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Welcome to Alice.com, the open online shopping platform for sundry goods. The business model from Alice.com is particularly interesting. Regarding their product sample strategy, we wrote:
“The manufacturers who sell products over Alice.com can directly target consumer groups of their liking with their free product samples. The samples are sent with the regular purchase orders. The profiles and other user data (such as purchase behaviour) allow for a more direct selection of sample recipients as opposed to when samples are made available to individual retailers.”
More on their business model can be found on business-strategy-innovation.com:
“The clever part about their model is that they don’t make any money selling the products that they offer. They make their money selling advertising on the site, and selling purchase data back to the manufacturers (which the manufacturers have wanted, but lacked forever). Data is king in the world of sales, and Alice is positioning itself to be the impartial third party that sits between the customer and the manufacturer. As long as Alice doesn’t compromise the identities of their customers, I don’t see how they can lose. Customers value price and manufacturers value richer customer data (what they buy and what causes them to buy), and everyone wins.”
Alice.com is positioning themselves as the platform with the lowest prices in order to get the furthest reach. And with this reach, Alice.com is able to collect the largest possible amount of useful data in order to be able to offer additional services such as advertising or targeted product samples. This in turn enables them keep product prices at their lowest possible level.
This is how a promising internet platform strategy should look like. On the condition of course, that the economics balance out.
Originally posted in German by Marcel Weiss, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
