational category usually operate within a narrower framework. In the market there are companies that offer custom-written papers specifically on math, physics, sociology, the 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, however , may have nothing to do with violation of ethics, but what about privacy of these students who previously ordered a custom-written paper, which might have been later on re-sold to another student?
Growth acceleration
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 research papers. Over the 5-year period the amount of companies in the market grew up to nearly two hundreds.
The leap within growth rates of the market will be noticed to take place in 2003-2004 whenever 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 probably caused by the tendency towards ecommerce solutions being new to hoards associated with entrepreneurs in a number of developing countries like India, Ukraine, Poland and other nations. Companies headquartered in these countries began offering similar services but with decrease fees as compared to those located in the U. S., Canada, or Quarterly report. More on pricing policies see within Pricing.
Today, market's growth swiftness is rather low as the market is usually full-fledged due to a variety of services offered by market participants.
Geographical distribution of services
It is worth mentioning the fact that researched market is a subdivision of ecommerce industry. This gives ground in conclusion that either products or services produced by industry's parties are of intangible personality rather than of tangible. This especially concerns custom writing services market, that provides its customers intangible products delivered to them mostly via email.
It should be clear that no matter where a company keeps its general/backup office, it operates worldwide.
The only principle that regulates geographical distribution of custom-written papers is linguistic attachment. Among major countries using the service are: america of America, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and some European and Asian countries.
Periodic character of the market
Another aspect of the market is its seasonality. Periodic character of the examined market is definitely sharply defined. As services offered by the market participants are oriented from student needs throughout the academic 12 months only, the season of active product sales almost coincides with the academic season. The first half of September - usually passive - is compensated along with several weeks in June.
Such seasonality of the market explains its lack of stability of prices. It was noticed that costs for services increase throughout the year along with peaks in December - January and April - May; and drop dramatically during the summer season.
Customers/Clients
Customers of online services such as custom writing services are usually students of high colleges, colleges, and Universities, of 16 to 25 years old. As pricing in the market is relatively low, target group of the market covers the so-called middle class and higher. A research demonstrates in 2005 from 14 percent to 23 percent of students (considering seasonality correction) have in due time applied to custom writing services (IAS, 2005). In other words, one-seventh in order to one-fourth of students has purchased at least one paper during 2004-2005 academic years. The same research provides data that gives ground to conclude about the growth of the market. It is announced that in 2003 peak price of students who applied to the particular service at least once was 25 percent, whereas in 2005 it is estimated to reach 36 percent (IAS, 2005).
Client 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 carrier's customer retention or loyalty programs.
Customer retention programs are usually complex systems that include two or more elements listed above. As regards the market of custom 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 customer loyalty such as permanently variable prices that depend on demand for the product or service throughout the year, bonus plans (such because bonus key that allows up to four percent reduction), and other techniques; and (b) nearly 10 percent of companies within the market use complex consumer loyalty programs such as flexible discount rates (sometimes up to 30 percent! ) within a combination with weekly feedback bonus deals, personal selection of a writer, order standing check, 24/7 customer care, and other settings of customer attraction.
Factors that will influence buyer's choice
Among elements that have impact on customers' choice on 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 cost and quality of a specific assistance, these two factors are the most important. It is vital for companies to balance between price and quality values given that optimum correlation between these two types benefits both a service provider and also 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 period, many companies offer urgent order accomplishment within 12 (and occasionally even 8) hours. Some of them limit the volume of an order to particular number of pages, though there are some businesses that accept urgent orders without volume limitation.
Pricing
Custom services market has been experiencing a decline in prices lately. As it has been mentioned earlier in this research, 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 for urgent (24 to 48h) purchases, and $30 a page for extremely urgent orders (within 24h).
You can find companies offering custom-written papers half price as compared to average pricing. This fact may indicate that a company either hires instant workers from developing countries or is a new comer to the market and provides such a low prices policy in order to enter the full marketplace and gain certain status.
Principles of operation
Principles of operation are the same throughout the industry. Intangible character of products produced by competitors on the market implies single system of relationships between a company and a customer irrespective of a good 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 required and optional features such as credit card processing system (necessary), online customer support (optional), and auto-responder to provide present customers with automated thank yous and newsletters, and other features.
A customer 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 hats, e. g. one person could perform 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 customer via email.
It is worth noting that major attention is paid to a company's website. It is common for a company producing custom-written papers to get as many webmasters as writers. Difficult to believe? In your opinion, what is the relationship between webmasters/programmers and book reviewers working for Amazon. com?
Competitors plus leaders
As mentioned above, the number of rivals in the market estimates nearly 200. Leadership in the market where companies offer custom-written papers of any kind is described exclusively due to a company's website's ranking 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 focused at different key words. Thus, various websites could be leaders in the same search engine, though for different keywords or even phrases.
Regulations
Being a subdivision from the ecommerce industry, custom writing services marketplace is regulated by nothing but various codes like BBB Online that will refer to web entrepreneurs. In general, ecommerce industry is poorly regulated.
Current trends within the industry and marketplace success factors
Among current tendencies in the market particularly three aspects are worth mentioning: (a) constant along with 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 quantity of freelance writers who once decided to start out their own business.
Permanent fall in price is caused by growing number of competition and similarity of services offered by companies in the market.
Finally, diversification associated with services is a logic consequence from the same increase in the number of competitors.
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