Baihe.com Consulting Report
Option B: Small Business Consulting
Table of Content
Executive Summary. 2
Introduction. 3
Client Profile. 5
Nature and History of Firm.. 6
Business and Market Environment 7
The Competition. 11
Findings. 14
Opportunities, Problems and Recommendations. 16
Feasibility Analysis forAPP Development 23
Conclusion. 24
Reference: 25
Appendix 1: 28
Appendix 2: 29
Appendix 3. 30
Consultancy Project Proposal 31
Executive Summary
Baihe.com is a professional Chinese online dating website, which provides service to help
users find their life mates through network communication technology. With the increasing
online dating websites and expandingnumbersof internet users in China, Baihe.com is
facing more challenges and opportunities.
This paper is analyzed the Chinese online dating environment, in order to understand the
current situation for online dating website. Through the research we found there is a huge
market potential for online dating, and we also analyzed Chinese online dating users’
needs based on Hu’s research (2012) to find consumers’ demand for helping Baihe.com
improve the service.
Through the analyses of customers’ needs and several key competitors’ performances, we
summarized the opportunities and problems of Baihe.com and gave reasonable
recommendations. There are three key problems in Baihe.com, including charging
problems, untruthfulness information and insincerity in Baihe.com, and user information
classification problems. To solve these problems, we made six recommendations for
Baihe.com to improve revenues and customer satisfaction.
Introduction
Baihe.com is a popular online dating website in China. The CEO is Fanjiang Tian.
Nowadays, Baihe.com faces three main problems, which are charging problem,
untruthfulness information and insincerity, and user information classification.
“In 2009, even the company’s registers reached 23 million, but just 10% of users to pay
fee.”(Baihe.com. 2009). “The annual income was 70million RMB with 20million RMB
profit.”(Chinaitab.com,2009). It made Baihe.com cannot break-even in the past few years.
Untruthfulness information problem is that registers prefer using descriptions, which are
far from realistic to attractive more people. Finally, the company does not have a useful
strategy or system to classify customers’ information to match right people.
The purpose of the proposal is to find out the problems of Baihe.com and to make relevant
solutions. For charging problem, the suggestion is developing multiple business models,
only charging high-end/ custom-made services, and keeping the basic service free. For
untruthfulness information problem, the suggestion is building a feedback system and
online and offline user community. The solution for user information classification
problem is to build a key word matching system and psychological cooperation.
Why does the company exists the three main problems? The root of these problems is due
to the special Chinese culture and consumption habit. China is a big country, that is, there
is a strong market competition in various fields. In order to account more market shares,
companies have to implement free strategy. Over time, it causes customer’s free
consumption habit. There is a Chinese saying “Clothes make the man”. (China.com, 2011).
It means people should make a good dress to everyone, even it far away from reality. That
is also the reason why people like to put untruthfulness information on internet.
All the information of the report is from email interview, newspaper, authoritative official
website, internal report, and public articles.
The report will suggest some relevant comprehensive solutionsimproving the company’s
operation, and increasing the company’s annual profit and market value. In the report, for
the problems, we will provide the specific recommendations to solve them. For example,
multiple business models to solve the charging problem. The limitations of our analysis are
practicability and maneuverability, because there are several unpredictable factors existing
in the market. Furthermore, Baihe.com is such a small Chinese business that we are
difficult to collect primary data. So we mainly focused on secondary data analysis.
Client Profile
l Company Name: Biahe.com – A dating service provider in China, which residences in
Beijing. (CrunchBase.com,2013).
l CEO Profile: FanjiangTian, graduated from Tsinghua
University with a PhD degree in engineering and a bachelor degree in engineering. Tian
had served as a consulting manager inAccenture, providing consulting for multiple world
fortune 500 companies. (Efocus.com,2009). In 2004, he left Accenture and founded Baihe
Online Technology Co. Ltd with his friends Jiang Qian and Yan Mu.
l How and why did Fanjiang Tian become interested in this business:
In China, there were many single young people, who have difficulties on finding their right
man or woman. However, there was not any professional company or website that could
provide such a serviceto find their life mate. Tian realized that there was a market
opportunity, then he founded Baihe.com.(Xie,2007) Due to the special conditions and
traditional culture in China, Tian focused on long-term market demand to get into the
market.
Nature and History of Firm
The following is the table to show the history of Baihe.com.
Business and Market Environment
In this part we are going to analyze the external market environment and internal business
situation.
External Market Environment
We use PEST framework to analyse the external online dating market environment through
four aspects: political, economic, social and technology. Through our analysis we found
online dating market has huge market potential and developing healthily.
Internal Business Environment
Online dating website has become increasingly popular in China now, and the numbers of
Baihe users are also growing. The following figure shows the numbers in Baihe.com from
2006 to 2013.
Source: Baihe.com(2013)
However, compared with two major competitors in China online dating market, Baihe.com
still has some problems should be solved, in next part we are going to analyzethe
competitors’ advantages and to summarize which aspect should be improved for
Baihe.com.
The Firm’s Operation
BusinessModel:
Membership Fee: Baihe.com charge membership fees for their users. However, most
Chinese users do not have habit to use charge services. Moreover, Baihe.com is afraid that
